Corydalis formosa

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

(Turkey Corn.)

Botanical Description. — This beautiful little plant is indigenous, found westward and southward of New York, to North Carolina, growing in rich soil on hills and mountains, among rocks and old decayed timber, flowering very early in the spring. It is also known as Wild Turkey Pea, Staggerweed, and Choice Dyelytra. It is a perennial plant, from six to ten inches high, having a tuberous root. Leaves radical, rising from ten to fifteen inches high ; somewhat three fold, with the incisions quite variable. The flower stem is radical, naked, rising from eight to twelve inches high, with from four to eight bunches of flowers, each bunch consisting of from six to ten reddish purple, nodding flowers. The inflorescence compound, having at the end of the branches a small tuft of hair. Corolla from eight to ten lines long, broad at the base; the spines very short, obtuse and incurved; the flower leaves purple, and at the base of the pedicles; the

style extended; the stigma two horned at the apex; sepals two, falling off at a stated time ; the capsule, pod-shaped and many-seeded.

Officinal Preparations. — Tincture with strong alcohol, from the fresh root; dilutions; triturations of the dried root.

Analogues. — Chimaphila, Iodide of Potassium, Mercurius corrosivus, Stillingia, Aurum; Phytolacca.

Head.

0 Syphilitic nodes on the skull.

0 Syphilitic and scrofulous eruptions on the scalp.

Mouth and Throat. 0 Syphilitic ulceration of the fauces. ° Chronic ulceration of the mouth and fauces.

Stomach.

• A peculiar derangement of the stomach, attended with profuse morbid secretion of mucus; tongue always coated, with fetor of the breath; loss of appetite and indiges tion ; (acute and chronic catarrh of the stomach). Generative Organs.

° Syphilis, primary and secondary.

° Syphilitic nodes, with nocturnal pains.

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

There are some medicines in the vegetable kingdom which closely resemble in remedial action those from the mineral.

No chemist can explain this resemblance by any chemical analysis, for the analogy lies deeper than any manipulation in the laboratory can discover. It may be that the ultimate atoms of Phytolacca and Mercurius, Iodide of potassa and Still ingia, Aurum and Corydalis, are similar, and that this ultimate similarity gives similarity of action and curative potentiality.

A glance at the clinical history of Corydalis will show some striking resemblances in the results obtained from its use, and the known curative action of those medicines so renowned as specifics against the syphilitic dyscrasia.

No provings of this agent have been made, and we have to rely mainly on reports of cures in eclectic literature. My experience, although limited, because I treat but few cases of syphilis, has been favorable.

I remember two cases of syphilitic nodes on the tibia, with nocturnal pains, which had been treated for nearly a year with massive doses of Iodide of potassa without benefit. Under the use of the Tincture of corydalis, in ten-drop doses, four times a day, the swellings slowly but permanently disappeared.

We have trustworthy testimony that it has cured syphilitic nodes of the skull, with falling off of the hair ; also, syphilitic and scrofulous eruptions on the scalp.

It has also cured syphilitic and non- syphilitic ulcerations of the

mouth and fauces. I think it will be found to be better adapted to secondary syphilis than primary. Whether it is useful in the so-called tertiary forms, or the mercurial cachexia, which some believe to be identical with the latter, future observation must determine.

I would not have you think I confine its use to syphilitic diseases alone. It may prove just as useful in the scrofulous (strumous) dyscrasia and in obstinate cutaneous diseases.

It would be worth while to try it in congenital syphilis. You may find it useful in the cachexia caused by inter mittents, when you find enlargement of the spleen and liver.

Its use in massive doses has caused, according to eclectic physicians, the following conditions : “ A derangement of the stomach, attended with profuse morbid secretion of mucus, there being always a coated tongue, with fetor of the breath, and loss of appetite and digestion.” It is, therefore, indicated in gastric catarrh, and is, in this respect, an analogue of Hydrastis.