INTRODUCTION
(Blue Flag).
COMPARE WITH
Antimonium-tartaricum, Arsenicum, Ipecacuanha.
Mercurius vivus, Pulsatilla, Podophyllum, Veratrum-album.
INFORMATION
We prepare a tincture from the fresh root, and likewise use the alkaloid Irisin.
Dr. W. A. Burt and J.G. Rowland have furnished some highly instructive provings of this drug. These provings have led to the successful employment of Iris in several interesting and important affections of the scalp and gastro-intestinal range, and have enabled us to account for the great success with which Dr. Kitchen, of Philadelphia, has used the blue flag empirically in a variety of disorders, before any provings had been instituted. It has been used with success in tinea capitis favosa, where, besides using the medicine internally, we likewise apply it externally to the affected part, in the form of an ointment. In crusta lactea it may prove a useful agent, but in dry scald-head we have not yet derived any curative results from
it.
Dr. Kitchen recommends it highly in sick headache, attended with retching and vomiting; likewise in neuralgia of the head and eyes, when accompanied with vomiting and retching. In the case which he published in the NORTH AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY, in 1851, the attack was attended with vomiting of sweetish mucus, and with much straining, when the mucus would occasionally contain a trace of bile.
According to our provings, Iris acts very powerfully as a sialogogue, loosening the teeth. Dr. Burt says that the root caused an intense burning in his mouth. This sort of salivation is sometimes the results of severe rheumatic exposure, and may, therefore, yield to Iris. This drug may likewise have power to counteract mercurial salivation; whether it will prove as specifically homoeopathic to this disorder as Iodine, will have to be verified by further trials with this drug. We have never had a chance to employ Iris in syphilis, for which it is so highly recommended by eclectics; we have no idea that any drug can successfully compete in this terrible plague with the mercurial preparations and the Bichromate of Potash.
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It is in the gastro-intestinal range that the effects of Iris are most prominent. It causes severe distress in the epigastrium, a burning distress, which Dr. Burt locates in the pancreas, and a most terrible and persistent watery diarrhoea, which gradually changes to discharges of mucus, with tenesmus, tenderness of the bowels and flying pains through the bowels. The prover likewise complained of great debility, painfulness of the calves when walking, acidity of the stomach.
There are few provings that we have perused with more, or even as much pleasure as these provings by Drs. Burt and Rowland. Dr. Rowland’s symptom, “pains, tensive and sticking, in right shoulder, during motion, particularly on raising the arm,” (which symptom set in soon after commencing the provings, and continued six weeks after discontinuing the medicine,) shows that Iris exerts a powerful and specific action over the functions of the liver. The other highly important symptom, “tensive, momentary and constantly recurring pains in all the joints, but mostly the smaller, which shift rapidly about, mostly in the evening, from supper to bed-time,” constitutes another specific indication of the direction in which the blue flag will manifest its curative effects. Guided by these provings we have prescribed it with satisfactory success in.
Bilious derangements of the stomach, or gastrodynia, gastralgia; acute, or periodical attacks of chronic dyspepsia, characterized by acute, cutting or crampy pains in the pit of the stomach, burning distress, acidity of the stomach, vomiting of food and mucus; and, as a consensual symptom, severe headache in the temples, sudden shocks of pain.
In cholera morbus, with severe vomiting of bile, mucus and water; watery stools, with tenesmus, or running off as if the bowels were paralyzed; sensitiveness of the abdominal wall to contact; burning in the epigastrium, pains through the bowels, weariness of the calves, prostration. We have cured hundreds of cases of cholera morbus with Aconite, more especially when the patient complained of excruciating, burning and spasmodic pains in the bowels; and we advise practitioners, while using Iris, not to over-look the indefeasible rights of Aconite, and perhaps Arsenicum and Veratrum-album in this affection. We are of opinion that our books speak too enthusiastically and too generally of the great effects of Iris in cholera morbus. We have seen it tried in epidemic cholera, but do not venture to recommend it very urgently as a remedy for this scourge. In sporadic cholera, depending upon prevailing bilious and rheumatic type of disease, we should expect to derive great benefit from this agent. In cholera infantum we have given it with adequate success, in cases where the symptoms correspond with the gastro-intestinal disturbances occasioned by the drug. In all these affections we are free to say that we have never employed the dilution, but have always given the remedy in massive doses, say from five to ten drops of Dr. Lodge’s tincture, in half a tumbler of water. In cholera-infantum Iris may prove our chief remedy. It is true we can point to an almost endless number of cases that yielded promptly and permanently to Aconite, Mercurius, Arsenicum, and other drugs; but then again we can point to many cases that succumbed under our treatment, or where the treatment was very much protracted, and where, if we had been better acquainted with the remedial virtues of Iris in this disease, the results might have been far different.
