VALERIANA Medicine


VALERIANA symptoms of the homeopathy remedy from Plain Talks on Materia Medica with Comparisons by W.I. Pierce. What VALERIANA can be used for? Indications and personality of VALERIANA…


      GREAT WILD VALERIAN.

Introduction

      (Valerian-valere, to be strong).

The common or officinal Valerian, the root of which we use for out tincture, is native of Europe and Asiatic Russia,

It was first proved by Hahnemann, but he did not do much with it, not including it in his Mat. Medorrhinum Pura, and it remained for his followers to make a more through proving.

Symptoms

      While both schools of medicine use Valerian in nervous hysterical conditions, Oliver Wendell Holmes speaking of it as a “calmer of hysterical squirms,” it is, m says Hughes, “perfectly homoeopathic to those conditions of nervous erethism for which it has so long been in repute.” He also says that “Valerian appears to exert a direct influence on the nervous centres, of the same kind as, but more enduring than, that of Ambra g., Usage., Mosch.”

Hering gives the type of the Valerian patient as the “nerves, irritable, hysterical subjects, in whom the intellectual faculties predominate, and who suffers from hysterical neuralgia.”

All authorities agree that it is very similar in many of its manifestations of Pulsatilla, m by which it it antidoted, but it has less tears and more anger.’

She begins by being nervous and apprehensive as night comes on. she is ashamed of her condition and tries to reason with herself as to the absurdity of it, but without success, and it is a very valuable remedy in hysteria that is worse as evening comes on and up to midnight. Hallucinations are common; she “feels as if floating in the air (Hering); sees things that are not there and must have pillows, or ornaments removed; she is very restless (160) and excitable has great dread of being left alone (80) and great and uncontrollable fear of the dark (80).

It is of value in globus hystericus (199), with sensation of something warm rising from the stomach into the throat.

The headaches for which we prescribe Valerian are nervous or neuralgic in character, and are accompanied by faintness.

The pains appear suddenly, or in jerks, in different parts if and if the head and if they involve the eye they are as darting pains from within outward. A characteristic sensation under Valerian is as if a thread were hanging in the throat and down the oesophagus (190) and the efforts to dislodge it causes nausea or salivation. This sensation may be found in hysterical headache or in trismus. ‘It is useful in hysterical colic or gastralgia worse in the evening or at night, with great tympanitis (13) and putrid eructations.

In the chest, if there are any pains or sensations, they have a general direction from within outward, or pressure outward in chest.

In the extremities, and especially in the lower extremities, we have neuralgic pains, all the peculiarity that they are worse when sitting and better when walking (10). I use Valerian in the tincture.

Willard Ide Pierce
Willard Ide Pierce, author of Plain Talks on Materia Medica (1911) and Repertory of Cough, Better and Worse (1907). Dr. Willard Ide Pierce was a Director and Professor of Clinical Medicine at Kent's post-graduate school in Philadelphia.