Mirza Tahir Ahmad James Tyler Kent
Phytolacca is prepared from the roots of a plant, the fruit of which is toxic when ingested in large quantity. The early symptoms of the toxicity are vomiting, diarrhoea and headache.
Phytolacca is a very important remedy. It resembles Mercury with respect to many of its symptoms. That is why it is also called Botanical Mercury. The diseases of Mercury become worse in the cold and humidity. At night also, the discomfort increases. In Phytolacca also, backache increases with cold and humidity. When the patient warms up in the bed at night, the pain intensifies further. All its ailments aggravate during the night. Both Mercury and Phytolacca are strongly connected to the diseases of the glands. Phytolacca acts as an antidote to the toxic effects of Mercury.
The feeling of pain and scraping of the skin over the sensitive area of the human body, where the skin is closely attached to the bone without the cushion of muscle or fat, is found both in Phytolacca and Mercury.
Both Mercury and Phytolacca are widely effective against bone pain. Eupatorium too is effective against influenza and the fever associated with severe bone aches. However, Mercury is the most important remedy for the treatment of bone problems. Mercury is very effective in the diseases in which the bones start to decay, with the formation of sinuses.
Phytolacca is very effective against the lesions of the inner linings (mucous membranes), skin and throat as well as glands that become hardened and have a tendency to produce pus. However, sometimes it becomes necessary to use Hepar Sulph or Silicea as its helpers. In Phytolacca, like Hepar Sulph, the phlegm is thick and sticky.
Phytolacca is the foremost remedy for the treatment of syphilis. It is also effective in chronic syphilis and diphtheria. Chronic joint pains, including rheumatoid arthritis, stiffness of the left shoulder and arm, a lightning type of migrating pain and the pain at the ankles and forefoot, are all the symptoms of Phytolacca. Phytolacca is also effective in the treatment of the cancer of the nose. The redness of the eyes, along with the flow of hot watery tears due to cold, a cough, sensitivity to light, a burning sensation with a feeling of sand in the eyes, the margins of the eyelids being hot, an abrased tongue and the feeling of a hot ball stuck in the throat, are all the symptoms of Phytolacca.
The Phytolacca patient often feels quite dizzy. He feels weak on getting up from the bed. The headache moves from the forehead towards the back of the head. The patient feels pressure in the eyes and the temples. The headache becomes worse during the rain. If there is itching on the head, accompanied with the formation of bumps and scabs, then Phytolacca can also be a good remedy.
Phytolacca is an exceptional remedy for breast-feeding women. If the mammary glands become indurated and sensitive with a tendency towards cancer, these women should be treated with Phytolacca without any delay. Besides Phytolacca, Bryonia, Belladonna and Conium can also be useful. In Belladonna, the mammary glands are not only hardened but also become red. However, in Bryonia, the glands harden, but there is no redness. Even the slightest movement is unbearable. In Bryonia and Phytolacca, the glands become stone hard. The milk of a Phytolacca woman is sour, poisonous and in clotted form. Breast-feeding the baby is very painful. The pain spreads throughout the body. (For details on Conium, please refer to the relevant chapter). Phytolacca is also useful for women in whom the breast milk is either deficient of dries up completely. Before and during the menstruation, the breasts become swollen and tender. In these women, the cold weather affects the mammary glands causing them to become painfully hard. The breast milk becomes thready like a spider web. If, while breast-feeding, a women develops convulsions and the pain spreads all over then Phytolacca is the treatment of choice. Frequent menstruation and excessive bleeding (menorrhagia) is also a symptom of Phytolacca. Usually these women develop a pain in the right ovary. In Phytolacca, the stomach feels injured. The vomitus is sticky. Phytolacca is also useful in the treatment of nausea associated with pain and a feeling of heat in the stomach, as well as bleeding piles.
Phytolacca is very useful in the teething problems of the children. Children clench their teeth forcefully leaving their marks on the tongue. Phytolacca ailments aggravate in humid and cold weather, during night and on movement. The discomfort subsides in dry, hot weather and on taking rest.
One form of Phytolacca called Phytolacca Berry is very famous in the treatment of obesity. I have treated several patients with it and have seen excellent results. Although Phytolacca is not as dangerous for the heart patients as Fucus, yet some patients with weak heart feel weaker while using Phytolacca. If so, Phytolacca should be immediately discontinued. Furthermore, the patients desirous of losing weight must, as a rule, be given Crataegus Q, which strengthens the heart. Fucus is more effective against obesity however it must be used with extreme care. As soon as the patient feels weakness of the heart, Fucus should be immediately stopped or there is a danger that the patient may have heart attack any time, which may prove fatal.
Antidotes: Belladonna, Meserium
Potency: Usually 30 to 1000. CM as needed.
by Mirza Tahir Ahmad
PHYTOLACCA
This is a very imperfectly proved remedy, and it is only possible to present fragments of it.
The mental symptoms have not been brought out, but the remedy has some striking features.
You will notice the resemblance of this drug to Mercury, and it is an antidote to mercury. In those lingering mercurial bone pains, where the patient has been salivated; the pains come on at night from the warmth of the bed; the body aches; a chronic, sore, bruised state; soreness of the periosteum where the flesh is thin, over the tibia; joints; soreness of the muscles; drawing and cramping; drawing in the muscles of the back; backache, worse at night; worse from the warmth of the bed.
The patient suffers from these symptoms in cold, damp weather, as in Mercury. Tendency to ulceration, hence its usefulness in syphilis; old, chronic, syphilitic ulcers; the patient has been salivated; had Mercury rubbed in; he became saturated with it, but it no longer helps. Ulcers in the throat; on the skin; on mucous membranes anywhere.
Spasmodic conditions; drawing in the muscles; this may extend to violent spasms; opisthotonos; sometimes the cervical region is affected and the head is drawn back; jerking and twitching of the muscles.
Glands: Phytolacca is a glandular remedy.
The glands become inflamed, and hard. It produces sore throats, with inflammation of the glands of the neck, particularly the sub maxillary and parotid. Inflammation of the throat with the accumulation of thick, tenacious mucus; swelling of the tonsils. Low grade inflammation like erysipelas.
The symptoms are aggravation at night, on cold days, in a cold room, and from the heat of the bed; so that there is a controversy between heat and cold.
It seems that the remedy centres in the mammary glands. Soreness and lumps in the breasts from each cold, damp spell; becomes chilled and a sore breast results; sore breast in connection with the menses; a nursing woman is exposed to the cold, the breast inflames and the milk becomes stringy; coagulated milk.
This comes out in the proving, but poke root has been extensively used by cattle raisers when the cow's milk became thick and there were lumps in the bag, and when the condition was brought on from the cow standing out in the rain.
Almost any excitement centers in the mammary gland; fear or an accident; lumps form, pains, heat, swelling, tumefaction; even violent inflammation and suppuration. No other remedy in the Materia Medica centres so in the mammary gland. Mercury is similar; when the patient takes cold the glands become sore. If every tribulation makes the glands sore in a nursing woman, give her Phytolacca.
When a mother says she has no milk, or that the milk is scanty, thick, unhealthy; dries up soon; Phytolacca becomes then a constitutional remedy if there are no contra-indicating symptoms. A bloody watery discharge which continued for five years after weaning the infant was cured by Phyto. The breast is so sore that, when she nurses the child, she almost goes into spasms, with the pain extending down the back and limbs all over the body.
Diphtheria. In certain epidemics; great tumefaction of the throat; swelling of the glands of the neck, parotid and sub maxillary; aching in the bones; fetor from the mouth, with heavily coated tongue; great aching in the back; nose bleed; soreness of the muscles.
Analogous to Mercurius; they are closely related in diphtheria. At times in diphtheria we can only obtain the fetor, loaded tongue, exudation, swollen glands and stiff neck.
This looks like Mercurius or one of the Mercuries. The Protoiodide is right sided, and stays there or may go to the left side. The Biniodide goes from left to right. The Merc. cyanide has a thick, green membranous cast, extending from the nose to the throat. In Phytolacca we have many features of Mercury.
It has cured syphilitic nodes on the skull and shin bones.
Skin: Many eruptions.
"Squamous eruptions; Pityriasis, psoriasis."
"Ringworm."
"Barber's itch."
"Rash on body; measles; scarlet eruptions all over the body."
It is not surprising that it cures scarlatina, as it has this scarlet rash, the sore throat and glandular involvement.
It has the ability to delay the formation of malignant growths, especially in the breast; glandular tumors that become hard and scirrhous. Until this remedy was known there was but one remedy for the old cicatrices in the mammary gland. Women who were confined years before, had abscesses of the breast which were poulticed and lanced had a cicatrix left, and now in the present confinement they have trouble; inflammation in the old cicatrices; ulceration which eats off the lacteal glands or turns the ducts aside and twists them; high inflammation - throbbing and pain; milk bloody.
Graphites was the old routine remedy, but Phytolacca, is a better remedy and suits the general concomitants oftener. The symptoms usually found in an inflamed breast after confinement are: aching in the back and bone pains; fever and shivering.
Phytolacca has these and falls into the very nature of the case. Graphites has it only in a limited way. if there is high fever; congestion to the head; throbbing carotids; much redness, and the redness radiates from the nipple, Belladonna is the remedy.
When the entire gland is as heavy as a stone, and hard, and the patient is sensitive to motion and touch, Bryonia. Mercury when the general symptoms agree. Hepar and Silicea after suppuration is inevitable, especially when the only comfort is obtained from heat. Hepar when there is extreme pain and soreness, irritability and this relief from heat; it limits the extent of the suppuration and opens the part without pain.
Nose: The most distressing, lingering, inveterate, old catarrhs with destruction of the bones of the nose.
"Total obstruction of the nose: when riding, must breathe through the mouth."
"Coryza and cough, with redness of eyes and lachrymation; photophobia; feeling of sand in the eyes, with soreness and burning."
"Syphilitic ozaena, with bloody, sanious discharge and disease of bone."
"Noli me tangere and cancerous affections of nose."
It is somewhat like Graphites, in that it seeks out fissures in which to establish inflammation, induration and eruptions. Where the circulation is feeble it has the tendency to establish induration.
"Face sunken, pale, hippocratic; blue around eyes; yellowish complexion; looking blue and suffering .
Pains in bones of head and face at night."
"Swelling around left ear and side of face like erysipelas; thence over scalp; very painful."
"Lips everted and firm. Tetanus."
"Ulcers on lips."
"Parotid and sub maxillary glands swollen."
"Tongue thickly coated on back; coated yellow and dry."
This is found in all acute complaints and is like Mercury. Phytolacca holds a reputation among the Eclectics, and in their results we see a shadow of its homeopathic action. In Cincinnati they used three drops in a tumbler of water and gave it for ulcers in the mouth. It was a standard remedy with them and they made some homoeopathic cures.
"Ulcerated sore mouth."
Syphilitic ulcers find a curative remedy in Phytolacca, when the symptoms agree.
Throat: There are several pages in the Guiding Symptoms showing homeopathic cures of the throat; diphtheria; sore throat; inflamed glands; aching bones worse at night, violent cases, with difficult swallowing, pains in the tonsils; enlarged tonsils; tendency to slough. Syphilitic and mercurial sore throats. The sore throats are often aggravated from warm drinks; he wants cool things; and there is an aggravation at night.
Here is a summary:
"Diphtheria; sick and dizzy when trying to sit up; frontal headache; pains shooting from throat into ears, especially on trying to swallow; face flushed; tongue much coated, protruded; thickly coated at back, fiery red at tip; breath foetid; putrid; vomiting; difficulty of swallowing; tonsils swollen, covered with membrane, first upon left; three or four patches; tonsils, uvula and back part of throat covered with ash-colored exudation. Pain in the root 'of the tongue on putting out."
Pains: Old gout and rheumatism of the limbs; in acute rheumatism which is prolonged, worse at night, worse from the warmth of the bed, worse from warm applications.
Gouty rheumatism; syphilitic cases; pains as if in the bones.
"Sharp cutting pains in hip, drawing; legs drawn up; cannot touch floor."
"Syphilitic or gonorrheal sciatica, etc."
"Ulcers and nodes on the legs."
A certain class of physicians used to call Podophyllum "vegetable Mercury."
Phytolacca ought to be called "vegetable Mercury" because it is so full of symptoms analogous to Mercury.
by James Tyler Kent