Passiflora incarnata

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

(White Passion Flower.) Botanical Description. — This is a vine climbing by tendrils, with a Brnooth stem, leaves three cleft, the lobes serrate, petiole bearing two glands,

■flowers large, nearly white, with a triple, purple, and flesh-colored crown, involucre three leaved.

Grows in dry soil, in Virginia, Kentucky and southward, flowering from May to July. The fruit of this variety of Passiflora is about the size of a hen's egg, and when crushed makes a report, from whence came its name of May-pop.

There seems to be a very marked difference as to the active properties of *,this plant as found growing in different localities. That growing on the levees around New Orleans, is very large and rank, but utterly inactive, while that growing on the uplands is much better, and that grown on the Bayou Gross Tete seems to be the strongest.

Officinal Preparations. — Tincture with dilute alcohol, from the care, fully dried or fresh leaves, gathered in May, or as soon as the plant blossoms, before forming fruit; dilutions; triturations from the inspissated juice.

Analogues. — Aconite (?), Chloral Hydrate, Nitrate of Amyl, Gelseminum, the Bromides, Calabar Bean, Cannabis Indica.

(No Provings.)

0 Tetanic convulsions affecting mainly the muscles of the trunk, with predominant opisthotonos. {Dr. L. Phares.)

0 Violent tetanus, with opisthotonos, trismus, and convulsions, in a child. {Tb.)

0 Tetanus and trismus in horses, many cases.

° Neuralgia,; sleeplessness, with great restlessness and suicidal mania.

0 Erysipelas and syphilis. (?)

° Tetanus infantum, (neonatorum.)

A quiet slumber, from which the patient may be wakened up, and he will talk to you as rationally as he ever did, and immediately relapse into his slumbers.

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

serving its very delightful effects, he always called the inspissated juice by the neither very classical nor scientific appellation, somnum seraphium.

Last year was very unfavorable for making a good preparation, so that I sent him but a very small quantity, which, he wrote, was too precious to use for anything but tetanus, for which he considered it a specific. Of the aqueous extract of the root, he writes : “ It is a famous application for chancre. I have, by spreading it over erysipelas, driven that inflammation away in a short time. I have cured irritable piles permanently in two or three applications. I have never found its equal in new burns.” Besides his experience in private practice with the Passiflora, he had a fine opportunity, during the late war, of using it in a military hospital, where there were many cases of syphilis, all of which he managed so successfully as to cause much surprise. Such is a brief sketch of Dr. Lindsay’s experience with this remedy.

I have myself used it in syphilis, but not in a sufficient number of cases to form a decided opinion as to its value. I never saw anything else act so promptly in erysipelas. I have used it with advantage in ulcers, neuralgias, and tetanus. I have seen wonderful effects from it in relieving tetanus ; but, having no record of cases by me, I could not with propriety attempt to detail cases. I will merely mention one case from memory. Some ten years ago I was called to see an old lady in a distant part of the country, who was reported to be “ having fits.” I found her able to be up most of the time, but, while examining her, convulsions came on, affecting mainly the trunkal muscles and drawing the head back. I gave her instantly a dose of Passiflora. The convulsions subsided, and she has never had one since. I continued the use of the medicine in small doses for a few days. I have used it treating tetanus in horses — a disease usually considered as inevitably fatal to that noble animal. It has never failed to cure the horse. Let one case suffice to illustrate. In 1851, early one morning, one of my horses was found to have trismus. A number of remedies failing, and the spasm becoming general, apparently affecting all the muscles — tetanus erectus — I abandoned him. He was down, his legs extended, and every muscle so tense as to be immovable by any force that could be safely applied. After some hours at night I concluded to try him with the Passiflora ; gathered a quantity — stems, leaves, and flowers — pounded, moistened with water, expressed ten or twelve ounces, and poured down his throat through a tube introduced at the side of the mouth. He was then apparently dying, and no one believed he could survive half an hour. I saw him no more till next morning, when he was well and grazing at a distance from the place where I had left him the night before. During the late war, my son, Dr. J. H. Phares, had occasion many times to prescribe the Passiflora for tetanus in horses, with one invariable result, — prompt, perfect, permanent cure. He fortunately saw no case in the men.

The leaves are gathered in May, or as soon as the plant blossoms, but before forming fruit. In fact, the whole plant may be used. It must be pounded, and the juice expressed through a strong cloth, into shallow glass or porcelain dishes, to dry as rapidly as possible in the shade, with free circulation of air. When dry, it is reduced to a powder by the use of mortar and pestle, bottled and closely corked. The dose of this powder is from one to four teaspoonfuls, repeated pro re nata. I have made ethereal, aqueous, and alcoholic preparations, and perhaps others ; but the inspissated juice reduced to a powder is the best I have ever used. The size of the dose renders it somewhat objectionable. Some eight or ten years ago I requested a manufacturing chemist of New York to prepare the concentrated active principle of the Passiflora incarnata, which he promised to do, but he has never reported progress. If a concentrated solution could be obtained, I have no doubt it would supersede Morphia and Atropia for hypodermic medication, its action being so much more pleasant and safe. I have never seen the least unpleasant effect from it in any dose, however large, although I have given it in quite large doses. When gathered later than May, the juice can never be sufficiently inspissated to be pulverized. It then contains too much sugar and gum. For external use the whole plant may be boiled for an hour, then thrown out, and the extract thus obtained boiled down to a proper consistence for the object in view. For this purpose the perennial roots answer well, gathered after the first frost in autumn.

The incarnata may be easily distinguished from the other species of Passiflora. This and the luteo are the only two species found in the United States north of Florida. Three other species are found in Florida; but all these, like the P. luteo, are small, and bear fruit less than half an inch in diameter, while the P. incarnata is much larger, and grows in the open fields, bears a fruit about the size and shape of the Muscovy duck, and has serrated trilobate leaves. From the sharp report emitted by the immature fruit when crushed, it is very gener* ally called the May-pop.

Since the foregoing was written I have treated with the fluid hydro-alcoholic extract of Passiflora, obtained from the dried leaves by displacement, several cases of neuralgia, and one of sleepless, incessant motion and suicidal mania. With the same extract, during the current week, Ur. J. II. Phares has treated, with the most prompt and satisfactory success, a very virulent and hopeless case of tetanus, with opisthotonos, trismus, and convulsions, in a child two years old. Other most potent remedies, in heroic doses, having failed to produce any effect in this case, he thinks nothing but the Passiflora could possibly have saved the child.

It has never been used by homceopathists, but deserves to be proven and used in our practice.