Berberis Aquifolium

• ▸Berb.
• ▸aqui.
• ▸belongs to the Mahonia group of the Barberry family.
• ▸It has been

used by eclectics in chronic syphilis, chronic skin diseases, in scrofulous cachexia, and for

removing pimples from the faces of girls. Hale reports a case of very advanced secondary

syphilis cured with it, and some characteristic cases of psoriasis. In all these conditions it has

• ▸been given in the @ tincture 5 to 10 drops.
• ▸J.
• ▸D.
• ▸W.
• ▸C.
• ▸, in Recorder, 1896, gives personal

experiences with doses of 10 to 15 drops a day. On the third day felt "nausea and thick-

headedness." Later there was "straining to vomit without vomiting." Then a peculiar headache,

strong compression, as if a band of iron two inches wide passed entirely round head just above

ears. It kept growing tighter and tighter. Strong black coffee relieved this after a time, but left

• ▸him tremulous in nerves and unsteady in gait.
• ▸Ever after that a single drop of Berb.
• ▸aq.
• ▸on the

tongue was sufficient to avert an attack of biliousness when threatening, and saved him much

• ▸trouble of the kind to which he had formerly been liable.
• ▸Berb.
• ▸aq.
• ▸has a reputation for making "a

• ▸new man of an old one.
• ▸" A tea made of the leaves of Berb.
• ▸mahon.
• ▸has a local reputation in the

mountain typhoid of the Rockies, and the provings of Berb. aq. show febrile symptoms and a

marked action on the spleen. A systematic proving was made under Winterburn's direction. I

have verified its usefulness in secondary, syphilis.

Unhappiness and depression; sometimes coming on suddenly.—Hysterical crying at

frequent intervals.—Nervous, restless —Disinclined to move or do anything; dull,

stupidity.—Drowsy in daytime.—Nausea and thick-headedness.

Weak, tired feeling, better for exercise.—Tremulous in nerves, unsteady in

gait.

• ▸Sensation of a band just above ears.
• ▸Bilious headache.
• ▸"Scald head".
• ▸Scaly eczema.

• ▸Dizzy sensation < sleeping or moving.
• ▸—Pain r.
• ▸side pressing like a weight.
• ▸—Pain r.

temple running down into teeth; pains transitory and recurring.—Pain like iron band completely

surrounding head above ears, with gradually increasing compression.

Conjunctiva injected.—Sensation of film before eyes.—Eyes look hollow and weak as if

tired; burning feeling and aching as from strain——Weak feeling in eyes lasting a long time.

Stuffy feeling, with discharge of greenish-yellow mucus.—Itching within nose with

desire to sneeze.

Acne. Blotches and pimples. Clears the complexion.

Blotches and pimples on face —Yellow skin.—Waxy, yellowish white.—Flashes of heat

to cheeks.—Pinched expression.

Bilious taste after eating.—Tongue thickly coated, yellow-brown or pasty

white. —Tongue feels as if, or actually is blistered.—Soreness in lower teeth and salivary glands.

Tongue thickly coated, yellowish-brown; feels blistered. Burning in stomach. Nausea and hunger after eating.

Hunger, even soon after eating, without desire for food.—Sudden nausea after

• ▸eating.
• ▸—Burning in stomach and borborygmi.
• ▸—Cramps, and no appetite (2nd week).
• ▸—Nausea

and severe straining to vomit (occurred when fasting).

Uneasy feeling without desire for stool.—Pain in hypogastrium.—Biliousness and

waxy jaundiced hue.—Intense burning in spleen and feeling as if pounded.—Distressing soreness

in spleen.

Large, free, dark stools.—Hot bilious diarrhoea.—A fter looseness, light-

coloured, varnished, constipated stools —Stools too large and expelled with difficulty.

Stitching, crampy pains; thick mucus, and bright-red, mealy sediment.

Slight burning in vagina, bearing-down pains and aching as, if

menses about to come on.

Bilious cold: throat choked with mucus, voice rough and somewhat

hoarse, expectoration yellow and then greenish.—Voice seemed cut off as if a damper had

• ▸closed.
• ▸—Lack of timbre in voice.
• ▸—Dry, irritative cough.
• ▸—Scanty, tenacious, blood-streaked

expectoration.

Oppression and weakness of upper part of chest.—Burning heat in lower I.

lung.—(Accelerated pulse and heightened temperature vividly suggest phthisis pulmonalis.)

• ▸Pimply, dry, rough, scaly.
• ▸Eruption on scalp extending to face and neck.
• ▸Tumor of breast, with pain.
• ▸Psoriasis.
• ▸Acne.
• ▸Dry eczema.
• ▸Pruritus.
• ▸Glandular induration.

Diurnal rise of temperature and pulse.—Flashes of heat and burning of

palms.—Flashes of heat to cheeks.

• ▸Biliousness.
• ▸Bronchorrhoea.
• ▸Eczema.
• ▸Face, roughness of.
• ▸Headache.
• ▸Herpes.

• ▸Leucorrheea.
• ▸Pityriasis.
• ▸Psoriasis.
• ▸Spleen, affections of.
• ▸Stomatitis.
• ▸Syphilis.
• ▸Typhoid.
• ▸Voice,

affections of.

Carbol acid; Euonym; Berb vulg; Hydr.

Tincture in rather material doses.

When we have finished the study of Berberis we will see that it is

not a very extensive remedy, but it is a very important one. Like

Benzoic acid, it fits into the gouty and rheumatic sphere. It corresponds to such gouty conditions as do not determine to their proper

places. A low state of the economy is present ; anaemic condition ;

feeble constitution ; pallid and sickly, old and worn out ; prematurely

old and wrinkled men and women. They are too feeble to determine

the gouty deposits to the finger joints, where they naturally belong,

and the trouble is yet, as it were, wandering around through the

economy Wandering pains in the nerves, and nerve sheaths. The

wandering, stitching, tearing, twinging pains that run through Berberis

are found in old gouty constitutions, and that is where we get the

greatest benefit from Berberis. Its proving would lead us to see it

is similar to the wandering, t\»^inging and tearing pains of old gouty

constitutions, in persons wdio are pallid, and sickly, and chilly, where

the deposits have not been so marked in the joints ; but where the

twinging in the fingers and in the toes are just such as are found

where the deposits do exist. Of course in all of the gouty states we

must look to the liver and kidneys for pains and various distresses ;

they are centers of observation, because these organs are more or less

disturbed. And very often cardiac troubles go along with them. The

kidneys, liver, and heart are more or less disturbed in their functions

and we see that Berberis takes hold of these organs. We have the

uraemic state, and the state of disorder that ends in these conditions.

We will have twinging pains along with kidney disturbances.

Irregularities of the urine. Copious discharges, alternating with

scanty discharges. Light urine, and heavy urine, excessive deposits

of uric acid and urates. It is changeable, like Benzoic acid. These two

remedies run very much together, yet their symptoms arc wholly

unlike. We find among these sensations that stitching pains are

found in almost every region of the body, and they are all the time

changing. Wandering and stitching pains ; little twinges. As you

sit by his side and talk to a gouty patient— “Ow,” he will say. What

J&ERBZRIS

does he mean by it ? He has had one of those twitching pains. The

next thing he knows it is in his knee ; then it is in his toes ; then it is in

his head, all over him. Finally the gouty deposits become prominent

in the fingers, and after the gout has determined itself, then we have

sore fingers ; but these corresponds more particularly to Ledum, Sulphur,

AlscuIus and Lycopodium, where the disease has become marked and

has located in the joints. In Berbeiis these twinging, tearing, stitching, burning pains are everywhere, they never remain in one place,

but are always moving, and they are not often affected by motion.

Whether he moves, or keeps still, they keep coming. In a few instances we have pains aggravated by motion, but a very few^ in proportion to the many pains in Berberis. He moves many times, because

he cannot keep still. He moves, because he suffers. There arc also

many pressing pains. But the burning, stinging, tearing, stitching,

wandering pains are the main feature, the grand feature of Berberis.

If you single them out in places, in a given joint, from that one joint

they will radiate in every direction. It it is the knee joint, they will

go up ; and down, and every way ; if it is the finger joint, they will

run in every direction. If it is the kidney, they will go down the

ureters ; if it is the liver, they will go down into the abdomen in every

direction. ‘‘Radiating from a particular point,' is a distinguishing

feature, and it puts Berberis almost alone for radiating pains. This is

such a strong feature that Berberis has cured renal colic in many instances because of its well kooivn ability to shoot out in every direction. It cures gall-stone colit when these little twinges go in every

direction from that locality* We see these twinging, shooting pains

in gouty constitutions are associated with urinary troubles, and with liver

troubles, and we begin to lay a foundation for the study of Berberis,

The joints sometimes swell. “Enlargement of the joints,” But tlie

swelling is not so common as the pains without swelling. Soreness,

lameness in the joints, with these radiating pains. There will be burning, stitching, tearing, and the pains will radiate and appear in one part

of the body then in another. “A pain in the heel as if it were ulcerating," and then the pain shoots oft’ in every direction. Numbness.

Lameness.

As to the heart, the pulse becomes slow. Very often it is slowed

down astonishingly.

The mental symptoms are very defective, that is, we do not know

the mental symptoms. There are a few. We know this, that the

mind is weak, that he is unable to sustain a mental effort, and that

• ▸he is forgetful.
• ▸“Defective recollection and weak memory.
• ▸Terrifying apparitions in ‘ twilight.
• ▸” It is not a strange thing for a child

in the dark to imagine all sorts of things, because they have heard

graveyard stories from old people ; but with this remedy between

BEHBEi^lS

b:22

the daylight and darkness he sees ghosts, imaginary forms coming

round him. It has melancholy, apathy, prostration of mmd. Some

dizziness. The headaches are of the same character as the general

pains in uraemic subjects, where there is plenty of sand in the uritte^

red pepper deposit. The head comes in for its share of these wandering pains. Stitching, tearing, twinging in the scalp ; in tlie skull ; in

the eyes, ears, back of the head. Burning pains. “A feeling in the

head as if it was becoming larger,'" is a peculiar symptom ; a puffy

sensation. Always putting the hand to the head ; it feels as if he had

on a skull-cap. It fits down over the brow, and it is not an uncommon

thing witli such patients to put the hand to the head to take off the

cap. ‘Teels as if he had a cap on the head,' when there is. none

there. This symptom is not alw^ays described like a cap on the head.

It is convertible into numbness of the scalp ; many patients describe a

sensation of numbness in the scalp, as if they had on a cap. Sometimes patients will deny that it is a sensation of numbness, and say

it is just a cap. At one time I fully believed the “cap" belonged to

two sensations. If it was painful I placed it under “pressure." If it

was not painful it was supposed to belong to “numbness but I have

now made a new rubric, “the sensation of skull-cap," which I now

think is entirely distinctive from numbness ; but they both have to

be compared.

Then the eyes take on that same gouty condition, wdth stitching,

tearing pains, twinging pains, shooting pains. Shooting off in various

directions. There is one grand feature about Berberis, that it has

no particular direction ; it has all directions. Most remedies have pains

taking a direction from one part to the other, pains going from the

eye to the temple, etc,, but in Beriberis it cannot be said the pains go

to any place in particular. They are wandering pains and they radiate.

Pains in the ears of the same character. In every part of the body we

have these twinging, tearing, burning, shooting pains coming and going, causing the patient to scowl and make a shaq) noise.

The patient has a sickly look ; face pale, earthy complexion, with

sunken cheeks and hollow, blue-cncirclcd eyes. That is a description

of a sick face. Berberis has been very useful in phthisical condiuons ;

and in the pains, and twinging, and sufferings in persons who have

been operated on for fistula in ano. When the fistula has been clpsed,

these pains will come if it is a Berberis case. The kidney manifestations will come on, or the liver manifestations, or the enfeebled heart,

or these wandering pains. At one time feverish, full of pains, with

violent thirst ; alternating with the very opposite state. Prostration

and' aversion to water. Want of appetite at one time ; canine hunger

at another. The stomach is disordered, digestion is slow and feeWe,

and we have manifestations usually known to patients, as “Bilious,"

aa3

Eructations that are bitter and of bile.

The liver is full of suffering. In the liver we have these pains, and

added to them sudden stabbing like a knife puncturing the liver.

Shooting, tearing, burning, stitching, twinging pains, wandering from

one place to another. “Gall-stone colic.’* These pains with jaundice.

The liver seems to slow down in its actions, and the patients becomes

jaundiced. The stool becomes white, bilelcss. “Sharp, pinching pains

in the liver, which come suddenly and with great severity. Violent

stabbing pain in the region of the liver, taking bis breath away. Had

to bend double.** These pains last a moment and pass away. In gallstone colic pains are spasmodic, increase in intensity and diminish,

but do not let up entirely. Berberis when it is indicated will let the

little gall-stone loose, and it will pass through, and the patient will

take a long breath and wish he had sent for the doctor sooner. Anything that is spasmodic can be relieved instantly.

Pains through the abdomen. Copious, thick, mushy stools, and these

• ▸are yellow, like yellow corn meal mush.
• ▸“Diarrhoea ; mush-Hke yellowish discharges.
• ▸** “Clay-coloured.
• ▸** From what we have seen it is not

surprising that it is clay-colored, that it is bilelcss, that it is white.

The action on the liver does that. When you have these symptoms

associated with radiating pains, and with wandering pains in broken

down constitutions, persons who are suffering from cold, who arc pallid

and sickly, you have a Berberis case.

Then the patient becomes cofistipatcd, but the stool is white, or very

light colored. “Burning, sting^g pain before, during, and after stool.^’

Enlargement of the prostate gUnd, which causes a constant pressure

in the perineum. Pressure as if there were a lump, or as if something was pressing down.** “Tearing extending around the anus.

Herpes around anus. Fistula in ano.’* Now the surgeons nearly all

advocate that if there is a fistulous opening around the anus it must

be operated upon. Homaeopathy cures such cases. I have not

operated on one for twenty years. The remedy that is indicated for

the patient will cure the patient, and the fistula. Above all things,

they should not be operated on. To close up that fistulous opening, and

thus neglect the patient, is a very dangerous thing to do. Knowing all

that I know, if such a trouble should come upon me and I could not

find the remedy to cure it I would bear with it patiently, knowing J

was keeping a much less grievance. Nor could I advise my patient to

have a thing done that I would not have done upon myself. It is a

dangerous thing to operate upon a fistula in ano. It is a very serious

matter. If it is closed up, and that patient is leaning towards phthisis,

he will develop phthisis ; if he has a tendency towards Bright’s disease,

that will hasten it ; if he threatens to break down in any direction, his

weakest patts will be affected, and he will break down. Occasionally

time enough elapses so that the physician who is ignorant does not see

the relation between the two. But now that you have heard it, you

tan never forget it.

And then the kidneys and the urinary organs come in for their

troubles. There is such a soreness in the lumbar region, in the region

of the kidneys, that he can bear no pressure. He cannot step down

from a carriage to the pavement without letting himself down very

carefully. A jar is a great shock to him, and sometimes the soreness

is so great that he almost faints. Soreness in the back ; in the muscles

of the back, and in the region of the kidneys ; and this associated with

all sorts of disturbances in the urine, with excessive deposits. The

kidneys radiate in every direction. Pains run up into the kidney, and

they become worn out if he does not get relief, he will have some

• ▸serious disease.
• ▸Hence we have these symptoms.
• ▸‘‘Burning and soreness in the region of the kidneys.
• ▸Burning stitches, single or several

in succession, in regions of loins and kidneys. Much pain, soreness and

tenderness in back, in the region of the kidneys. Sensitiveness in the

region of the kidneys so great that any jarring motion, riding in a

wagon, jumping from it, was intolerable. After kidney complaints, a

foul, bitter taste, rush of blood to the throat. Great urging, with pain

in the neck of the bladder, with burning, scanty urine. Violent, cutting,

tensive pain, deeply seated in left side of bladder, at last becoming a

sticking, obliquely in female urethra, as if in its orifice, lasting a few

minutes.^' Now we see how these symptoms manifest themselves. Sore,

inflamed, sensitive kidney, one or both. And then, the formation of

little calculi in the pelvis of the kidney — little stones like pinheads ; and

every now and then one of them lakes a start down the ureter to the

bladder, and, oh, how he suffers. Then it is that the pains in the

kidneys radiate in every direction. Pains run up into the kidney, and

down into the bladder. In the male they appear as if they ran down

the spermatic cord into the testes, and he is a great sufferer. You

will be astonished to know how quickly Berberis will relieve this

particular kind of renal colic. Burning pain in the bladder ; burning

pain in the kidney. “Urine dark, turbid with copious sediment. Urine

• ▸very slow to flow.
• ▸Constant urging.
• ▸’' The bladder becomes very irritable.
• ▸Catarrhal conditions of the bladder.
• ▸Smarting, burning, stitching pains.
• ▸Many troubles, pains and aches in the spermatic cord and

testes in gouty constitutions. Burning pains along these regions.

Berberis especially fits a woman who is tired, with a gouty constitution ; though not old in years she is physically tired, so that all

of her domestic affairs fret and tire her. Coition becomes painful, and

she has an aversion to it. The orgasm is delayed, or is entirely absent,

and she is prostrated by it. In all the affairs of her innermost life she

is a drudge. Full of twinging pains in all of her nerves. ‘"Burning in

Sense of numbness and feeling as if there was no strength of will to lift the

part.—When perfectly still, no pain; on movement, cramp (in legs), trembling and uncertainty of

motion and pain.—Pain severe as after a heavy blow.—Peculiar prickling as from electricity back

of hand and outside forearm, momentary but frequently returning and independent of

conditions.—Rheumatic tension and stiffness of legs.