Ceanothus americanus

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

(New Jersey Tea. Bed Root)

Botanical Description. — The Ceanothus is a small shrub, growing from three to four feet high, from a dark red root, which varies widely. During the Revolutionary war, the leaves were used as a substitute for tea. {I have tasted tea made from them; it tastes very much like a poor quality of black tea.) The leaves are egg-shaped, the broad end at base, with three ribs, toothed edges, downy beneath, very beautiful green in summer, but in the autumn turn a very bright and beautiful red; have a long leaf stalk. The branches are downy. The flowers grow in white clusters. The calyx has five lobes, which are colored, and curved in, the lower part with a thick disk cohering with the ovary, the upper part separating across the fruit. The petals are spreading, hood-shaped, on slender claws, longer than the calyx. The fruit has three lobes, and when ripe splits into three carpels.

Officinal Preparations. — Tincture of the leaves ; dilutions.

Analogues. — {?).

Mind.

Used as a substitute for tea; said to have slightly exhilarating effects.

Mouth.

° Sore mouth after fever. (?) Aphthae of nursing children. (?)

Throat.

° Ulcerated sore throat after scarlatina. (?)

Spleen.

[During the late civil war I used this plant for splenitis, and so well satisfied have I been with the results that for six years I do not remember using anything else for enlarged spleen. I have used it in the worst cases I ever saw, from tender infancy to old age. I have yet to see or hear of its failure in a single case, however inveterate. —Dr. , Atlanta Med. Jour.]

° Enlarged spleen in a child a few weeks old, congenital. 0 Enlarged spleen after ague, and abuse of quinine.

[The dose was a few drops, or teaspoonful, of the tincture, and the application of the tincture over the spleen.]

[In chronic cases, when the organ is no longer tender, under the use of the tincture, even without the friction, it soon becomes painful and tender, then sinks very rapidly to its normal size, and so remains, the patient no longer conscious of its presence. — Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal.] Respiratory Organs.

0 Chronic bronchitis.

Generative Organs. c Leucorrhoea. Gonorrhoea. Syphilis. (/)

Volume I — Appendix

(New Jersey Tea— Red Boot.) Description.— (See page 167, "Symptomatology.") Generalities.

" Great nervous excitement, with chilliness, loss of appetite.

" Feeling as if the nerves were shaken, and one day at dinner

could scarcely hold knife and fork. Chilliness, chiefly down the back. Shivered with cold chills (i. e., rigors).

Abdomen.

Bowels were relaxed.

• Menses appeared ten days too early, and were very profuse.

Spleen.

° Enormous enlargement of the spleen. (Dunham.)

0 " Splenitis, with violent vomiting, pain all up the left side, cough, with expectoration, profuse perspirations, and fever.

Considerable fever, cough, pain in left side, and dulness on percussion of the same side.

° Chronic splenitis. Chronic swelling in the left side under the ribs, with considerable cutting pain in it.

Patient stated that it was worse in cold, damp weather, and always felt chilly.

Chilliness severe and lasting.

Spends most of the time by the fire.

Dreads winter.

In summer is nearly well, but the lump in spleen and chilliness and pain persisted, but are quite bearable in warm weather.

0 Severe pain in the left side in the region of the spleen.

° Severe pain in the left side and a large swelling in the same position.

0 Enormous spleen, occupying the entire left hypochondrium, and reaching inferiorly to about an inch above the crest of the ilium ; it bulged toward the median line, and ran off' to an angle laterally.

0 Chronic hyprtrophy of the spleen.

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the ribs.

° Jaundice, characterized by very severe pain in the left side. ° Metrorrhagia, characterized by pain in the left hypochondrium. 0 Chronic splenitis, chills, and leucorrhoea.

0 Pain in the left side for several months, aud right-sided headache.

° Severe pain and fulness in the left side, with inability to lie on that side. (Cured symptoms, all from Dr. Burnet, of London, Eng.)

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

This shrub, called Jersey tea , derives its common name from the fact that during the Revolution, when Chinese tea could not be procured, it was used as a substitute, as were many other plants.

It is said that the infusion possesses slightly exhilarating effects. It would probably repay a good proving.

I found in the “ Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal ” a communication in which it was stated that the Ceanothus possessed the power of curing splenitis and enlargement of the spleen. Dr. - savs :

“ During the late civil war I used this plant for splenitis, and so well satisfied have I been with the results that for six years I do not remember using anything else for enlarged spleen. I have used it in the worst cases I ever saw, from infancy to old age. I have yet to see or hear of its failure in a single case, however inveterate.”

This is pretty strong and positive testimony, and the author fully confirms my idea that a remedy which cures is homoeopathic always , for he further says :

“ In chronic cases, when the organ is no longer tender, under the use of the tincture, even without friction, it soon becomes painful and tender, then sinks rapidly to its normal size, and so remains, the patient no longer being conscious of its presence.”

We see here a true homoeopathic aggravation, showing that the drug has a specific affinity for that organ.

I would advise you to make use of it when you meet with cases of “ ague cake,” so common in malarious districts.

The tincture is made from the leaves, and is given in drop doses of the 0 or lx dilution and applied to the region of the spleen.

Dr. Carroll Dunham informs me that a physician of his acquaintance cured an enormous enlargement of the spleen by the use of this remedy.

It is not a little singular that since the first mention of Ceanothus in the third edition of this work, no clinical reports of its use in disease have been reported in American journals. It remained for an English physician, Dr. J. C. Burnett, to discover its affinity for splenic disorders. In an article in the “Monthly Homoeopathic Review,” of March, 1879, entitled “ Ceanothus Americanus in its Relation to Diseases of the Spleen,” he says :

For several years past I have been in the habit of using this drug in true Rademacherian fashion as an organ remedy. The perusal of Rademacher’s “ Magnum Opus ” is one of the greatest literary treats that ever fell to my lot ; based on Hohenheimian bizarries, avowedly and obviously merely an attempt at reducing his genial, erratic, pretended mysticism to the concrete form of a practice of medicine, by depolarizing it, if I may so speak, it is nevertheless the most genial and most original production it is possible to find in medical literature. It is one of the most bareboned lawless empiricisms that one can conceive, and yet there are two leading ideas running through the entire work, and these are the genius epidemicus morborum and organopathy ; and considered from the pharmacological side, the other two ideas of universal (general) and particular medicines. For Paracelsus there were only three universal remedies, and so also for Rademacher and for their followers. Hahnemann has but three fundamental morbid states, psora, syphilis, and sycosis. Von Grauvogl has but three constitutions of the body — they might have all been working out the fatherlandish proverb, Alter guten Dinge sind drei !

The genius epidemicus morborum is beyond question a fact in nature, but it is dreadfully eel-like, hard to get a grip of. The same may be said of Hahnemann’s tripartite pathology and of Grauvogl’s three constitutional states.

Rademacher’s organopathy (that an otherwise able modern writer appropriates with childlike naivete) is no more and no less than the homoeopathic specificity of seat, with just a dash of a mystic psychic something in the several organs ; if we set aside this little particular soul for each organ, it is only local affinity, or elective affinity. And it is quite true in nature, and the mind that cannot, or will not, recognize it, is wanting in catholicity of perception ; and in practice will often go a mile when three paces would have reached the goal. Whatever else Cantharis may be, it is first and foremost a kidney medicine ; whatever else Digitalis may be, it is primarily a heart medicine ; and let Belladonna be what it may, it is before all other things an artery medicine, and just in this sense Ceanothus Americanus is a spleen medicine.

The spleen constitutes a dark corner in the human economy, whether considered physiologically or therapeutically. I have heard it professorially very ably argued that the spleen is the principal manufactory of our blood-corpuscles. I have heard that theory equally, ably, and professorially refuted, and in its stead the thesis set up that the spleen is, as it were, the ultimum refugium of the old and effete blood-corpuscles, wherein they are broken up and their debris sent off again into the circulating medium. A third argued that all this was veritable nonsense, as the spleen had nothing whatever to do with either making leucocytes or breaking up their reddened descendants, that in fact the spleen had no other function than to act as a reservoir for the blood, being, indeed, a kind of living sac in the side, to swell or shrink, according as the circulation required more or less of the circulating fluid.

I fondle this latter theory myself, and like to call it mine. Whose it really is, I do not know. Perhaps the erudite editors will kindly add a footnote and say what they think the spleen is good for beyond serving as the anatomical whereabouts of that enigmatical something that supposedly sends my dear fellowcountrymen in shoals off London Bridge into the Thames on a rainy or foggy

day — I mean, of course, le spleen ! This great bugbear of our Gallic and Germanic brethren — as applied to ourselves bien entendu ! for they consider it essentially a morbus Anglicus, just as we like to think it is principally those naughty French who commit suicide — is really only another name for being “ hipped,” or suffering from an attack of hypochondriasis, and there cannot be any sound reason for refusing it a habitat under the left ribs, since so many have welcomed it under the right ones.

My first and only literary acquaintance with Ceanothus Americanus is the very short empirical account of it in Hale’s “ New Remedies,” which I read some five or six years ago. Previously I had frequently felt a difficulty in treating a pain in the left side, having its seat, apparently, in the spleen. Myrtis communis has a pain in the left side, but that is high up under the clavicle ; the pain that is a little lower is the property of Sumbul ; still lower of Acidum fluoricum ; a little further to the left of Acidum oxalicum ; more to the right of Aurum ; right under the left breast of Cimicifuga rac.

These remedies promptly do their work when these left-sided pains are a part of the diseased picture, but they will not touch the pain that is deep in behind the ribs of the left side ; more superficially Bryonia has it ; a little deeper than Bryonia, Pulsatilla nuttal. will touch it ; and so will J uglans regia, which poor Clothar Muller proved as a student. But the real splenitic stitch requires China, Chelidonium, Berberis, Chininum sulfuricum, or Conium, or Ceanothus Americanus.

Some years since I treated a lady in Chester for “ violent vomiting, pain all up the left side, cough, with expectoration, profuse perspirations, and fever.” She was not a Cestrian, but came only for a short visit, and took lodgings in a small house facing a meadow on the banks of the Dee ; the locality was at one time a part of the port of Chester, but was many years ago reclaimed. At my first visit she told me she often got inflammation on the chest with cough, and finding considerable fever, cough, pain in the left side, and dulness on percussion of the same side, I quickly ticketed it pleuropneumonia sinistra, and gave Acidum oxalicum, which seemed to cover all the symptoms, and to correspond also to the supposed pathological state within. Oxalic acid somewhat relieved the vomiting, but nothing more, and I then gave various remedies, such as Aconite, Bryonia, Phos., I pec., and thus elapsed about three weeks, but patient remained as ill as ever. Then I went into the case with very great care, and examined my patient very thoroughly, and, see, there was inflammation of the spleen. I gave her Ceanothus Americanus in a low dilution, and all the symptoms, subjective and objective, disappeared right off, and my previously ill-treated patient was sitting up in a week, and quite well in a few more days. I had never before met with splenitis in the acute form, and have never since met with it.

A few cases of Aironie pains in the spleen occurred subsequently in my Chester practice, and they rapidly yielded to Ceanothus, one of which I well remember ; it is this :

Chronic Splenitis.~A young lady of about 26 consulted me for a chronic swelling in the left side under the ribs, with considerable cutting pain in it. She stated that it was worse in cold damp weather and she always felt chilly ; the chilliness was so severe and long lasting that she had spent the greater part of her time during the previous winter sitting at the fireside, and now she was looking forward to the winter with perfect dread. In the summer she had felt nearly

well, but the lump and the chilliness and pain nevertheless persisted, but it being warm she did not heed it much, it being quite bearable.

Ceanothus Americanus quite cured her of all her symptoms, and subsequent observation proved its permanency. Often during the following winter she called my attention to the fact that she was not chilly and felt well.

One of the first cases I treated at the Wirral Homoeopathic Dispensary in Birkenhead was that of a young man somewhat similarly suffering.

Chronic Splenitis. — This young man was sent to the dispensary by the then manager of Messrs. Thompson and Capper’s Birkenhead establishment, and was occupied in the Liverpool post-office in some light but ill- paid employment. His whole trouble consisted in severe pain in the left side in the region of the spleen, and he had long vainly sought relief of many, probably at dispensaries. He therefore put in an early appearance at my new dispensary to try the new doctor, probably on the well-known principle of the new broom. He had become quite low-spirited and began to fear he would become totally unfit for work, and naturally that was a very serious matter for a young married man. He told me he had formerly helped his wife in her household matters, doing the heavy rough work, but the pain in his side had now become so bad that he could not carry a bucket of water into the house or even sweep up their little yard, as handling the broom pained him so dreadfully. I was pressed for time, and prescribed Ceanothus Americanus in pilules of a low dilution, and promised to go into his case that day week, meaning to percuss the part and ascertain whether the spleen was enlarged. He returned that day week almost well, and the following week was quite well. At my request he again reported himself some time afterwards, and he still continued well.

I resolved to begin my next case with the physical examination. My next case was this —

Chronic Hypertrophy of the Spleen. — A middle-aged lady consulted me shortly after the above case, for a severe pain in the left side and a large swelling in the same position. Kemembering the last case I said I must examine the side. Slrfe objected, so I declined to treat her ; then she said she would think about it and consult with her husband on the subject. In a fortnight or so she returned (driven by the severe pain in the side), and I examined the side and found an enormous spleen occupying the entire left hypochondrium, and reaching inferiorly to about an inch above the crest of the ilium ; it bulged towards the median line and ran off to an angle literally. It was of long standing.

Gave Ceanothus Americanus in a low dilution.

This lady being very intelligent I begged she would allow me to examine the side again after I had finished the treatment. She promised to comply.

Fourteen days after this she came full of gratitude and reported that the swelling was smaller and the pain considerably less.

To continue the medicine. She never consulted me again, but as she was a near neighbor of mine I often saw her, and somewhat six months afterwards she called to pay my fee, and then informed me that she had soon got rid of the pain entirely and the swelling was much smaller, so she had discontinued the medicine altogether, and did not deem it needful to trouble me again.

This is the usual thing. People will not be at the trouble of seeing the doctor as soon as they are better ; they seem not to understand any interest one feels

in the case. We can only make periodical reliable examinations of patients in a hospital ; in private practice it is extremely difficult, as all practitioners know to their chagrin. Still, faute de rnieux, we must put up with those fragments. This patient had had no children, and had a very fresh complexion.

My next case is also one of chronic hypertrophy of the spleen, though only about half the size of the one just narrated. Subject, a poor woman of about thirty or thirty -two years of age, whom I was requested to see by a very kindhearted benevolent lay minister well known in Birkenhead and the neighborhood. She is the mother of several children, very poor, ill-fed and overworked, but withal a good respectable woman and very clean. She had a considerable and very painful swelling in the left side under the ribs, that had been there for some time, and latterly she could not get up on account of the severe pain. I carefully examined the tumor and satisfied myself that it was a very much swelled spleen, and the pain seemed to me to be due to its pressing against the ribs. I marked its size on the skin with ink, made her engage not to wash off the ink-mark, and promised her I would call in a week, having first prescribed Ceanothus as in the other cases. But the fates were against my laudable plan, for I received a message, the day before my next visit was due, to the effect that Mrs. - felt herself so much better that she was up at her housework, and begged me not to call again, as she thought it unnecessary.

Since then I have at times had cases of deepseated pain in the left side to treat, and have mostly found it yield to Ceanothus, though not always. In one case in which it failed the pain was cured with Berberis vulgaris.

In one case of jaundice, characterized by very severe pain in the left side, I gave Ceanothus, with very prompt relief of the pain only ; Myrica cerifera then finished the icterus. Before giving the Ceanothus I had given Chelidonium majus.

In one case of severe metrorrhagia, characterized by pain in the left hypochondrium, Ceanothus gave instant relief to the pain, and checked the haemorrhage. It failed me in a subsequent similar attack in the same person, when Conium was effective, and was suggested by Dr. Thomas of Llandudno.

Chronic Splenitis, Chills and Leucorrlma,. — Some four years since, perhaps a little more, I treated a lady of about 55. She complained of rigors at frequent intervals, and pain in the left side, both of long standing.

The leucorrlioea had lasted some twenty years, and was profuse, thick, and yellow. She had been for years under the best allopathic physicians of Chester, and finally given up as beyond the reach of medical art, evidently on Moliere’s principle that “ nul n’aura de V esprit que nous et nos amis.” Nevertheless, the patient bethought her of homoeopathy, and came under my care. Her last physician had finally suspected cerebro-spinal mischief, and hinted at incipient paralysis.

The pain in the side was the most prominent and distressing symptom, and for this I prescribed Ceanothus: In a month the pain was entirely cured, and also the leucorrlma, while the cold feeling was very much diminished, but not quite cured. I have also never succeeded in quite curing it with any subsequent treatment. I watched the case for nearly four years, and am thus enabled to state that the pain in the side and the leucorrlioea never returned, and the chilliness never again became very bad, but still she had it a little when I saw her last.

Cases calling for this remedy are not very common with me, but every few weeks I meet with one. Thus, since coming to London, I have met with one such, viz., a girl, Ada, set. 14, who came under observation on Nov. 29, 1878, with pain in the left side for some months, and right- sided headache. She received Ceanothus 1 in pilules.

Dec. 13. Cured of pain in left side, head better. Pergat. Did not return.

Ceanothus Americanus never having been proved, at any rate as far as I know, I have always used it about lx or 1, and sometimes in the mother tincture.

Most of the persons with these splenitic disturbances, were in fair condition, and many complained of nothing else ; many were women, and two of these were drunkards ; many had “ chills,” but not all ; none had ever had ague.

As a first contribution to a proving, I will add two or three data.

PATHOGENESIS OF CEANOTHUS AMERICANUS.

1. It very frequently relaxes the bowels, and I have known this even amount to diarrhoea.

2. Ceanothus Americanus 1, four drops in water three times a day was once given by me to a young lady (26) for severe pain and fulness in left side, with inability (for years) of lying on left side. In a few days she could lie comfortably on either side, and the pain in the side was said to be nearly well. This was my second visit, and I said go on with the medicine. She did, and I took these notes at my next visit :

“ Had been taking it for about a fortnight, when one day I felt great nervous excitement, with chilliness, loss of appetite; felt as if the nerves were shaken, and one day at dinner could scarcely hold knife and fork.” The chilliness was chiefly down the back ; she shivered with cold chills ( i . e., rigors).

Thinking these symptoms were due to the medicine, she left it off for two days, and the symptoms entirely passed off. Then she resumed the medicine for one day, and the same symptoms again appeared ; she again discontinued the medicine, and again the symptoms ceased. Her bowels were relaxed. Subsequently her menses appeared ten days too early, and very profusely, a thing that had never happened before in her life, as her mamma informed me.

I mentioned this medicine to Dr. K. Hughes at the Manchester Congress, and Dr. Edward Madden and I partly agreed to prove it ; I am not aware whether this gentleman has ever done it ; if so, he has done more than I have in the matter ; still it is obviously worth proving, for our good spleen medicines are not very plentiful.

I have several times had the honor of calling attention to Ceanothus Americanus at the various meetings of the Liverpool Homoeopathic Medico-Chirurgical Society, but do not remember ever hearing any of the members mention having used it ; they probably never need it, or very properly object to using an unproved drug as a remedy. Also as no notice of it ever appears in our journals it is probable that it is not a usual remedy with the profession.

We are overwhelmed with new remedies, and certainly need rather a better knowledge of what we have than the addition of any fresh ones. I therefore

think it would be a useful undertaking for some one to prove the needlessness of Ceanothus by showing how deep sealed pain in the left hypochondrium, acute and chronic splenitis, hypertrophy of the spleen, etc., can be more promptly cured than I here show. Some one living in a malarious district would have a good opportunity of showing its worthlessness in ague cases also.