CORN ERGOT-CORN SMUT-USTILAGO MAIDIS.
Introduction
(Ustilago, urere, burn.)
Ustilago, a fungus on Indian corn, was first proved by Dr.W.H.Burt, in 1868, and later by Dr. T. S. Hoyne, of Chicago, and some student of the Hahnemann Medical College in that city, for the American Institute Transactions,1872 but in neither of them were symptoms obtained from healthy female provers.
Symptoms
Ustilago is a remedy that is seldom used, probably because our clinical reports are so scanty; its effect on the skin, for instance, is pronounced by we know little of its cure. We find in its pathogenesis the symptom., “languor and faint feeling at 11 A.M. in a warm lecture room.” This, which seems such a promising statement, is too indefinite for you to make immediate use of, for it does not state the subject of the lecture, nor whether the languor was towards the end of a four-years; course in Materia Medica, and, therefore, purely physiological,
Ustilago, says Minton,”very much resembles Secale c. in its general physiological action; both control uterine haemorrhage and promote uterine contraction, and as we use it at present, there is some uterine condition and especially haemorrhage as the leading indication.
It is a remedy that is especially suited top the climacteric period and is said to act best on tall, slim women, with clear, white skin; more or less “consumptive persons”(Hering).
The menses are, or have been, habitually too early and too profuse (135) and followed, perhaps, by (136) brownish and offensive leucorrhoea (126).
In uterine haemorrhage, and especially in menorrhagia at the climacteric (135), the blood may be either bright red and watery or partly clotted (136), the uterus seemingly soft and spongy and suffering from passive congestion. In chronic uterine haemorrhage calling for this remedy, we have a persistent oozing of dark blood (136), with black clots (136).
With these haemorrhages there is soreness in the uterine and I. ovarian regions, and bearing down pains, the pains often shooting down the thighs to the knees.
It is to bethought of for I.-sided ovarian neuralgia (147) and for pain in the I. mammary region, especially during the intermenstrual periods (23).
