Sarracenia Purpurea

The use of the Pitcher Plant in small-pox is a discovery of the Indians of North

America, the spotted appearance of the plant probably suggesting a resemblance to the disease.

Hale has collected much confirmatory evidence of its power to antidote the small-pox poison. A

proving by T. C. Duncan, Thomas, and others brought out symptoms of fever, backache,

headache, and gastric disturbance. Hering quotes these instances of its action: (/) A woman far

advanced in pregnancy was cured of small-pox with Sarr. 3, 6, and 9, delivery being happily

accomplished during her convalescence, the infant bearing on its body numerous red blotches,

indicating that it had been affected with the disease. (2) An infant a few months old was attacked

with a grave form of small-pox, with variolous angina so severe that it was with difficulty it

could take the breast; the mother took Sarr. 3, 6, and 9, and continued to nurse the infant, which

promptly recovered, the mother not taking the disease. (3) In an epidemic occurring in the

environs of Wavre, Sarr. was given to two thousand persons living in the very middle of the

disease and coming in constant intercourse with it, but all who took Sarr. escaped; during the

same epidemic two hundred cases were treated with Sarr. without a death. Bilden, who used the

1x tincture in an epidemic with success, concludes that Sarr. is to small-pox what Gels. is to

• ▸bilious fever.
• ▸Hale quotes Surgeon-Major C.
• ▸G.
• ▸Logie's (allopath) account of his experience with

Sarr. (decoction probably) in small-pox: "Four of the cases in my hospital have been severe

confluent cases. They have throughout the disease all been perfectly sensible, have had excellent

appetites, been free from pain, and have never felt weak. The effects of this medicine, which I

have carefully watched, seemed to arrest the development of the pustules, killing, as it were, the

virus from within, thereby changing the character of the disease and doing away with pitting." A

number of eye symptoms appeared in the provings, and Sarr. has cured disordered vision. A case

of "phlyctenoid herpes" has also been reported cured by it. Extreme lassitude and pains in the

bones were prominent in the provings. The right side was more affected than the left. Sensations

• ▸were: Light feeling in head.
• ▸As if he received a knock on the head.
• ▸As if head were split.
• ▸Left eye

as if congested. Heat in face as if on fire. Swelling in womb as if from a tumour or dropsy.

• ▸Uterus swollen as if full of cysts.
• ▸As if bones of leg were too thick.
• ▸Sarr.
• ▸has the empty, hungry,

sinking sensation of the antipsorics. Dryness of mouth and throat. Weak feeling in the arms.

• ▸Very sensitive to cold air.
• ▸Faint after stool.
• ▸There is vesical and rectal tenesmus.
• ▸Stool smells of

• ▸musk.
• ▸The symptoms were < about midnight and at 3 p.
• ▸m.
• ▸< Morning.
• ▸< Rising from lying.
• ▸<

Trying to walk. < In stormy weather. Open air = chilliness, hands and feet cold; = head to be hot

and sore, and feet full. Cold air = to feel chilly and < bone pains. Symptoms generally > in fresh

air; and > out of bed.

Melancholia, anxious about everything. —Great depression of spirits with frontal

headache.—Brain clearer, buoyant spirits —Dulness of head, loss of memory, insensibility of r.

side; paralysis of hearing and smell.—Want of memory with the headache.—Difficult to

concentrate attention, forgetful; feels dull and heavy; sweats freely.—Alternate apathy and

intellectual activity.

Debility; heavy, languid.—Dull, heavy, sore feeling in all

bones.—Phlegmonous swelling, with a rosy tint on various parts.—Unrefreshed though slept

soundly.

Head feels dull and heavy.—Feels light-headed.—Vertigo: with cramps in neck,

spreading to forehead; < night; sensation as if he had received a knock on the head, stupor and

staggering gait; obliged to support himself or lie down; with drowsiness in head and contractions

in spinal column.—Frontal headache, low-spirited.—Headache: dull at cranial region; severe in

afternoon; with chills, nausea, vomiting, dim sight, surring in ears.—Pulsations and burning heat

of head, with sensation as if it would split—Head hot and aches.—Head and body warm.—Frontal

bone sore.—Pruritus and heat of scalp.

• ▸Photophobia.
• ▸Eyes feel swollen and sore.
• ▸Pain in orbits.
• ▸Black objects move with the eye.

Eyes weak.—Dim sight, headache.—Gas flame seems a brilliant yellow ring; sees black

• ▸objects moving with the eye.
• ▸—Great photophobia.
• ▸—Soreness of r.
• ▸optic nerve, just behind

• ▸eyeball.
• ▸—Pain in 1.
• ▸eye as if congested, on waking.
• ▸—Eyes feel swollen and sore.
• ▸—Eyes and lids

inflamed.—Increased mucous secretion.—Cutting, penetrating pains in orbits.

Surring in ears.—Sticking pains deep in r. ear; transient but recurring often; same in 1.

ear.—Intense earache; fears he will lose his senses.—Swelling of parotids.

Fetid smell.—Epistaxis nearly producing fainting —Fluent coryza with cold chills and

loss of smell.—Foul-smelling, green, yellowish, or bloody discharges.—Nose swollen, red, with

pressure and pulsation at root.

Face flushed.—Heat and redness of face.—Face pale, with heat and chill

alternating —Erysipelatous swelling of face—Miliary eruption on face, with heat as if it were on

fire—Scaly herpes on face and forehead.—Intense neuralgic pains from temples to jaws.

Tongue: dry; coated brownish white—Mouth dry; lips and mouth

parched.—Toothache at night in bed; from least contact, and cold air.

Throat dry, not > by tea or water; borborygmi.

10. Appetite——Hungry all the time, even after a meal——Appetite unusually active, but there was a

sense of pain about the stomach like that after inflammation or of overtaxed muscle.—Little

appetite, but what is eaten agrees.—Great desire to sleep during eating.

Hungry all the time, even after a meal. Sleepy during meals. Copious, painful vomiting.

Empty, hungry feeling; for he can keep nothing in his stomach.—Burning pains in

stomach with palpitations and contraction.—Pinching pain in stomach, it feels distended and torn.

After going to bed whole abdominal region was in commotion, extending along

ascending, and descending colon, all in a kind of rolling motion; epigastrium sensitive to

pressure.—Transient pains in bowels.—Bloated about navel—Borborygmi and some pain in

bowels with constipation; dry throat.

Much flatus.—First part of stool natural, last diarrhoeic.—Much tenesmus;

dysenteric diarrhcea.—Stool at first costive, thin, dark, offensive, soluble.—Costive; stools very

hard, covered with mucus, and dark.—Stool copious, dark, fetid, evacuated with great straining,

morning.—Rectum and anus swollen and inflamed.—Morning diarrhoea; faint after stool, which is

dark, often mixed with blood, foul smelling, or smelling of musk; bloatedness with colic.

Awoke 3 a.m. with urging to urinate; bladder so full it overcame

• ▸resistance of sphincter and dribbled away.
• ▸—Voided 27 ounces of urine of sp.
• ▸gr.
• ▸1024; vesical

tenesmus.—Urine phosphatic.—Urine scanty, limpid.

Watery or milky leucorrhcea, foul-smelling, with spasmodic pains

in uterus; pulsative pains in womb with swelling as if from a tumour or dropsy; uterus swollen as

if full of cysts, esp. r. side; cervix swollen, hot; miliary eruption and heat in vulva; bloody

discharge at other times than menstrual period, as during climaxis.

Phthisis pulmonalis and bronchial affections, joined to or depending

on a psoric state; hemoptysis, thick cough; continual tickling in larynx and bronchi; cough with

desire to vomit, and vomiting, paroxysms of suffocation and epistaxis; hard cough, shaking chest

and bowels, and stopping only after expectorating a quantity of compact mucus, tenacious,

filamentary, with a bitter, putrid, oily taste.

Pains in third and fourth ribs, with great apprehension of heart disease.—Pain in

angle of ribs.—Soreness of pectoralis major.

Feeling of congestion about head, with irregularity of heart's action.—Congestion to

chest, heavy feeling about heart—Slight palpitation in morning.—Pulse: full and strong; 68,

general malaise; small; quick.

Pains shooting in zig-zag course from lumbar region to middle of scapula.

A pain up r. trapezius muscle with wave-like motion.—Warm sensation

passed up back into head —Weak between and below shoulders.—Back weak, wants to lean on

something.—Arms and back tired and sore all over—Deep-seated pain in back.—Fixed pains in

• ▸small of back.
• ▸—Heat in whole r.
• ▸lumbar region.
• ▸—Pain in cervical and lumbar vertebree.
• ▸—Pain and

soreness in sacrum.

• ▸Paroxysms of pain in r.
• ▸shoulder.
• ▸—Joint, pain in |.
• ▸carpus and tarsus; face

flushed.—Arms feel weak.—Bruised feeling from shoulders to hands——Aching, sore pain in I.

humerus.—Bones in both arms pain.

Pain in hip-joints < rising to feet from a lying posture.—Paroxysms of

weakness in coxo-femoral joint, with pains of luxation and fear of failing when beginning to

walk.—Strange lameness in femur, lower third, < in inner condyle.—Pain in condyles of

femur.—Wave-like motion in muscles of femur.—Sensation of fatigue in bones of leg as if they

• ▸were too thick.
• ▸—Bruised and luxated feeling in joints.
• ▸—Pain in r.
• ▸patella and metatarsal

bones.—Knees feel weak.—Bruised pain in knees as after a fall; he falls easily on his

knees.—Bone pains in tibia and fibula; intermittent, but bones continually sore—Bones of feet

inflamed, nodes as in gout.

Limbs weak; bruised pain in knees and hip-joints. Bones in arm pain. Weak between shoulders.

Variola, aborts the disease, arrests pustulation.

• ▸Phlyctenoid herpes.
• ▸—Psoriasis.
• ▸—Scrofulous eruptions.
• ▸—Variola; (the decoction taken

when eruption is out and beginning to pustulate aborts secondary fever and prevents

pitting).—Eruption out, pustules dissipate, first on face, fever lessens, urine though scanty and

dark becomes abundant and pale, strength returns.—Eruptions similar to crusta lactea; on

forehead and hands papular eruptions, changing to vesicular, with the depression as in small-pox

lasting from seven to eight days.

Sleepy in daytime; sleep disturbed by strange and frightful dreams.—Awakes early:

3, 4, or 5; in a fright; with urging to urinate.

Feverish and shaking chills, < morning.—General chills between shoulder-

• ▸blades.
• ▸—Chills, heat, and sweat, 5 p.
• ▸m.
• ▸—At 2 p.
• ▸m.
• ▸very chilly in open air.
• ▸—Skin hot and

• ▸dry.
• ▸—Hands hot, warm all over.
• ▸—Head and body warm.
• ▸—Perspires freely (Sth, 8th, 9th d.
• ▸);

although weather still warm, and actively employed, sweat not as free as while taking the drug

(11th d.).

• ▸Back, pains in.
• ▸Bones, pains in.
• ▸Borborygmus.
• ▸Constipation.
• ▸Coxalgia.
• ▸Diarrhcea.

• ▸Eruptions, scrofulous.
• ▸Femur, pains in.
• ▸Herpes.
• ▸Influenza.
• ▸Lumbago.
• ▸Psoriasis.
• ▸Small-pox

Vision, disordered.

• ▸Antidoted by: Podoph.
• ▸Compare: In small-pox, Ant.
• ▸t.
• ▸, Merc.
• ▸, Vaccin.
• ▸, Variol.
• ▸,

Maland. In bone pains, Eup. perf.

Compare: Tartar em; Variol; Maland.

Third to sixth potency.

Limbs cold when still, as from deficient circulation.—Limbs easily

benumbed.—Weakness of limbs with paralytic debility —Pains and soreness in diaphyses of all

• ▸long bones; < humerus, esp.
• ▸1.
• ▸—Pain in |.
• ▸carpus and tarsus.