NOSE. Many of the provers experienced bleeding from the nose, worse mornings, nosebleed after suppression of the menses. The remedy is useful in vicarious menstruation taking on this form.
MOUTH AND TEETH. The lips are often dry and cracked and the patient moistens them frequently. The toothache of Bryonia is of gastric origin or of rheumatic origin and comes from cold. It may occur in sound teeth, the whole of the tooth aches. When we presume that the nerves or dentine in the tooth are inflamed, pressure of the hand, or resting the head firmly against a pillow, may believe. Cold applications believe momentarily.
Coffea. Toothache in children from indiscretions in diet, candy or from constitutional causes relieved by cold water.
Merc. sol. Toothaches traceable to inflamed of dentine.
Kreosote. Neuralgia of the face with burning pains, worse from motion, in nervous, irritable people whose teeth decay rapidly.
In aphthous sore mouth of children when the mouth is dry and the child cannot nurse until it is moistened, Bryonia may be the remedy.
GASTRIC SYMPTOMS. We have seen that the headache is generally associated with gastric symptoms. What are they? Remember the dryness of the mucous membranes, dry mouth. scanty secretion of gastric juice, hence food lies heavy and undigested.
There is in consequence a pressure as of a stone in the stomach, the epigastric region is painful to touch and pressure. Bitter taste in the mouth. This and dryness create an intense thirst, large quantities of cold water are craved.
This pressure in the stomach is more frequent in women. It is cause by irregularity of diet or indigestible food and is present whether the stomach is full or empty. It goes off with eructations. Waterbrash, acidity, heartburn and vomiting of sour and acrid mucus may be present.
It is an extremely valuable remedy for catarrhal inflammation of the stomach with thirst, white coated tongue, nausea and vomiting worse from warm drinks which are vomited, and a feeling of a hard lump with makes the stomach sore.
Sometimes you will have patients who have taken much Mercury. The attacks are frequently preceded by great hunger and are apparently caused by over-eating. In all gastric derangements there is usually great sensitiveness of epigastrium to touch and vomiting of food.
STOOLS. Constipation usually accompanies the gastric symptoms. The fauces are dry, as if burnt, hard and large. Children frequently require Bryonia when the stools are large, hard and cause pain in passing. The liver is affected, congested, with pain in right shoulder, giddiness, yellow skin and eyes, bitter taste, tensive, burning pain in the region of the liver and stitches on pressure, with coughing on deep inspiration. The liver seems swollen, sensitive and sore to touch, Bryonia diminishes the action of the intestines, Nux does not, Nux rather increases it but at the same time renders it inharmonious and spasmodic, a hindrance therefore to evacuation. Hence Nux has frequent, ineffectual desire for stool, the action of the intestine being irregular and spasmodic. Bryonia has no desire for stool, which is just like Veratrum.
Besides the constipation, Bryonia also produces a diarrhoea, preceded by colic, especially at night or early morning, on moving about. In summer or dry, hot weather diarrhoeas. Diarrhoea from vegetable food, stewed fruit, cold drinks or from sudden changes in temperature from being overheated. Diarrhoea from suppressed eruptions.
It is a frequently indicated remedy in cases of typhlitis, appendicitis, peritonitis and gastro-enteritis which are characterized by extreme soreness, thirst, fever, coated tongue and sharp, stitching pains. Jaundice from duodenal catarrh, caused by anger, calls for Bryonia. Although the patient is hot he complains of feeling chilly.
Chelidonium, you remember, has sharp pains in the region of the liver, shooting in all directions, under the scapula, etc., but it is has a diarrhoea of clay colored stools and this decides between it and Bryonia.
It is a useful remedy for the so-called bilious attacks. it has also stitches in the spleen.
URINE. The urine is dark, brown-red without any deposit.
FEMALE. Suppression of menses with the characteristic gastric derangements, or with periodical discharge of blood else where, nose, throat, etc. It is an important remedy in pelvic peritonitis with the sharp, stitching pains. The menstrual suppression may be accompanied with the splitting headache so characteristic of the remedy. This may also occur with suppressed lochia, when the head seems to burst. Inflammation of the breasts. They are hard, tender, hot and have sharp, stitching pains in them. Patient wants to lie absolutely quiet. It is our sheet anchor in milk fever when there is chilliness, fever, headache, coated tongue, aching in the limbs and tender breasts.
RESPIRATORY. Bryonia is indicated in nasal catarrh when the discharge from the nose is thick and yellow. Here, you see, it is not a beginning remedy but comes in rather late. It is also useful when the catarrh is suppressed and you have maddening headache at the root of the nose, at every step it seems as though a knife had gone through the head. Bryonia affects chiefly the trachea and it is useful in tracheitis when the inflammation does not extend lower than the first division of the bronchi. The cough has little expectoration, it is dry, continuous, irritating, violent, often causing retching and pains in the walls of the chest. There is heat, soreness and pain behind the sternum. The patient often presses on sternum to support the chest during the cough. Hoarseness, tough mucus, loosened only after frequent hacking.
The patient coughs until the seat of the irritation becomes sore. Sometimes the cough seems to come from the pit of the stomach, worse coming into a warm room from the cold air. The patient coughs until that spot becomes sore, even to pressure. When the cough comes on the patient must sit up.
In pneumonia, proper croupous pneumonia, Bryonia is often indicated after Aconite, Veratrum viride of Ferrum phos. The fever still continues but he disease has become localized, as seen by the oppression, anxiety, and pulmonary oppression, referable y to the chest. You have a fibrinous exudation in the air cells to which Bryonia corresponds. The general symptoms already given will indicate it more particularly. Stitching pains, because the pleura is involved, worse from the slightest motion, deep inspiration, coughing or moving. Lies perfectly still in consequences. the expectoration is especially scanty and sometimes it is absent, or it may even be the scanty rust-colored expectoration so characteristic of the disease. It is always indicated after Aconite, the fever continues but the skin is not so hot, the face is not so red, and the patient is not so restless as when Aconite was indicated. Aconite pictures an expression of pulmonary oppression.
Iodines is one of the first drugs in the list for pneumonia. It has high fever, restlessness and a tendency to a rapid extension of the hepatization. It seems to limit the spread of the hepatization.
Bryonia has great affinity for the chest and its organs, especially for the intercostal muscles and pleurae. Pleurodynia, stitch in the side, pleurisy. Here you will have symptoms of tightness of breathing, pressure, and the physical signs. Bryonia products the most terrible shortness of breath, worse from the least movement.
In stitching pains remember Ranunculus bulbosus, which has sharp pains following the course of the intercostal nerves, but not especially aggravated by a deep breath.
Phosphorus either follows Bryonia in pneumonia or is the remedy from the start, when the sharp pleuritic pains are absent, in tall spare built subjects.
A typhoid condition may be present, tongue dry, dark-brown, great pain and oppression of chest. Cough with bloody difficult expectoration. Severe asthenic cases.
Senega is adapted to sluggish cases which do not get over a cold, sore spots in the chest remain after a cold, hoarseness, cough ends in a sneeze, much mucus in the chest. Useful in irritative, shaking cough of old people.
Chelidonium resembles Bryonia in its action upon the liver and in pneumonia. It is preferable when the patient is a blonde and of a placid temperament. Right-sided pneumonia with involvement of the liver. There is a pain at the lower angle of the right scapula running into the chest, jaundice, and much mucous expectoration. Bryonia has scanty expectoration.
Asclepias tuberosa is useful in very heavy colds with loose, violent cough and sharp, stitching pains in the chest. The cough is looser than the Bryonia cough and the patient is more generally “broken up” with the cold.
Kali carb. has stitching, worse by rest, lying on the affected side, and around 3 a.m.
FEVERS. The fever of Bryonia is not marked by the violence, acuteness and general storm of Aconite, nor by the decompensation and the great debility of the acids. It is neither synochal nor so markedly upon local affections, the state of stomach, liver, chest, etc. Inflammations of the brain, stomach, respiratory organs, cellulitis, etc., where the fever depends upon the local lesions, are met by Bryonia. When the general storm which at first swept the system has localized itself somewhere, then Bryonia comes to your aid.
Professor of Materia Medica in the University of Michigan Homeopathic Medical College. Member of American Institute of Homeopathy. In addition to his editoral work he authored or collaborated on: Boericke and Dewey's Twelve Tissue Remedies, Essentials of Homeopathic Materia Medica, Essentials of Homeopathic Therapeutics and Practical Homeopathic Therapeutics.