INDIAN TURNIP-JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT-MEMORY ROOT.
Introduction
(Arum-apuv, aron, wake-robin. Tryphyllum-triphyllus-Tpivy, trophugus, three-leaved-three leaflets.)
Cowerry boys coax their city cousins to bite into the fresh root and watch the effects that the acrid juice has on the mucous membranes of their friends. One trial is sufficient and the memory of its caustic effects remains with one through life, hence the reason for one of its common names. The acrid principle of the root is, however, very volatile, and heat and drying makes the root palatable.
Hale tells us that “it is very difficult to procure a permanent tincture of the fresh root” (which is used for our tincture); “alcohol does not preserve it” but “distilled water, to which sufficient alcohol is added, may be a successful method of preparation.”.
Symptoms
Arum tri. is an irritant poison, causing inflammation and burning of mucous membranes, corrosive discharges and destruction of tissue, together with a low type of fever.
The discharges, especially from the nose and mouth, is acrid and corroding, causing rawness and soreness or every part that it touches. The lips get dry and chapped and the discharge dries and forms scabs at the junction of the skin and mucous membrane, lips and nose especially, and the patient is unable to restrain from picking at these scabs and removing them, which results in bleeding and an increase in the size of the raw people.
There is a tendency to great depression of the vital forces in Arum tri. and it is very valuable in low types of diphtheria (62), scarlet (164) and typhoid fevers, with carphology (27) and especially with boring into the nose (14) and picking at the lips until they bleed.
We are very apt to have delirium in these cases and there is a very acrid, excoriating discharge that burns every part that it touches; the throat, tongue and the whole mouth are sore and raw and the lips cracked and bleeding (127). In diphtheria the membrane involves the nose (62), which becomes completely stopped so that they must breathe through the mouth.
A severe case requiring Arum tri. is something awful to look upon. A sense of duty alone is the only thing that will ever case a physician to attend. Death seems inevitable and you cannot but feel that only a poor, weak mortal has been sent for to oppose it. If ever you going to be rattled, it will be on some such occasion. If ever heroic measures are justified, this is the time you say to yourself.
But let me tell you gentlemen, that if you want to fool with old school drugs for their physiological effects, do it in some slight, annoying, non-characteristic case, where you cannot readily get the picture of any remedy known to you; but as you vale your future peace of mind, give straight homoeopathy in the acute and severe cases.
The more serious the case the clearer the symptoms stand out, and I beg of you to interpret them rightly and to give the remedy that they are asking for.
In acute fluent coryza (37) and in hay-fever (88) Arum tri. is of frequent use, with the same general picture of the remedy, differing only in degree; the excoriating discharge (37), the inclination to pick at the nose (145) and the feeling of rawness and soreness in the nose and throat.
It is of great valve in laryngitis, with great hoarseness; them is inclination to clear the voice but with pain on so doing, and tearing in larynx on coughing (51). Laryngitis as the result of talking (117). Clergyman’s sore throat (118).
It is also of value when the voice suddenly gives out or breaks (207) when asking or singing.
I wish to make a differentiation between two remedies,Causticum and Arm tri., in acute colds associated with hoarseness. In both the cold may first attack the larynx and either stay there or travel to the nose as an acute coryza, and then return to the throat. (when it is in the nose Causticum is not the remedy, while Arum tri may be)
In both, hoarseness is the prominent feature, m painless in Causticum, painful in Arum tri.
In Caust, there is a feeling as if there was mucus attached to the vocal cords which prevented their approximation. the patients make forcible efforts to clear the cords and while but little mucus is raised the effort improves the voice.
In Arum tri, there is considerable mucus which is raised in lumps but it hurts to dislodge it. There is rawness and more or less soreness on swallowing. It hurts to talk, seemingly from the movement of the vocal cords, and when they do speak it is done deliberately and with forethought as though they tried to talk around or over the cords so as to keep them immovable; while in Causticum They talk through the cords with force so as to scrape off the mucus attached to them.
In Arum tri., they cannot call to a person in e next room, for not only would it be painful but the voice would break on attempting it.
I used Arum tri. 1st or 3rd.
