July 20, 1951-a few spells of flatulence and palpitation. Rx Sac. lac.
September 25, 1951-Throbbing pains left temple and occiput. Gnawing in stomach. No palpitation. Ex Fagopyrum 10M.
May 30, 1952-The headache soon disappeared and he seems quite well.
The curative action of the remedy in this case is unmistakable. While the intense burning and stinging pain are absent, there are the characteristic dull aching and numbness of the extremities and throbbing in the head. There are no skin symptoms, but these cannot be expected in every case. They are, however, the most evident and usually the only toxic manifestations in those who are allergic to buckwheat.
The symptoms of cold feet is not mentioned in any of the papers on this drug or in the provings. The same is true of nyctalopia, photopsies, hot flushes at night when lying on the left side- a marked symptom in Mr. S’s case-palpitation while lying on the right side, relief from loosening the clothing and a few other minor symptoms.
Fagopyrum is one of the best examples of the transformation of substances inert in their crude state, or even common articles of diet, into deep-acting medicines by potentization.
30 N. MICHIGAN
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
DISCUSSION.
DR. ROGER A. SCHMIDT [San Francisco, Calif.]: Fagopyrum is really an interesting remedy. We don’t know much about it because it hasn’t very many characteristics that would keep your mind on it. But I remember some years back a case eczema of both upper extremities, from the elbow down to the hands and the fingers. I worked on that case for quite a while without change until I stumbled on Fagopyrum which cleared the case nicely with a few doses. If I remember, one of the characteristic indications was symmetrical lesions on both sides. It was a dry eczema of quite some duration.
DR. I.L. MOYER [Columbia, Pa.]:In Pennsylvania they sow buckwheat to get rid of the weeds. Just before Dr. Farrington got up, I thought, “Well, that is a new remedy. I am going to write a paper on it”.
Back in 1946 we had our convention at Detroit. I was to give a paper for Dr. Shettel in this group. It was just at that time that the Agricultural Department was making experiments with Fagopyrum just outside of Philadelphia. I learned that the most rutin in buckwheat or in Fagopyrum is contained in the plant between the third and the fifth week after budding. I immediately got ready. i scoured my own neighborhood and York Country to get some buckwheat. I finally found it on one of the York Country farms.
In the spring I sowed a patch. The first year I made myself a gallon of tincture, and the second year I made some more tincture. Now, by the time I get home, the buckwheat patch will be ready so I can make some more tincture.
Possibly the first patient that struck me very forcibly was an old lady who had had a cerebral haemorrhage in October of that year. I was called there in the evening. When I went in, the patient said,” I am lame in one side”.
I said, “Get up”.
“I can’t get up,” she said.
I said, “Let’s get into this bed”.
She said, “Look here, Doctor, I have graveyard spots”.
“Well, you do? Let me see them”.
She had a lot of these haemorrhagic spots over the skin.I concluded that possibly she had that kind of thing in the brain. Anyhow, I gave her two teaspoonfuls of Fagopyrum tincture in an eight-ounce glass. I said, ‘Now, you keep taking that until I come back tomorrow night about this time. I believe you had better take about a teaspoon every thirty minutes”.
I came back the next night. She said, “There is nothing the matter with me. There was nothing the matter with me yesterday. I don’t know why you came”.
She looked at me and said, “Look, honestly, just see how I can walk”.
That is a miracle, I guess, but, anyhow, Fagopyrum did something to that brain.
I have an old lady-I have lots of them [laughter]-and I have to tell this story. When I first came to see this old-lady she said that she was sixty-two. This day she took me in her front parlor and commenced to get rather confidential.
She said, “Doctor, do you know how old I am?”
I said, “I always took you for an honest woman. you tell me you are sixty-two.”
“Now, Doctor, you know better than that.”
I said, Sure, that is what I think.”
She said, “No, Doctor, you know better. I am eighty-nine years old”.
That was the age. Anyhow, the next day we took her to the hospital. She lived right across the street from the hospital. She had high blood pressure way up, 220. She had tremendous pain across the abdomen and terrific headache, and she had some trouble with the left arm and was a pretty sick woman.
She said that she was the first nurse from England to come from Guy’s Hospital and practice in the United States. That was another curious thing to me.
Anyhow, I commenced to give her Fagopyrum. Of course, I am also a friend of Veratrum viride’ I am also a friend of Glonoine. She got the whole three together. She got about 3 drops of Veratrum viride, 1/200 of Glonoine and about 6 drops of Fagopyrum every hour. I put it on the chart to carry it out, to repeat it every hour until the blood pressure came down to 170. For some reason or other, the nurses overlooked it. When I took the blood pressure, it was down to 125. She was a pretty sick woman, after doing that. In a short time, a day or so, she went up again, and we held her when it was 160, and I have been holding her there for about half a year until such a time that she doesnt have any need of a blood pressure depressant. But if she doesnt get the Fagopyrum, she seems to leak blood out of the vessels. That is my opinion of the Fagopyrum.
I am very fond of the Fagopyrum, and it is a cure-all among the people who seem to have bleeding heart vessels.
DR. FARRINGTON [Closing]: I have little to add. Thank you for the discussion. This, of course, being a new remedy, unfamiliar to all of us, it would hardly bring out very much discussion. I hope that, perhaps, when you go back, starting into practice again, you may run across some cases which will be relieved by this remedy.
It seems to me it ought to be a good remedy for some of these rashes that come out from nervous excitement or great stress. Sometimes they are symmetrical but they itch and burn.
