Euphorbia corollata

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

(Spurge — Wandering Milk Weed.)

Botanical Description. — A. tall, slender, erect plant, one to two feet high, with a large, perennial, branching, yellowish root, which sends up several stems from two to five feet in height, round, and generally simple and smooth. The flowers are disposed upon a large terminal umbel. The root, when full grown, is sometimes an inch in thickness and two feet in length. It is without unpleasant taste, producing only a sense of heat a short time after it has been taken. The medicinal virtues are said to reside in the cortical portion, which is thick, and constitutes two-thirds of the whole root. They are taken out by water and alcohol, and rem: in in the extract formed by the evaporation of the decoction of the tincture. This species is one of over thirty of the genus Euphorbiaeese, indigenous to this country, to which belongs the European species E. officinalis proved and used by Hahnemann. The E. corollata is found all over the United States, growing chiefly in a dry, barren, and sandy soil, seldom growing in woods or on the borders of streams. Its flowers appear in July and August. The central head is two or three weeks earliest.

Officinal Preparations. — Tincture oftneroot; dilutions.

Analogues. — Croton tiglium, Euphorbia officinalis, Elaterium, J alappa, Lobelia, Helleborus niger, Veratrum album.

Head.

Vertigo, swimming in the head, with faintness. Excessive vertigo, with ringing in the ears. Death-like sensation, with anxiety of mind.

Stomach and Abdomen, Etc. Burning in the mouth and on the tongue, with nausea.

• Sudden nausea, followed by sudden and forcible vomiting

and diarrhoea of rice-water fluid, with sinking, anxious feeling at the stomach.

• Profuse colliquative discharges from the bowels, with painful

spasms of the intestines. Cold sweat on the body and extremities with the diarrhoea. 0 Spasms of the legs and feet, with vomiting and diarrhoea. ° Sea sickness; vomiting of pregnancy. ° Acute enteritis and gastritis. ° Chronic diarrhoea from malaria.

• Diarrhoea which is very obstinate. ° Dysenteric diarrhoea.

0 Cholera morbus.

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

This is an indigenous species of Spurge, possessing properties similar to those of the Euphorbia officinalis of Europe. In our older Materia Medica you will find a very good pathogenesis of the latter, which will give you a good idea of the character of both.

This indigenous specific is, however, much milder than the foreign. The juice of the latter will produce painful vesications on the skin and mucous membrane, while the former rarely if ever affects the skin as severely, even when the juice is applied topically.

The sphere of action of Euphorbia is on the mucous membrane of the intestinal canal, which it affects in a manner similar to Croton tiglium, Elaterium, Jalapa, Helleborus niger, and Veratrum album.

Large doses of the root or its tincture produce great nausea, profuse vomiting, followed by diarrhoea of serous, watery fluid, with painful colic, great prostration, cold sweat, fainting, cramps, etc., affording us a good picture of such diseases as cholera, cholera morbus, cholera infantum, etc., in which diseases I have used it as successfully in many cases as I have its analogues. It acts well in such colliquative discharges when given in the 3X to 6* dilutions.

So profuse are the watery evacuatious caused by this drug that the eclectics call it a “hydragogue cathartic,” and use it in dropsy to run off the serum through the bowels, just as Elaterium is used by the allopathic school, and in rare cases by our own school.

I would recommend you to give it a trial in irritable stomach, profuse watery vomiting, colliquative diarrhoea in typhoids and of consumptives.

The ultimate primary effects of Euphorbia, after the watery diarrhoea has ended, is to cause mucous enteritis with tormina, mucous and bloody stools with tenesmus. In my second edition of “New

I

Remedies ” I suggested its use in dysentery when the symptoms corresponded, namely, when the dysenteric evacuations had been preceded by vomiting and diarrhoea similar to that caused by the drug. Since then several physicians have used it with good results in that variety of dysentery. Some epidemics of dysentery, both in adults and children, commence with attacks of cholera morbus or cholera infantum, and “run into” dysentery.

Naturally enough it shows the inevitable influence of a natural law; we find that the eclectic physicians recommend it in “cholera infantum, diarrhoea, and dysentery.” They try to avoid the truth by asserting that it cures “by giving tone to the action of the secretory vessels.” How contemptible are such subterfuges ! How much nobler would it be to admit the truth of the law of Similia !

I wish to call your attention to the similarity of the action of Spurge to some epidemics of summer diarrhoea, when previous to the attack the child or adult has an eruption of small watery vesicles with redness of the skin. It has been observed that if the eruption suddenly recedes, choleraic evacuations occur. Now this remedy may be quite homoeopathic to such cases, as is Croton tiglium. If the eruption had been like urticaria, Apis or Arsenicum are indicated ; if papular, Pulsatilla or Dulcamara.

I have found it beneficial in a few cases of gastritis, with burning in the throat and stomach.

It is also indicated in that peculiar form of g astro- enteric irritation, when the slightest cold or indiscretion in diet results in vomiting of water or food, diarrhoea of undigested matters and water, followed by bloating of the abdomen and constipation In the latter disorder the remedy should be given persistently for several weeks, in order to effect a radical cure.

Another species, the Euphorbium hyper id folia, has been used very successfully in epidemic dysentery when the discharges were very bloody. It has generally been given in weak infusions. I suggest that you give it a trial in the lower dilutions.