Chelone glabra

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

(Balmony.)

Description. — A smooth perennial, with upright, branching stem, and large, white, rose-color, or purple flower. (It is called Turtle-head and Snake-head, because of the appearance of the corolla, resembling in shape the head of a reptile.) The flowers are sessile, in spikes or clusters; leaves lanceolate, on very short stalks. It grows in wet places; blooming from July to September. A.11 its parts are very bitter.

Officinal Preparations. — Tinctures; of the whole plant; dilutions.

Analogues. — Hydrastis, China, Myrica, Chelidonium, etc.

Stomach.

Increase of appetite, with powerful digestion. 0 Dyspeptic ailments, with hepatic disorder.

Liver.

0 Jaundice, with loss of appetite and disgust for food.

Stool.

0 Constipation from hepatic torpor. 0 Expulsion of lumbrici.

Fever.

c Specific in cases of quinine cachexia. (Drs. Ball and Price.) 0 Intermittent fever after abuse of quinine. (75.)

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

The Chelone is one of those bitter indigenous plants which has always had a popular reputation as a tonic, or strength-restorer. The same may be said of Gentian, Frazera, the foreign Columbo, and others.

But the Chelone seems to possess some specific powers aside from its general action. No provings have been made, but the clinical experience of a few homoeopath ists, and my own, show that it must affect the liver.

It has been found very beneficial in weak digestion, especially when due to want of tone in the stomach.

Jaundice, with loss of appetite, disgust for food, constipation and debility, has been removed promptly by drop doses of the tincture.

Dr. Ball, of Marshall, Mich., has had much experience with Chelone in intermittent fever after abuse of Quinine. In such cases the Chelone cures, not by possessing any anti-malarial virtue like Quinine, but by its power of removing the Quinine cachexia. That troublesome condition, which follows severe attacks of malarial fever, known as “dumb ague,” consisting of ill-defined paroxysms of aching, with fever and distress, may be removed by this medicine if its use is patiently continued a few weeks.

Dr. E. C. Price, of Baltimore, verifies Dr. Ball’s experience. He gave it to a man broken down with ague, and who, notwithstanding the use of Quinine, Iron, and Strychnia, became so

weak as to be unable to sit up. “The tincture of Chelone, five drops three times a day, brought him right up, and he has remained well ever since.”