Mucuna Urens

Horse-Eye. (Hot regions of Venezuela.) N. O. Leguminosæ. The pulverised bean is macerated in five times its weight of alcohol.

Clinical

Hæmorrhoidal discharges / Hæmorrhoids

Characteristics

In New, Old, and Forgotten Remedies (p. 220) is a letter by Delgado Palacios, of Venezuela, pointing out that the name Dolichos, given to Cowhage or Cow-itch in homœopathic literature (see Vol. I.), is not in accordance with latest botanical terminology. Cowhage is really a Mucuna, Mucuna and Dolichos being separate genera of the Leguminosæ. They are so described in the Treasury of Botany. (Allen gives Linnæus as the authority for the name Dolichos puriens.) Palacios has used M. urens, with which, he says, modern botanists consider Cowhage identical; but he does not name his plant M. Pruriens, an alternative name of Cowhage, and as he says, further, that M. urens is a "special plant which grows in the calid regions of Venezuela," and that the beans are "very difficult to obtain," I think it best to give the plant a separate notice. This is the more desirable as Palacios uses an entirely different preparation. In Dolichos (I retain the name for the sake of distinction) the entire pod is used, the stinging hairs being the most important part of it. Palacios uses the pulverised bean for making his tincture. His chief use for it is in hæmorrhoids and complaints arising from the hæmorrhoidal diathesis. The keynote symptom is burning. There may or may not be bleeding. Affections of liver, uterus, bladder, testicles, when accompanied by hæmorrhoids, are likely to be cured by M. urens. He gives one drop daily of the Ø tincture, and sometimes makes an ointment of it as well. He places more reliance in it than in Hamamelis and Æscul. h. There is no pathogenesis.