It has power to contract the prostatic gland or expand the bladder, for large quantities of urine can be held in my own case. I can hold a good four ounces and have only to pass it four times in a day. The water is light colored and leaves a lime deposit. All express themselves as passing more water and of holding it longer. Many of my own women patients have large pouches of fat below the umbilicus that rest upon the thighs when sitting; this presses up the bladder and contracts it so that it in some cases it is difficult to say whether the bladder is enlarged or only relieved from the pressure as the fat is reduced.
But there is a dull feeling amounting to a soreness in the region of the kidney and making one believe it will have power over the enlarged kidney. The aching is similar to that described by the sufferers from Bright’s disease. It never amounts to a pain, only to an aching and tired feeling, that makes a chair with a good back to it feel comfortable.
I have fancied that my hips were somewhat stiff and sore during the time I was taking it, but have not been any less able to do my duty or play my favorite game of cricket.
The proving of the Phytolacca root has been so well made by so many and is so well known, that I cannot say anything new about it, but only this, that my provings have confirmed the symptoms as described in our Materia Medica, and especially in the Encyclopaedia of Allen.
I could give you many cases that have been greatly reduced in flesh and made to feel comfortable in their actions and breathing, but as it is too early in some cases, perhaps I had better not.
I have been seen it stated that the Phytolacca tincture of Dr. Howe is made from the whole plant. Well, perhaps, that may be the better way-and yet I am somewhat inclined to believe that there is some truth in what is called the law of signatures-so far as to believe that the breathing organs of a plant may possess more affinity to or for the breathing organs of the suffers. And the instinct of the lower animals leads them to eat the leaves in most cases of medicinal plant, and only rarely the branch or bark; seldom if ever the root.
I am sure that in the Phytolacca leaf we have a very valuable cough remedy. In those dry throats with much tickling in the throat that nothing seems to reach-which produces such distressing coughs, dry bronchial coughs with sensation of roughness and increases of heat in trachea and difficult or no expectoration. A few cases of this kind of cough have been greatly and promptly relieved.
How shall we make our tinctures, seeing that alcohol has some detrimental influence over some parts of the plant or fruit and leaf or color, and thus to a certain extent will mar or interfere with its usefulness in some of its finer shades? Fully believing that the bountiful benefactor who has created all things to satisfy the perfection in Himself, would not put even the coloring matter to the fruit or flower if there was nothing to serve thereby-so that in my judgment everything should betaken as nature has prepared it.
Glycerine is the most pleasant way, but it cannot be accepted or made to apply to all the modes of usefulness.
The acetic acid or vinegar keeps it best and clearest in all its ways, but this makes a combination and cannot be used unless we make a proving of it as such, that I propose to do during the next two weeks.
September 8, 1892, measurement is thirty-one and one-half inches, tight, abdomen.
