In some parts of the country where it grows it is called Golden Ragwort, in others Huckleroot.
It is an old domestic remedy and one only proved in a fragmentary way. Many of these medicines that have become household remedies should be properly proved. Only in this way can their power and influence be known, i. e., they can be used properly only when indicated by the symptoms they can produce.
Women: Senecio, is to be studied in relation to young girls with menstrual irregularities.
Those who have suppression of the menstrual flow from getting wet, from getting the feet wet, those who have menorrhagia, a copious menstrual flow which continues until they are anemic; and those also who suffer from dysmenorrhœa, the pains being most violent. In this remedy, with these general features, the young girl gradually tends toward catarrhal phthisis.
The menstrual flow is suppressed sometimes many months, she begins to look pale, has a dry, hacking cough, with bleeding from the lungs instead of the menstrual flow, a vicarious spitting of blood.
There is a catarrhal state throughout the chest. They are pallid and weakly girls. They tell you they have lost their menstrual flow, and have a chronic cough, are sensitive to every draft of air, are always taking cold and finally expectorate profusely.
The phthisis may go on as catarrh of the chest for years, but at last a miliary tuberculosis sets in and takes the patient off with what is known as acute consumption. Especially is this condition associated with disorder of the menstrual flow and a general catarrhal state.
“Phthisis, with obstructed menstruation.”
When the symptoms agree in this kind of a case Senecio is a most useful medicine for establishing the menstrual flow. You will know that it is acting well by the fact that the cough gradually diminishes. Of course a great many medicines will be suited to such general states, but this one has an unusually marked and special relation to these cases. In certain regions, Senecio has been used as a domestic medicine, an old woman’s remedy for bringing on the menstrual flow.
You will be struck on reading over this remedy with the tendency to hemorrhage from all the mucous membranes of the body. There is coryza with nose-bleed; spitting of blood from the throat and chest; hemorrhage from the lungs; a catarrhal condition of all the mucous membranes with a tendency to haemorrhage: congestion and inflammation of the kidneys with haemorrhage.
You know how commonly these cases end in dropsy. These waxy, anaemic, chlorotic girls, who have lost their menstrual flow, become dropsical after slow hemorrhage from the uterus, kidneys and bladder.
“Dropsy from anaemia.”
It is a medicine of the highest order for hemorrhages in catarrhal conditions.
Urinary: It has also in its proving many distressing symptoms of the urinary organs.
Painful urination. Uncomfortable heat in the neck of the bladder. Renal colic, the pains being so great that they produce nausea.
Renal dropsy. Intense pain over right kidney, etc. The whole urinary tract is painful and subject to bleeding. But bleeding especially in the absence of the menstrual flow is the feature of this remedy.
Wherever there is an inflammatory spot or catarrhal condition of the mucous membrane it will bleed in case the menstrual flow does not appear.
We have other medicines having the symptoms of vicarious haemorrhage, such as Hamamelis, Phosphorus and Bryonia, but Senecio has this condition strikingly and is one of the newer remedies for such condition.
“Dysmenorrhoea with urinary symptoms; cutting in sacral and hypogastric regions.”
“Hacking cough at night.”
“Amenorrhoea from a cold; nervous irritability; lassitude; dropsy.”
“Menstrual irregularities in consumptive patients.”
“Mucous rattling with suppressed cough.”
Leucorrhoea especially in chlorotic girls. It is a marked remedy in chlorosis, in the anemic state with a green hue, called “green sickness” by the laity.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.