Introduction
The toasted or roasted Turkey sponge of commerce, the “bath- sponge” as Hahnemann calls it, is used for the preparation of our remedy and the tincture, which corresponds in drug power to the 1x, is officinal whether in the form of liquid or trituration.
Hahnemann, who first proved the remedy, tells us that “sponge burnt to a black coal seems to be less powerful” than when it is toasted brown.
Symptoms
Spongia is said to be most often indicated in light-haired, fair-complexioned people (88).
Hahnemann seems to look upon Spongia as almost a specific in goitre (83) or bronchocele and speaks of getting curative action from one or two doses of the tincture. The gland is large and hard and there are suffocative spells, worse at night, but as Hughes says, “when it” (Spongia) “is preferable to Iodine in its treatment we have not learned to predict beforehand.”
In laryngitis and in spasmodic croup (53) Spongia is indicated when we have the harsh, barking, croupy cough, the rasping or sawing respiration (25) and the suffocative spells rousing the child from sleep in fright, with necessity to sit up (41) and perhaps with relief from eating (25).
The larynx is extremely sensitive to touch and even turning the head will bring on a suffocative attack. Remember that Spongia is, perhaps, the most frequently-indicated remedy in false croup without fever.
In true or membranous croup it would be indicated by the suffocative attacks and after the febrile stage had passed. Hahnemann, who for other things than goitre advises the 30th potency, lays especial stress on this symptom as calling for Spongia in true croup: “Difficulty in drawing the breath, as if a cork were sticking in the larynx and the breath could not penetrate through the narrowed orifice of the larynx” (25).
Allen says: “It is possible, however, now to prescribe Iodine or Bromine, as occasion demands, with accuracy, and thus avoid the necessity of giving Spongia (which combines in a feeble way some properties of both these drugs).”
Spongia is useful in laryngeal phthisis (125), with great hoarseness, and in chronic hoarseness (117), especially if the voice gives out when talking or singing.
In many of the respiratory troubles we find that there is relief from eating and, may be, from drinking, such as oppression of breathing, better from eating (24), and in bronchitis with suffocative attacks of coughing, worse from dry, cold air (40), from lying with the head low (41) and when in a hot room (41), and better fro eating (40) and drinking (40).
It has been used with success in the dry suffocative cough associated with aneurism (41), or with enlarged bronchial glands.
Another field of usefulness for Spongia is in the male sexual organs, where were find the spermatic cord swollen and painful and the testicles swollen (188), with a bruised, pinching squeezing pain (188) extending into the spermatic cord.
I use Spongia 1st.
