Datura arborea

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

{Bougmancia Candida.)

Description. — A native of Peru, growing along the Pacific coast in California, cultivated in gardens and conservatories. Leaves large, their sides unequal. Flowers; corolla funnel shaped, long tubed and bent downward; color, snow-white, with a yellow tint by the fundus, of very sweet odor. Dr. Poulson, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, communicates the following pathogenetic symptoms.

Officinal Preparations. — Tincture of the leaves and flowers; dilu tions.

Analogues. — Agaricus, JEthusa, Belladonna, Hyoscyamus, Cannabis indica, Stramonium, etc.

Mind.

Toxicological effect much slower than D. Stramonium, but: dynamically very intense and lasting.

The odor of the flowers in a room causes considerable psychological aberration.

Causes such deep impression upon the mental sphere and: faculty of concentrating ideas that I was sensibly affected a long time. (Dr. Camaun.')

A very strange feeling of pleasant ease and comfort, as if I scarcely touched the earth with my feet, and had to gather my ideas from afar, as if they were floating in the clouds.

A longing for beauty and fine scenery.

The brain seems floating in thousands of problems and granu ideas, without being able to concentrate itself, or get to any point and carry out any system of thought.

It acts mostly as a pure dynamic and semi-spiritual agent upon the sensations, without perceptible pain. {Poulson.)

He experienced a slight vertigo, and found himself involved in a most beautiful atmosphere, bright and calm as the sunlight at noon. {Camaun.)

A confusion of ideas across the cerebrum. {Ib.)

° Recommended by Dr. Camaun as a remedy in some forms of emotional or functional insanity, or when the patient is < happy and contented and imagines himself or herself to be some extraordinary emperor, prince, etc. {Poulson.) Head.

A drawing, nervous irritation, from the cerebrum back to the cerebellum, and a spinal irritation, or depletion of nervous circulation in the medulla oblongata. (Ib-) A contraction of the front cerebrum of a convulsive nature, sometimes as if a string was tied close around the head from sinus frontalis to os occipitis. {Ib.) The cramps of both hemispheres (cerebro-frontalis) made me

careful in experimenting more. {Ib.) A feeling as if my forehead was expanded, and my ideas were

floating outside my brain. {Ib.) A sharp, constrictive sensation across the spine in the region pars dorsalis, extending upward to the pars cervicalio, into ventriculus quartus, or the lower region of the cerebellum, with irritation of nervous accessories. {Ib.) [Dr. Poulson's estimate of the power of this remedy is, perhaps, overrated; his theory of its action rather vague. It would have been better if he had couched his language in less transcendental terms.