WHITE POPPY.
Introduction
The dried juice, the black opium from Smyrna, is not only the strongest but is the kind used for homoeopathic preparations.
Hahnemann, who first proved Opium, naturally has a good deal to say in condemnation of its use as a pain destroyer, and declares that, “No medicine in the world has done more harm (with preliminary apparent relief) than this Opium” (Mat. Medorrhinum Pura).
According to his view, only the primary effects of a drug are available for its homoeopathic applications, although most of the symptoms that he has recorded are, as he tells us, secondary ones, and he says: “Opium is almost the only medicine that in its primary action does not produce a single pain. Every other known drug, on the other hand, produces in the healthy human body each its own kind of pains in its primary action, and hence is able to cure and remove (homoeopathically) similar pains in diseases, especially if the other symptoms of the disease correspond in similarity to those observed from the administration of that medicine.
“Opium alone is unable to subdue homoeopathically, i.e., permanently, any one single pain, because it does not cause in its primary action one single pain, but the very reverse, namely, insensibility, the inevitable consequence (secondary action) of which is greater sensitiveness than before, and hence a more acute sensation of pain” (Mat. Medorrhinum Pura).
We will find as we study the remedy that pain does not occupy a prominent position in its pathogenesis.
It was Hahnemann’s idea at this time that the primary action alone, of a drug, gave us the symptoms on which to prescribe homoeopathically, and while this is the view still held by some of our best men, the reading of Hahnemann’s argument under Opium has not convinced me to that way of thinking.
Right here I must tell you that the opposite action of drugs, notably diarrhoea and constipation, for which we may prescribe the same remedy, are considered by Hahnemann to be in many cases alternating effects of the primary action of such drugs, and not as primary and secondary action (see Organon, Secs. 115 and 251).
Dr. William Boericke, in a paper on Camphor, in the Transactions American Institute of Homoeopathy, 1905, says: “Hahnemann’s attempt, as he did at first and throughout the Materia Medica Pura, to utilize homoeopathically only the so- called primary symptoms, soon led into difficulties and in the case of Camphor, to palpable limitations of its homoeopathic employment, and later to the practical, if not avowed abandonment of this division of drug action. The right view of drug symptomatology is, of course, all important to us as a school, and in the very onset we must discriminate between the palliative and truly curative drug symptoms and uses; between the direct, so-called physiological action by means of a definite dosage on the one hand and the homoeopathic employment of these symptoms with the necessary sub-physiological dosage on the other; the homoeopathic dose ranging anywhere from this sub-physiological base to the highest potency.
“The other condition for a right view I judge is in accepting all pathogenetic symptoms, whether so-called primary or secondary, early or late, such as are produced by attenuations, including also, though tentatively, curative symptoms, accepting all as legitimate symptoms for homoeopathic prescribing.”
Hughes, at the end of a lecture on this subject, says: “I have now, I think, said sufficient to acquaint you with the principles as to drug action which will regulate the teaching on the subject I shall give in this place… How far they are absolutely true, I cannot say; they are the best at which I can arrive at present, and that is all I can do. Our comfort is, that however we may shift in the progress of time and knowledge, homoeopathy, as a mode of healing, is not dependent on them. The relation it establishes is between the observed facts of drug- action on the one hand, and of disease on the other; and no alteration in our view of the meaning of either can affect it one bit.”
Hahnemann, in closing his remarks on this remedy, says: “Opium belongs to those medicines whose primary effects seldom admit of a homoeopathic application in human diseases; but when it is so a small portion of a drop of the decillion-fold (30th) potency suffices for a dose” (Mat. Medorrhinum Pura).
While we seldom prescribe Opium, still as the conditions calling for its use are frequently severe ones, we must keep its prominent symptoms in mind so as to be ready for the emergency when it arises.
Symptoms
Among the grosser physiological actions of Opium we find stupor and profound coma, with stertorous or apoplectic respiration and contracted pupils; later slow, feeble respiration and pulse, cool, moist skin, and finally death from failure of respiration. The larger the dose, the sooner the secondary effects exhibit themselves. “At first the pulse is increased in frequency and the respiratory movements are more rapid; but the cardiac pulsations soon diminish in number and force, and the respirations become sighing in character and more shallow” (Bartholow). More rarely, instead of the stupor and coma, Opium produces delirium and convulsions.
Obstinate constipation, with diminished secretion and atony of the bowels, usually follows its administration, and retention of urine is common. A prominent symptom, as quoted from Hering, is, “painlessness with all ailments; complains of nothing and asks for nothing.”
There is, in cases requiring Opium, a general tendency to twitching of muscles (193) or tremulousness (192) of the head, arms and hands, with occasional jerks, especially of the flexors.
It is indicated in puerperal fever (155) with approaching stupor, and in puerperal convulsions (155) with coma between the spasms, as well as in convulsions, especially from fright (36), the spasm ushered in with a loud cry, purple face and hot sweat. It is useful for the after effects of the fright (80), with delirium about the original cause, flushed face, sleeplessness and cold extremities.
Complete stupor is the rule in low types of fever, with open eyes and mouth and rigidity of the muscles; this condition may alternate with delirium; he has hallucinations of sight, fear of small and hideous animals (54) and attempts to escape (53), with dark red face (207), respirations slow and sighing and involuntary stools.
Opium is of value in delirium tremens (54), with fear, and aggravation from the least amount of additional alcohol; also for those in whom a slight amount of stimulant will bring on an attack.
It is of undoubted value in apoplexy (18); either the threatening of drunkards, where the occiput feels as heavy as lead (107) and there is a tendency towards stertorous respiration, with spasmodic jerkings of the limbs, or in apoplexy when there is stupor and cold extremities. Dunham says: “We should hope more from Opium when the apoplexy had not been preceded by chronic symptoms of lesion in the brain substance,” and Allen says: “It has frequently produced the most rapid and beneficial results in temporary paralysis, apparently resulting from serous effusions in the brain, and it is certainly of great value as a palliative in cerebral haemorrhage.”
We have in Opium paralysis of the tongue (192) and pharynx, with great difficulty in articulation and inability to swallow.
It is of great value in intestinal paralysis or obstruction, with tympanitic distention (13) and faecal vomiting, and, with these features, of value for painter’s or lead colic (126).
Constipation is the rule in these cases, and Hahnemann says: “Opium cannot stop the pain of lead colic until it has homoeopathically removed the obstinate constipation produced by the lead by virtue of its constipating primary action” (Mat. Medorrhinum Pura). “Opium produces,” says Dunham, “a suspension of the secretion from the mucous surfaces of the digestive canal, e.g., the dry mouth and fauces. It probably, therefore, lessens the amount of excrement. It also paralyzes the intestines. These two actions combine to produce an obstinate constipation, an effect of Opium which is universally admitted, recognized, and, by allopaths, regretted.”
In the constipation calling for Opium, the stool is in small, hard balls (35) and there is complete inertia of the bowels, especially of the rectum, with no inclination for stool; in these cases gas accumulates in the upper part of the bowels (13) and causes great pain and distress. It is especially useful for the constipation resulting from the use of enemas of soap and water (34). It has cured intestinal catarrh associated with constipation, with discharge of large quantities of mucus, or the faecal stools completely enveloped in mucus (35), the indications for the remedy being, as Allen tells us, “complete atony of the lower bowel and the accumulation of hard balls of faeces.”
It is to be thought of in diarrhoea during typhoid fever, with “stupid comatose sleep and rattling, snoring breathing” (Bell), and in cholera infantum, with involuntary, offensive stools, great weakness and collapse, or when the discharges have been suppressed and the child has become unconscious (60), with insensible pupils and dark red face.
