(From vol. i, 3rd edit.)
The root of this plant, whose favourite habitat is in shrub-grown upland plains, very soon loses in the air a considerable portion of its odour and of its medicinal power, but it loses most by boiling. Still the freshly prepared powder dried rapidly and thoroughly in the water-bath may be kept with almost unimpaired power for several years in wellcorked phials.
All the artificial dogmas enunciated by the ordinary medical art, which is in its way a learned science, all its scholastic definitions, distinctions, and hair-splitting explanations were in all past centuries unable to discover the specific curative power of this plant or to find out the real remedy for the often dangerous general derangement of the health which is caused by a severe fall, by blows, knocks, contusions, sprains, or by over-stretching or laceration of the solid parts(Hence it is very beneficial in the meat severe wounds by bullets and blunt weapons, as also in the pains and other ailments consequent on extracting the teeth, and in other surgical operations whereby sensitive parts have been violently stretched, as also after dislocations of the joints, after setting fractures of the bones &c.) of our body. Common people had to do this for them, and after the fruitless employment of innumerable things they found at last by accident the true remedy in this vegetable, and hence they called it Fallkraut (fall plant). Some 200 years ago a physician (FEHR) first mentioned this discovery of domestic practice to the learned medical art (this plant was then named by her “Panacea lapsorum”), which has likewise borrowed all the other still extant specific remedies she possesses without exception from the accidental discoveries of domestic practice, but was unable to find them for herself, because she never attempted to ascertain the pure effects of natural substances on the healthy human body.
The symptoms of all injuries caused by severe contusions and lacerations of the fibres are tolerably uniform in character, and, as the following record shows, these symptoms are contained in striking homoeopathic similarity in the alterations of the health which arnica montana develops in the healthy human subject.
In severe and extensive contusion-injuries the cure is very much promoted when, in addition to a small dose of arnica taken internally (when necessary a dose every three days), the parts are also for the first twenty-four hours externally moistened with wine or equal parts of brandy and water, with one pound of either of which five to ten drops of the hundred-fold potentized dilution of arnica are mixed and strongly succussed about ten times.
But the following list of its pule powers points to several other morbid conditions in the human system for which arnica offers sure homoeopathic relief. It is a medicine of much utility, and although its action even in same doses does not last beyond six days, yet I have found it an indispensable auxiliary and intermediate remedy even in the most chronic diseases.
But we must never employ it in purely inflammatory acute diseases, with general heat, chiefly external, nor in diarrhoeas. In such cases it will always be found to be very hurtful, the reason of which is obvious from its peculiar mode of action.
In some kinds of false pleurisy, however, it is very efficacious, in such, namely, whose symptoms correspond to those of this root.
The best preparation of this medicine for internal use is the decillionth(In this as in many other places. Hahnemann rally the potency by the degree of its dilution. And not as on other occasions by the number of times it has been diluted by the addition of 99 or 100 parts to 1 of the stronger preparation. Thus “the hundred-fold potentized dilution” is the first dilution.” The decillinth development of power” is the thirtieth dilution”) development of power. When we can obtain the plant in the green state we mix the freshly expressed juice obtained from the whole plant when near its flowering time with equal parts of spirits of wine. Two drops of the clear fluid, obtained by allowing the mixture to stand, are first diluted with ninety-eight drops of spirits of wine and potentized by two succussions. The dilution is carried on through twenty-nine other phials, always one drop of the weaker dilution added to 100 drops of spirit in the next phial, and shaken twice. In the last phial it is brought to the decillionth development of power.
But if we cannot get the plant in the green state we must be satisfied with a tincture made by adding ten grains of the finely powdered root, as fresh as it can be had, to 1000 drops of alcohol, and allowing it to digest for a week, giving it one shake per diem. Of this one drop is mixed with 100 drops of alcohol, and potentized with two succussions, and so on until the decillionth potency is reached. Two or three of the smallest globules moistened with the highest potency are the most ordinary dose for internal use.