Opuntia vulgaris

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

(Prickly Pear.)

Description. — This (with a variety, the O. Rafinesque), is the only member of the cactus family, growing east of the Mississippi. It is found all over the United States, in sandy fields and on dry rocks. It is low, prostrate, spreading, pale, with flat and obovate, broad joints; the minute leaves ovate-subulate and oppressed; axils bristly, rarely with a few small spines; flowers, sulphur-yellow; berry, nearly smooth, eatable. It blooms in June, in the neighborhood of Chicago.

Officinal Preparations. — Tincture of the fresh petals. (Burdick.) Tincture of the whole plant. (Hale.)

Analogues. — ( ? )

[These symptoms are from a fragmentary proving by Dr. Burdick, of New York, from inhaling the tincture of the petals.]

Burning and smarting in the margins of the eyelids, with a

feeling of contraction in the line of the eyelashes.

• Nausea, extending from the stomach down into the bowels,

with sensation as if diarrhoea would set in.

• Excoriating, sick feeling in lower third of abdomen, with

sensation as if the bowels had all settled down into the

lower part of the abdomen. {Burdick.) ° Diarrhoea, stools dark, slimy, excoriating, exhausting, with

nausea, and cramps in stomach and bowels. Alternate nausea of stomach and bowels; sensation as if the

contents of the lower bowels were very acrid. Nausea, with dull heavy pain in stomach, with feeling as if

cramps would set in. Feeling of prostration and coldness.

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

This member of the Cactus family is the only species which grows as far north as the Great Lakes. I have seen it blooming luxuriantly on the shores of Lake Michigan. We have only a fragmentary proving, in which it seemed to affect the intestinal mucous membrane, and perhaps the abdominal nerves. It has cured attacks of diarrhoea with extreme nausea.

Its relationship to the Cactus grandiflora suggests the possibility that a thorough proving might evolve some cardiac symptoms. I would suggest a careful proving of the tincture of the whole plant.

OXALATE OF OERIUM.

This medicine was introduced to the profession by Professor J. Y. Simpson, of Edinburgh (see “ Simpson’s Memoirs ”). He recommended it in very obstinate cases of vomiting during pregnancy , and also in some particularly intractable cases of chronic vomiting, which he imagined to be caused by some eruption on the mucous membrane of the stomach. The allopathic school have used it quite extensively in such cases, and their testimony is, that while it gives prompt relief in some cases, in others quite similar it seems to have no effect whatever.

No proving has been made by the homoeopathic school, but it has been resorted to by many in obstinate cases. In the Homoeopathic Medical Society of Pennsylvania, 1872, during a discussion on “ morning sickness,” Dr. Charlton stated that for several years he had used the Oxalate of cerium in all cases of morning sickness of pregnancy with unvarying success. Dr. B. W. James had experience in its use. He said : “ It very seldom fails in relieving the vomiting of pregnancy, when given in goodsized doses of the 2X trit.” Dr. McClelland had tried it and got