Urtica urens

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

{Stinging Nettle.)

Botanical Description. — A well-known perennial herbaceous plant, growing both in Europe and the United States, by the roadsides, in hedges and gardens. The stinging, or irritating property, is caused by the free formic acid, which is found in the little hairs, which are very sharp.

Officinal Preparations. — Tincture of the plant; dilutions.

Analogues. — Arsenicum, Apis mellifica, Belladonna, Clematis, Copaiva, Comocladia, Dulcamara, Petroleum, Rhus.

Head.

Dull aching pain in right sinciput; right side of the face, extending to malar bone.

o

Neuralgic pain in right face and forehead. Fullness, dullness, and dizziness, like rush of blood to the head.

Dull aching in head, with stitches in region of the spleen. Dull aching in occiput and over the eyes. 3 Urticaria of the scalp — suddenly appearing and determining internally.

Face and Eyes.

Pain in right eye and right parietal bone — a stinging pain,

compelling one to rub and press it. Pressing pain over right eye and in the eyeball. Pressing pain in left eye.

Pressing pain over both eyes; they feel weak and sore. Pain in eyeballs as if from a blow, and a sensation as of sand in eyes.

Fever blisters on lips, itching.

Lips, nose and ears swollen ; eyelids closed and cedematous — followed by small transparent vesicles, filled with serum, afterwards desquamation.

0 Urticaria appears, after being suppressed.

° Vesicular erysipelas appears, after suppression.

Mouth and Throat.

Burning in throat, with frequent throwing up of frothy mucus, with cough and frothy expectoration.

Burning in throat, with nausea.

Gastric and Intestinal.

Nausea, with burning in throat.

• Vomiting from suppression of nettle rash.

• Constipation, [p.)

Pain around the umbilicus, with severe dysenteric stools of whitish slime.

White and yellow stools, with slimy mucus, tenesmus and colic-like pains.

Small dysenteric stools of greenish-brown slime, with urging and tenesmus.

Soreness in the bowels, and on pressure a sound as if they

were full of water. Dysenteric stools during the greater part of the proving. Stools, small and painful, mixed with white matter, like the

boiled white of an egg, with much pain over the whole

abdomen.

° Dysentery, if accompanied or preceded by nettle rash; during and after passage of stool, a sensation of rawness and burning in anus.

A small hemorrhoidal tumor, itching and burning, at times quite severe.

Urinary Organs.

Complete suppression of urine for twelve days, with cedematous swelling of the whole upper body down to the umbilicus.

° Strangury. 0 Gravel. ° Disease of bladder and kidneys.

° Hemorrhage from the bladder.

Generative Organs.

Women. — The breasts of a woman who had had twelve children, but never nursed any, became swollen and filled with a serous, and afterwards milky fluid — (in the case of oedema of the upper body).

Menorrhagia after confinement, and at the critical period.

° Sudden suppression of milk.

Chest.

Soreness and bruised feeling in sides of the chest. 0 Haemoptysis — from violent exertion of the lungs.

Extremities.

Pain in right deltoid muscle, worse at 9 p. m., could not put on his coat without assistance.

Pain in both arms, right the worst, and in ankles; cramp-like pain in right arm, the deltoid feeling sore to the touch; worse on rotating the arms inward; worse in evening.

Rheumatic pains in right arm; worse when lying on it.

A sharp stitch darting through the arm.

Muscles of right arm sore, as if bruised.

Inability to stretch or raise the right arm, on account of a pain in the right hypochondriac region.

• Urticaria nodosa on hands and fingers. Rheumatic pains in right wrist and ankles.

• Blotches, "hives," on the hands and fingers, itching. Soreness on inside of right knee joint. Rheumatic pains, attended with urticaria.

Skin.

The skin of the face, arms and chest burnt frightfully; she complained of itching and burning as if the skin was scorched ; the lips, nose and ears were swollen; the eyelids oedematous, as if full of water, and closed; (in morning, after drinking an infusion of Urtica at night;) at noon, the whole upper part of body, down to the umbilicus, was enormously swollen, but rather pale and dropsical than inflamed, and covered with confluent, small, transparent vesicles filled with serum (sudamina). In other respects the patient was free from pain; the breathing and circulation were undisturbed. On the third day there was violent itching; on the sixth, desquamation.

• Raised, red, itching blotches on the skin of the hands and

. fingers.

• Urticaria nodosa, with stinging itching.

° Urticaria attending or preceding rheumatism.

0 Burns, when the integuments and subjacent tissues are not

destroyed, and when the injury is confined to the skin. 0 Vesicular erysipelas, of a not very severe character. c Erythema, with burning and itching.

The skin-symptoms tended to return every year at the same date.

Generalities. General oedema of the upper half of body.

The seeds induce lethargic sleep.

° Haemorrhages from various organs.

° Results of retrocession of urticaria, and other eruptions.

° Affections attended by urticaria.

The rheumatic pains worse in evening.

° The seeds are said to have cured Goitre.

° Intermittent fever. (?)

° Insufficiency or entire want of milk after parturition. (?) ° Nettle rash, which affects the patient every year at the same season.

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

The Stinging-nettle has many points of resemblance to Apis. It also resembles Formica, as it should, for its stings contain Formic acid.

Its chief use in our school is in the treatment of urticaria, for which it is prescribed internally, and as a lotion or cerate. It seems best adapted to that variety called urticaria nodosa, in which the skin appears elevated, with a white central spot and red areola, and attended by stinging and burning. It is also useful when the eruption recedes, and causes vomiting, fainting, and sometimes diarrhoea. This result often occurs in children when we do not suspect such an origin. It has been used for dysentery, enteritis, strangury, gravel, haematuria, suppression of milk in nursing women, haemoptysis, and menorrhagia. It is said to have cured rheumatism (some rheumatic pains are relieved by the appearance of nettle-rash). The seeds are reported to have removed goitres.