EUPHORBIUM OFFICINARUM

(EUPHORBIUM)

An irritant to the skin and mucous membranes. Burning pain in bones. Pains in limbs and paralytic weakness in the joints. Important respiratory and skin symptoms. Terrible burning pains. Pains of cancer . Everything appears larger than it really is.

Head

Acute mania. Violent, pressive headache.

Face

Erysipelas; yellow blisters. Burning in cheek; worse, left. Eyes inflamed and agglutinated in morning; Red swelling of cheeks. Nasal pruritus with mucous secretions from naso-pharynx.

Stomach

Great hunger. Sialorrhea (profuse salty saliva). Waterbrash. Thirst for cold drinks.

Abdomen

Sunken; spasmodic, flatulent colic. Stools fermented, profuse, clayey. Feels hollow.

Respiratory

Breathing oppressed, as if chest were not wide enough. Spasmodic, dry cough, day and night, with asthma. Violent, fluent coryza, with burning and cough. Constant cough, with stitches from pit of stomach to sides of chest. Croup, dry, hollow, cough. Warm feeling in chest, as if hot food had been swallowed.

Extremities

Paralytic pains. Pain in hip-joint and coccyx.

Skin

Erysipelatous inflammation, especially of the cheek. Biting and stinging, red, swollen. Vesicular erysipelas . Carbuncle; old, torpid, indolent ulcers with biting, lancinating pain. Old torpid ulcer, pustules; gangrene ( Echinac; Secale ). Ulcerating carcinoma and epithelioma of the skin.

Relationship

Compare: Euphorbia amygdaloides -Wood Spurge (in pain in antrum, illusion of smell, odor of mice . Sense of taste blunted. Diarrhœa; stools difficult, with painful anal spasm).

Euphorbia corollata

-Large Flowering Spurge--(a diaphoretic expectorant and cathartic of the old school in gastro-enteric disturbance, with deathly nausea. Vomiting of food, water, and mucus and copious evacuations. Attacks recur after short intermissions. Feeling of clawing in stomach; cold sweat) ( Verat alb ).

Euphorbia marginata

-Snow on the mountain--(Honey from the flowers is poisonous, detected by the hot, acrid taste. The milky juice produces skin symptoms like Rhus ).

Euphorbia pilulifera

-Pillbearing Spurge--(Humid asthma, cardiac dyspnœa, hay-fever, and bronchitis. Urethritis, with intense pain on urinating, and much urging. Acrid leucorrhœa; worse least movement. Hæmorrhages from sunstroke and traumatism).

Compare, also: Psoralea -A Columbian plant--(Pain of cancer, ulcers. Leucorrhœa fetid. Pruritus. Uterine tumors). Croton; Jatropha; Colchic .

Antidotes: Camph; Opium .

Dose

Third to sixth potency.