Gnaphalium polycephalum

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

(Cud Weed.)

Botanical Description. — This plant is indigenous and known by the various names of Indian Posey, Sweet Life Everlasting, White Balsam, Old-field Balsam, etc. It is herbaceous and annual, with an erect, whitish, woody and much branched stem, from one to two feet in height. Leaves alternate, sessile, linear-lanceolate, acute, entire, scabrous above, and whitish tomentose beneath. Flowers tubular and yellow, in heads clustered at the summit of the panicled corymbose branches, ovate-conical before expansion, then .obovate, involucre imbricate, with whitish, ovate, oblong, rather obtuse scales. Florets of the ray, subulate — of the disc, entire. Receptacle, flat, naked, pappus pilose, scabrous capillary.

It is found in Canada and various parts of the United States, growing in old fields and on dry, barren lands, and bearing whitish yellow flowers in July and August. The leaves have a pleasant aromatic smell, and an aro matic, slightly bitter and astringent, but rather an agreeable taste. They yield their properties to alcohol and water.

Officinal Preparations. — Tincture of the plant.

Analogues. — Anisum, Chamomilla, Ipecacuanha, Mercurius, Pulsatilla. Head and Face. Giddiness, especially after rising from a recumbent position. Pain in the back of the head, of a dull, continuous character,

with shooting pain in the eyeballs. Neuralgic pain, of an intermittent form, of the superior maxillary of both sides. Dull, heavy expression of countenance; face appears bloated. Fullness about the temples.

Mouth and Throat.

Mouth feels parched and tastes badly.

Flat, sweetish, sickening taste in the mouth.

Tongue covered with long white fur.

Stomach and Abdomen. Flatus of stomach, windy eructations, nausea and hiccough.

• Colic pains in various parts of the abdomen, which is sensitive to pressure, in coecum. Borborygmus, with much emission of flatus.

Rectum and Stool. Looseness of bowels, with passage of pale-colored fceces

(primary).

Rumbling in the bowels, with stool before breakfast.

• Diarrhceic discharges in morning and during the day, with

irritable temper; pains in bowels in children.

• Vomiting and purging, like cholera morbus, in the night

and all next day.

Constipation for three days after the diarrhoea {secondary).

Copious, watery stool at night, with much prostration, nausea, pain, and rumbling in the bowels.

Dark-colored, liquid, offensive stool in the morning, afterwards pain in the bowels all day.

Genito-TJrinary Organs.

Sensation of fullness and tension in the bladder, even when just emptied.

Pain in the kidneys, with frequent but slight pain in prostate gland.

Increase of sexual passion, waking with an erection and urgent desire for an embrace (a thing which never occurred before); the desire was rather mechanical than passional.

0 Irritation of the prostate gland.

Trunk and Superior Extremities.

Feeling of debility in the arms, with rheumatic-like pains.

Pains in the chest, darting from side to side.

Numbness of the lower parts of the back, with lumbago.

Sensations of weight in the pelvis.

Inferior Extremities.

• Intense pain along the sciatic nerve, following its larger

ramifications.

Frequent cramps of the calves of the legs. Cramps of the feet when in bed. Rheumatic pains in the knee and ankle joints. * Sciatica. {Dr. Banks, Dr. Woodbury.) Feeling of numbness occasionally taking the place of the sciatic pains, making exercise very fatiguing.

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

This many-headed Everlasting was first introduced into our practice by Dr. Woodbury and others of Boston. Its sphere of action appears to include certain nerves of the face and lower extremities, and the mucous membrane of the bowels. The provings show it to cause an intermittent neuralgia of the superior maxillary nerve of both sides, and an occipital headache, with shooting pains in the eyeballs. Dr. Banks, selecting the remedy from its symptom, ‘‘'intense pain along the sciatic nerve, following the larger ramifications,” cured several cases of sciatica; and Dr Woodbury has lately reported a case cured. By reference to the provings, you will see that the pain is attended by cramps of the calves and feet, and a numbness which takes the place of the pain at times.

It has been used successfully in colic, evidently flatulent ; in morning diarrhoea of dark-colored, liquid, offensive stool in children ; also in cholera morbus and cholera infantum, by Dr. E. Gamny, of New York, with the symptoms recorded in the pathogenesis. It seems to faintly resemble Colocynth and Veratrum album.