Chelidonium majus

PNEUMONIA.

Mercurius, Chelidonium and Kali carb. are a trio that go well in company. These remedies all suit cases of pneumonia with bilious complication.

Chelidonium has pain under the right shoulderblade and in the liver, with marked jaundice, yellow face and skin, tongue coated yellow at the base (Merc. prot.), yellow urine and very yellow stool, yellow as gold, or very white stools.

PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS.

Chelidonium is different and may accomplish much in both the early and later stages. The first symptom that generally appears is the well-known persistent pain under the inner angle of the right shoulderblade. It has also a deep seated pain through the whole right side of chest. Again, stitches in right side of chest, oppression of right chest, soreness of lower ribs of right side, pain in right shoulder, etc., etc. It is as preeminently a right sided remedy as is Lycopodium, and they complement each other well. There is a great deal of

COUGH, sometimes dry and spasmodic, with painful contraction of the abdomen with every cough; at other times there is much expectoration, < in morning. A peculiar symptom is that there is at times forcible ejection of mucus, which flies out of the mouth in small lumps (Badiag., Kali carb.). Now, if there are the liver symptoms, colorless stools or the alternate yellow as gold diarrhœa, dark yellow, bile laden urine, yellow skin and sclerotica, there is no mistake. Chelidonium is the remedy, and will probably cure the whole patient. The use of the remedy should be persisted in, for it is a long deep acting remedy. I do not mean by this that it should be given continuously, without intermission, but given until relief, and then stopped and left to act as long as improvement continues, to be repeated again, and generally in a different potency, as occasion requires. Other remedies may have to be interpolated, generally antipsoric, like Sulphur or Lycopodium, especially the latter, during the course of the treatment. I was a little surprised not to find Chelidonium noticed in “Gregg” by Allen on consumption, but think it must have been an oversight, as no one knows better than Allen the wonderful value of this remedy. My attention was first called to Chelidonium as a remedy for incipient consumption in a little work by “Hitchman.” I have lost the book, but have used the remedy many times with success.

COUGH.

Chelidonium.—Cough with pain in chest under right shoulder-blade: Deep cough with expectoration.