Laurocerasus, the common or cherry laurel, is a remedy but seldom used, although it appears at length in Hering and Allen. Because of an almost miraculous alleviation in a desperate case I want to bring it again to your attention.
I was called in consultation by an ardent young homoeopath. I found the patient sitting in a big chair gasping for breath, will blue lips, hectic malar flush, staring frightened eyes, coughing in short racking spasmodic backs, skin cold yet craving air, thought not desiring fanning, with clubbed fingers and markedly oedematous feet, which were icy up to the knees.
Physical examination showed mitral and aortic heart, double pleural effusion, huge liver, tender and pulsating, fluid in the abdomen, probable hypostatic pneumonia, irregularity and at times flutter of the heart, pulse soft and weak. Practically no urine was being passed.
Chief complaint was cough: starting at 9 or 10 p.m. and constant through the night. Sputum scanty, jelly-like, dotted with bloody specks. Salty taste. Cough > cold drink, cool air; loss of urine with cough. Skin was cold and dry, but warmth did not help. Cold drinks craved, gurgled on going down. The patient < emotion and wet weather and better from company. Great fear of death. Smothering and suffocating sensation. Worse after coition for a long time. Youngest child one month old. Duration of heart disease many years, collapse after childbirth. Craves sours; milk disagrees,.
Patient had been given Phosphorus CM. and two or three days later Sulphur CM. by her doctor.
She had been subject to long-lasting fainting spells.
To say that palliation was clearly indicated would have been humorous, had it not been tragic.
Prescription: Laurocerasus 2C., two doses one hour apart. Within twenty minutes relief set in. That night she had two brief coughing spells and her first good rest in many days.
Laurocerasus did its work.
One feature of the case was not according to Hoyle: the cough of Laur. is usually > lying down, which hers was not. (Laur, and Psor. share that symptom of > from lying.) However, may Laur.symptoms are > sitting up.
Let me bring out a few characteristic points of Laurocerasus:.
Coldness > cold (like CAMPH,. Am. Carb., Sec).
Cyanosis.
Spells of sleepiness and long-lasting faints.
Suppression of urine with suffocation, in cardiacs.
Gasping dyspnoea.
Racking cough < or > lying.
Left sidedness; chest, nape stiffness, tongue swelling.
Fluttering heart with soft pulse.
Also: loss of consciousness, facial distortion, sensation of a cold draft on the face, throat spasms, audible gurgling drinking, hunger after eating with emptiness, sensation of a lump falling from above the navel through to the back, diarrhoea with green mucous stools, flatus, cramps and hiccough with sold skin > cold: menses early, profuse, thin, dark clots, with pain from sacrum to pubis (Sabina from pubis to sacrum) with icy tongue and stinging nipples and dysmenorrhoea.
Laur is a remedy often overlooked in lack of reaction, when the well chosen remedy does not act. Here it views with Sulphur and Opium.
Stauffer stresses its value in the results of suppressed exanthemata, as well as in chorea, epilepsy, apoplexy, asphyxia neonatorum and terminal tuberculosis.
It should be compared with Ambra, Am. carb, Ars., Bell,. Camph,.Caps,.Cupr,.Dros.,Kali carb,. Lach,. Opium,.Psor,.Puls,. Sulph,.Tart,.emet.,Valer.,Verat. and Zinc.
May the common laurel in your hands win its laurels more often!
NEW YORK, N.Y.
