Materia medica/ knowledge of medicinal powers

I aim to write about the medicines here as given in Materia Medica s, but would confine myself to only bite-size indications. Occasionally do I plan to provide a full meal😊. Most of what I would be posting here would be practical points that can be used in day-to-day practice.
How to perceive a patient’s symptoms and understand them in light of the language of Materia medica is what I plan to present. It will not be something out of the extraordinary but would be of importance, which is sometimes missed in the sea of symptoms in each medicine. I personally am very fond of a few authors and have been trying to follow them. They are Boenninghausen, Boger, Lippe, Pulford, Guernsey, Hering, Allen, Phatak, and the fountainhead Dr. Hahnemann, and most of what I plan to write would be from these. I would also try to give a reference for what I write. I still find myself learning every day and discovering new things; once a student always a student. I however wish to reduce this struggle for others.
Occasionally I will be sharing the drug picture for better understanding.

Hope you find it helpful.

AESCLEPIAS TUBEROSA- a snapshot

  • Action on
    • Sudoriferous glands
    • Chest muscles
  • Bronchitis
  • Pleurisy
  • Catarrhal states
    • From damp cold weather (compare dulcamara)
    • Headache with yellow sticky discharge
    • Catarrhal dysentery with rheumatic pains all over
  • Base of left lung painful
  • Cough
    • Dry, causes pain in head and abdo
    • Pain chest shooting downward from left nipple
    • Pain > bending forward
    • Intercoastal space near sternum is tender
  • Irritation in larynx with huskiness
  • Influenza with pleuritic pain
  • Lancinating pains between shoulder
  • Sick headaches with flatulence
  • Flatulence after meals
  • Stomach sensitive to tobacco
    • Feeling of drunkenness after smoking little
  • Stools smell like rotten eggs
  • Joints pains as if adhesions being broken up on bending
  • Diagonal pains
  • Excessive weakness, cannot walk.
  • Numbness of whole body
  • Motion <
  • Deep breathing <
  • Snuffles of children
  • Capillary bronchitis in children
  • Sweating as concomitant
    • In pleuropneumonia
    • Diarrhoea
    • In rheumatism
  • Colliquative states (compare AGARICUS)
  • Yellow coated tongue
  • Yellow nasal discharge
  • Pericardial effusion.

RUTA GRAVEOLENS- a snapshot

  • Melancholy towards evening
  • Injuries
    • To periosteum/ bones
    • Dislocations
    • Sprains, lameness after sprains
  • Pthisis after mechanical injuries to chest
    • Yellow expectoration
  • Restlessness as concomitant
    • Constantly changing position in bed
  • Severe soreness in the body
    • Weakness and bruised feeling
    • The side lain on feels hard (compare BAPTISIA, PYROGINUM)
  • Rectum
    • Prolapse after confinement
    • Prolapse on trying to pass stool
    • Prolapse on even bending
    • Nauseas felt in rectum
    • Stricture of rectum
  • Cancers of lower bowel
  • Eyes
    • Asthenopia
    • Burning redness in the eye after fine work.
    • Eyes feel weary (compare NATRUM MUR, SENEGA)
  • Back/ joints
    • Severe backacke esp just before getting up in the morning
    • Complaints are better after moving sp joint pains.
    • Backache > lying down on back
    • Wrist and ankles painful and stiff
    • Cracking in joints < open air
    • Burning pain in feet while walking, bones feel sore
  • Thighs feel weak
  • Hamstrings feel shortened (KALI BI, GRAPH, GUAIAC)
  • Bursitis/ ganglion
  • Legs feel weak on getting up from chair
  • Knees give way on ascending and descending stairs
  • Tension in stomach > drinking milk
  • < uncooked food
  • Glowing heat of skin
  • Unquenchable thirst for cold water
  • Vomiting of worms in children

ANAGALLIS ARVENSIS- a snapshot

  • Syphilitic medicine
  • Great hilarity
  • Skin
    • Itching
    • Tingling
    • Tetters
    • Bran like eruptions on hands
    • Warts
    • Eruptions on palms
    • Ringworm
  • Parts feel cold
  • Headache
    • From mental work
    • Supraorbital, with rumbling in stools, > drinking coffee
  • Pains
    • In facial muscles
    • In left shoulder shooting to nape of neck (eupatorium perf)
    • Gouty/ rheumatic pains in shoulders arms etc.
  • Urine
    • Burning and pain in urine
    • Stream splits into several streams

CHIONANTHUS VIRGINICA- a snapshot

A small shrub tree with fragrant fringe like flowers, the medicine is prepared from the bark of tree.

  • Headaches
    • Bilious
    • Periodical migraines
    • Aggravation stooping and motion
    • Pain over eyes. Root of nose painful.
  • Enlarged
    • Liver
    • Spleen
  • Jaundice
    • Periodical, occurring annually
    • concomitants
      • With amenorrhoea (compare- LEPTANDRA)
      • Constipation
    • Clay coloured stools
    • Very dark urine

(the above 2 symptoms indicate an obstructive jaundice pathology)

  • A very good remedy for gall stones (CHOLESTRINUM, BERBERIS, CALC)
  • Diabetes mellitus
  • Paroxysmal abdomen pains
    • Feeling as if knot tied in intestines and left loose slowly
  • Thick yellow coated tongue

OLEUM JACORIS A- a snapshot

  • Affects – Liver/ pancreas/ tendons/ chest
  • Very good infant remedy
    • Atrophy of infants with hot hands, restlessness and feverishness.
    • Children who cannot digest milk
    • Used locally, in dwarfish emaciated babies
  • Chronic rheumatism- pain in elbows, knees
  • Soreness as generality
    • Sore chest
    • Liver / chest/ abdo/ kidney/ovaries/ back etc
  • Cold damp <
  • Hemoptysis
  • Fever evening with burning in palms
  • Yellowness
    • Tongue
    • Leucorrhoea
    • Expectoration
  • Chilly
  • Cough < on exposure to cold damp weather
  • Red face
  • Voracious appetite yet emaciation (SANICULA, TUBERCULINUM, IODUM)
  • Rigid tendons
  • Milk crust
  • Growth of hair on face of females
  • Ringworms.

MANGANUM ACETICUM- a snapshot

  • Stoic face, like a mask
  • Involuntary laughter and weeping
  • Weepy, moaning and groaning
  • Anxiety > lying down
  • Asthmatics cannot lie on feather pillows
  • Low monotonous voice
  • Body extremely painful, feels bruised and sore to touch
  • Pains from different parts settle in ears.
  • Very much affected by sad music
  • Delayed first menses
  • Paraplegia
  • Ant horn of spinal cord affected
  • Gait
    • Slapping gait
    • Festinating gait
    • Walks backwards
  • Paralysis
    • Ascending, lower limbs affected first
  • Ears
    • Deafness from exposure to cold damp
    • Whistling tinnitus (compare KALI IOD)
    • Ears open up on blowing nose
  • Nose
    • Chronic catarrhal condition
    • Dryness
  • Larynx
    • Raw, expectoration of mucus
    • Sore throat of singers, speakers
    • Laryngeal pthisis and consequent aphonia
  • Every cold rouses a bronchitis (DULC)
  • Flushes of heat at climacteric
  • Nodes on palate (compare ASAFOETIDA)
  • Hot breath
  • Pruritis of diabetes
  • All complaints
    • < night, cold damp weather
      • Lying down
  • Rheumatism
    • Pain in joints after exposure to cold
    • Red swollen joints
    • Eruptions and suppurations around joints
  • Skin
    • Rhagades in bent of joints
    • Red raised spots on skin
  • Severe bone pains
  • Anaemia, jaundice, nephritis with albuminuria        
  • Ulcers and warts on tongue
  • Salivation with complaints: colic, paralysis etc
  • Headache
    • < straining at stool (? Increased intracranial pressure)
  • Weak ankles

(Think of this remedy in neurological complaints)

CISTUS CANADENSIS- a snapshot

  • Bad effects of vexation, feels as if paralysed
  • Mental excitement increases all sufferings
  • Coldness
    • Of body parts
      • Throat
      • Tip of finger
      • Chest
      • Tongue
      • Saliva etc
    • Feels very cold
    • Tendency to catch cold
  • Cracks
    • Tetters in hands
    • Near canthi
    • Lips
  • Glands
    • Indurated and inflamed
    • Mammae- Cancer
  • Suppurations
  • Nodosities
  • Headache from not eating
  • Throat
    • Raw, with desire to drink sips of water
    • Glairy tenacious mucous hawked
  • Desire cheese
  • hardened areas in hands of workers with cracks
  • asthmatic after lying down with difficult breathing and numbness and crawling over the body

(Think of a very chilly person who is least affected by cold. Even inspired air feels cold. He gets throat sore on least exposure. Complaints started after vexation, he felt almost paralysed from it. You might think of PHYTO, SANG CAN or HEPAR SULPH)

COBALT/ COBALTUM METALLICUM- a snapshot

  • Mental excitement increases all sufferings
  • Changing mood
  • Sourness as generality
  • Sore bruised feeling of whole body, fatigued, agitated, bone pains
  • Backache
    • After coition
    • Lumbar ache; < coition; < sitting, > walking; with weak knees; can’t straighten up
  • Emissions even in presence of women
  • Lascivious lewd dreams
  • Head feels big, agg after stools
  • Weak knees
  • Blood from anus without stools
  • Itching hairy scalp
  • Pimply skin
  • Vernal photophobias (vernal means spring/ seasonal)
  • Pain along spine down both the legs
  • Cracks across tongue
  • Bending forward aggravates the headache
  • Emptiness felt at naval (FLUORIC ACID)

(Think of a person who comes to you with excessive body aches, sore bruised feeling, you find that there has been abuse of sexual powers, and now he is inching towards impotence. He has lewd dreams, has emissions which make him really weak. You might think of CHINA, CALADIUM, ONOSMODIUM, AGNUS CASTUS etc, but cobalt has frothy discharges.)

TELLURIUM- a snapshot

  • Skin
    • Eczema, moist, foul, on scalp, behind ears
    • Ringworm infection
    • Burning in old scars
  • Offensiveness
    • As generality
    • Body, sweat, discharges, mouth, flatus
    • Very offensive foot sweat
    • Fish brine or garlicky odor
  • Slow development of all symptoms
  • Linear head pains
  • Sciatica
    • Rt sided
    • After falls and injuries to spine
    • < coughing, sneezing etc
  • Craving apples
  • Fluent coryza, salty expectoration
  • Thickened tarsi with inflamed eyes
  • Offensive otorrhoea
  • Restless
  • Drowsiness after eating
  • Sharp quick pains and then soreness of the part

SALIX NIGRA

  • Nymphomania
  • Satyriasis
    • Emissions after masturbations
    • Emissions when talking to women or in their presence
  • Acute gonorrhoea
  • Soreness
    • Of eyes
    • Of muscles
    • Of temples
  • Swollen red face with red tip of nose