VERATRUM SABADILLA – INDIAN CAUSTIC BARLEY.
Introduction
(Spanish, Cebadilla, and cebada, barley.)
Sabadilla, which is a source from which is obtained, veratrin, is like Veratrum alb., an acrid emetic and cathartic, with a very decided action on the nose.
Hahnemann took part in the proving of Sabadilla.
Symptoms
There is a general sensitiveness to (5) and aggravation from cold and a tendency to a regular return of the symptoms at the same hour each day.
One of the provers had numerous fanciful ideas about his body and it has been used with success for imaginary diseases or where patients insist that they have various troubles that do not exist, “imagines himself sick” (Lippe); “that she is pregnant, with she is merely swollen from flatus” (Hering).
There may be sudden vertigo on waking at night, or when rising from stooping, and Allen speaks of headache better from eating (92).
Sabadilla is of value in influenza, especially hay fever (88), with burning and tingling in the nose, complete obstruction (39), and increased sneezing and lachrymation when in the open air.
(Arsenicum iod. and Sabadilla are two remedies that are frequently used in hay-fever, and while they have many symptoms in common, there is as the pronounced point of differentiation, that in the former the nose is free for breathing purposes, while in the latter it is stopped or “stuffed”).
In the stomach we have a longing for sweets (9), absence of thirst and general relief of all symptoms after eating (174).
Worms (208) occupy an important place in the prescribing of Sabadilla, it having been used even for the expulsion of tape worms. There may be colic from worms, a feeling of a worm in the pharynx or vomiting of round worms, and convulsive symptoms or irritation of the external genitals from thread worms.
In intermittent fever the chill begins in the extremities, usually in the late afternoon or evenings, and returns at the same hour the next day. The fever of the paroxysm may be wanting or slight and intermingled with the sweat.
I use Sabadilla in the tincture.
