TARTARUS STIBIATUS



In bilious erysipelas, or in that originating with strongly- marked gastric disorder. Desault advises Tart-emetic, largely dilute. He state that he has seen the symptoms entirely subside under its use although the medicine produce no other sensible alteration in the animal economy than an increase of perspiration and of urine. More recently, Dr. Welsh expressed his opinion that his salt acts specifically on erysipelatous inflammation. He says that this salt acts specifically on erysipelatous inflammation. He says, that is no form of the disease which should not in the first instance be attacked with Tartar-emetic, whether there be high inflammatory fever, low fever, vomiting or purging; under all and every circumstance we shall find, he adds that the disease will yield to this remedy. A tonic course is sometimes necessary to complete a cure.

Inflammation. In inflammatory, continued and remittent fevers, Tartarus-emeticus is a most valuable remedy. fulfilling two important indications viz, subduing the morbidly increased actions of the heart and arterial system and determining freely to the skin. Unless contra-indicated by great gastric irritability or cerebral complications a strong antimonial solutions at the outset of the attack, may be given with manifest benefit, although it does not, as formerly supposed out short the fever. In the more advanced stages of fever, Ant-tart, every one two hours, in alternation with Opium. exercises a most beneficial influence. In those cases where it is inadvisable or impossible to administer Antimony by mouth. it is recommended to exhibit it by means of an enema; for this purpose it should be thrown high up into the bowels by means of a long flexible tube. In this way you can secure all the good effects of Antimony in overcoming congestion of the brain and in procuring sleep. In the cerebral complications of fever, Dr. Graves speaks in the highest terms of the efficacy of Opium and Tartar-emetic; in the third and last stage he has also employed it with great benefit, conjoining it with a slight tonic or stimulant treatment.

In intermittent fevers, an antimonial preparation, unless contraindicated, given at the outset of the attack, is attended with evident benefit. In mild cases a complete cure is often effected by its continued use, every two hours, strict attention being paid at the same time to the condition of the bowels. Dr. Moore’s treatment was to administer a brisk purgative. provided the fever was not complicated with any local affections of important viscera or organs and then to proceed with the Antimony. He uses quite a weak preparation, viz one grain of the pure salt to a hundred ounces of a water, sometimes, however using ten grains to a hundred ounces. Should complications exist, they are p73 to be met by the use of the appropriate remedies, but they need not interfere with the continued use of the Antimony.

In acute inflammation of the heart or its membranes. in that of the lungs, pleura, peritoneum, the brain and its membranes, and also in acute bronchitis, Tartar-emetic is a powerful therapeutic agent. It controls the actions of the heart and arterial system, lowers the force and frequency of the urinary secretion, and produces a certain amount of diaphoresis. There are few inflammations which will not yield to it taken at an early stage, but the patient requires to be carefully watched, and any signs of re- turning inflammation to be met by a repetition of the same remedy.

There are some inflammations however, in which Antimony must be administered with great caution; thus, in a acute meningitis it should never he given in such doses as to produce vomiting; should this symptoms supervene, its use should be suspended or at least the dose diminished. In pleuritis, also, it is necessary to guard against its emetic; and in nephritis it is seldom admissible, in consequence of the great tendency to vomiting which generally accompanies this inflammation. Dr. Watson considers Antimony most useful in inflammations of mucous membranes, and not nearly so valuable a remedy as Mercurius when serous membranes are the seat of disease. When, however, these remedies are alternated, they appear almost equally useful, whether the seat of inflammation be the mucous or serous surface.

Pneumonia. According to Magendie, it acts specifically in inflaming the lungs and the mucous membrane which lines the intestine from the cardia to the anus. Lepelletier also remarks, “Its effects on the respiratory organs are to produce dyspnoea in dogs which were in perfect health before its administration the lungs were found hepatized, had lost their color, and scarcely crepitated at all. One would imagine that, admitting its action in man to be similar far from being useful, its administration would be particularly pernicious in pneumonia, but it is not so, for, far from favoring engorgement of the lung, it induced its resolution.”

The indications for this remedy in croup are (beside its physiological effects) based on the predomination symptoms of a partial paralysis of the pneumo-gastric nerve. The short, horse nearly suffocative breathing is accompanied by a whistling noise, heard even at a distance, whilst the thorax expands only with the greatest muscular effort, and the greatest anxiety and uneasiness, together with great prostration are manifested. The head is thrown back wards; face livid and cold; the forehead, and sometimes the whole body are covered with a cold; the sweat; pulse small and very much accelerated, or depressed and slow; drinking causes great difficulty, both owing to spasm and incomplete contraction of the muscles of the throat. The remedy should be administered in strong doses, repeated every hour or half hour. The effect is a remarkably rapid diminution of all the symptoms, without producing diarrhoea, vomiting, or a profuse sweat. The children fall into a gentle sleep in two or three p73 hours, breath freely, cough easily and loosely, expectorate a thick, lumpy, greenish mucus, their skin becomes moderately warm and the pulse becomes small. weak, and mostly remarkably slow. Quarterly Hom. Journal.

CLINICAL NOTE BY DR. GRAY

“1. I have given the Tartar-emetic with success in a case of apoplexy, accompanied by fruitless efforts to vomit. The patient, a women of sixty years, after lying quite unconscious for nearly twenty-four hours, had partially recovered her senses for forty- eight hours before I saw her, but taken neither food nor drink. Her efforts to vomit were repeated about every half-hour. Between these turns she appeared to be in an uneasy coma. The remedy was given in a watery solutions, one-sixtieth of a grain and this one dose was completely successful; no more efforts at vomiting occurred the coma disappeared rapidly, and a hemiplegia, which remained after the full restoration of her consciousness, faded away in a very few days. No other remedy was exhibits.

“2. I have for many years been in the habit of treating the coma which occurs in the height of febrile paroxysms, especially the violent ephemeral attacks to which young children are liable, by the Tartar-emetic in doses of the one-hundred of a grain, repeat- ed every hour till the heat and coma abate. The pressure of vomiting strengthens the indication for the drug so much as to make it a advisable to give a smaller quantity, and at intervals of from a half to a full hour longer. The very hot paroxysms of fever, occurring in the course of dentition, and especially such as are excited by errors of dict, and tend to the development of severe convulsions, have been much more satisfactorily treated by this drug than by the Aconite, Belladonna, or Chamomilla, which I have often applied singly and seriatim as is the general practice in our school. The first sign of abatement in the fever, or coma, is with me, the single for stopping the remedy.

“3. In the first stage of influenza (generally of itself a fugitive state) I think it by very much the most strictly indicated, and on that account, as well as from my own observations in many hundreds of cases, by very far the most efficacious means we can apply. The state against which I give it is lassitude with great sensitiveness to cold, with chilly feelings, headache, pasty tongue, inflammations of the throat (tonsils, arches of the palate or pharynx) short turns of nausea, aching in the bones, especially of the lower extremities, yellowness of the skin. slight hoarseness, more or less fever. heat and sweats.

The Antimony often acts as a perfect remedy in the stage of incubation, especially in those cases which would of themselves close this stage by profuse watery diarrhoea with some vomiting and cramps.1 [1. This stage of which the angina-faucium, the chills, and the bones-pains are the prominent sufferings, sub- sides of itself in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and the physician is very apt to be deceived as to the efficacy of his treatment. The allopathist praises his atrocious lancet and heroic purgatives and the homoeopathist his Mercuries, or Belladonna or Nux and the patient in other case thinks a wonder has been done for him but the disease if it be a real influenza is not removed it has only advanced a step beyond the process of incubation, towards the stadium of bronchitis with its concomitant cough, dyspnoea, fever sweats, and prostration.]

Charles Julius Hempel
Charles Julius Hempel (5 September 1811 Solingen, Prussia - 25 September 1879 Grand Rapids, Michigan) was a German-born translator and homeopathic physician who worked in the United States. While attending medical lectures at the University of New York, where he graduated in 1845, he became associated with several eminent homeopathic practitioners, and soon after his graduation he began to translate some of the more important works relating to homeopathy. He was appointed professor of materia medica and therapeutics in the Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia in 1857.