Chimaphila umbellata

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

(Prince's Pine.)

Description. — A small, evergreen plant, with a perennial, creeping root, -which gives rise to several simple, erect, or drooping stems, from four to eight inches high, woody at their base. The leaves are wedgeshaped, leathery, serrate, smooth, a shining green on the upper surface, paler beneath, or irregularly white. Flowers in a terminal corymb, on nodding penduncles; they are white, tinged with red, and exhale an agreeable odor. The C. maculata is a variety only, with spotted leaves, or veined with greenish-white. It may be used for our tinctures, as it possesses identical properties.

Officinal Preparations. — Tincture of the root and leaves; dilutions.

Analogues. — Cubeba, (?) Copaiva, Buchu, Galium, Pareira, Uva ursi, Cannabis sativa.

(No Proving.) Urinary Organs. * Scanty urine, containing large quantity of muco-purulent sediment.

0 Dropsy, from disease of the kidneys.

° Albuminuria, occurring during Bright’s Disease.

0 Increased amount of urine, with diminution of the lithates.

0 Chronic catarrh of the bladder.

° Disease of the prostate, with waste of prostatic fluid. ° Hematuria, from chronic gonorrhoea.

0 Dysuria in plethoric, hysterical women; scanty, frequent urination, and pressing, scalding, smarting pain; highcolored urine, depositing a copious mucus sediment.

"* Urine thick, ropy, of brick color, and copious bloody sedi« ment, with hectic fever and night sweats.

Stool.

Constipation, when connected with renal or cystic disease. ° Enlargement of mesenteric glands.

Generative Organs.

• Excessive itching and painful irritation of the urethra, from

the end of the penis to the neck of the bladder.

• Sensation of swelling in the perineum, as if on sitting down

a ball was pressing against it. c Atrophy of the mammae. 0 Tumors of the mammas. 0 Scirrhous tumor of the mammas. (?)

Fever.

• Flushing of the cheeks and general heat, with accelerated

pulse.

0 Hectic fever, from chronic renal disease.

Skin.

0 Glandular enlargements, especially of the lymphatics.

0 In scrofula it seems to rank with some of the anti-psorics.

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

This pretty little plant, a native of the Northern and Middle States, belongs to the class of popular renal remedies. That it possesses undoubted affinity for the gen ito- urinary mucous membrane is now admitted. It is called by allopathic authorities an “astringent diuretic” — a curious and apparently incongruous name, which is doubtless meant to imply that, while it increases the watery portions of the urine, it decreases its solid constituents. This it does do, especially when such constituents are abnormal. It is probable that massive doses, long continued, would provoke inflammatory action, but such effects have not come under my observation.

Its principal curative indications are :

Scanty urine , containing a large quantity of muco-purulent sediment.

Excessive itching and painful irritation of the urethra from the end of the penis to the neck of the bladder.

Sensation of swelling in the perinaeum, as if, in sitting down, a ball was pressing up against it.

It has proved curative in the following:

Dropsy after scarlatina, or during Bright’s disease.

Chronic catarrh of the bladder, with hectic fever.

Chronic disease of the prostate gland.

TIcematuria, passive, symptomatic, in local disease.

Dysuria, in plethoric, hysterical women; scanty, frequent urination, with pressing, scalding and smarting pain; also tenesmus of the bladder; urine filled with mucus. Urine thick, ropy, brick-colored, with bloody sediment.

It has some reputation in scrofula with glandular enlargements, and is said to have cured, in the practice of various physicians, tumors of the mammce, enlargements of lymphatic glands, scrofulous eruptions, and even scirrhus and cancer. Success is claimed by use of the 30th, as well as the tincture and infusion. I prefer the infusion in diseases of the bladder.