Vipera Berus

The effects of bites by the Common Viper and related species have been

collected, and have furnished the data for Homceopathic prescribing. Vipera affects the blood

and blood-vessels, conducing to haemorrhage and inflammation of the vessels themselves. A

keynote for Vip. in cases of phlebitis and varicosis is "< on letting the limb affected hang down";

as if it would burst with fulness. The region of the vessel affected is inflamed and sensitive.

Allen (Handbook) relates this case: A goldbeater found the veins of his right arm become

exceedingly swollen and painful, so that he could no longer work, or Jet his hand hang down.

• ▸Vip.
• ▸cured immediately.
• ▸A case (quoted from Med.
• ▸Adv.
• ▸in Med.
• ▸Cent.
• ▸, ii.
• ▸79) of varicose vein of

the popliteal space, with the sensation as though the leg would burst, and a nervous, fidgety

condition of the feet which kept them in constant motion, was cured with Vip. torva 30. The

bursting feeling appears to be at the root of this characteristic. Swan said Vip. was a remedy for

all forms of epistaxis. Vip. has a chronic and periodic action; the symptoms return annually for

years. Patients resist the cold badly. The parts may be paralysed and ulcers and gangrene follow.

A Sensation as if something ran up the thigh occurred in the bitten limb in one case. In one case

• ▸there was sweat over the whole body except the bitten limb.
• ▸Leonard (M.
• ▸A.
• ▸, xxvi.
• ▸103) gave

Vipera acontica carinata (1) to a lady suffering from climacteric hemorrhage; flow red with

dark clots; excessive to prostration and faintness. She had a small uterine fibroid. A few doses

relieved, and the excessive hemorrhage did not return. (2) A lady nursing a child a year old was

much prostrated by hemorrhage lasting several weeks, not profuse, but continuous: Nose-bleed

• ▸nearly every day; weaning brought no relief.
• ▸Chi.
• ▸200 did no good.
• ▸Vip.
• ▸ac.
• ▸cm cured in three

doses. The symptoms are: < By touch; by pressure; on change of weather. < Letting limb or part

hang down.

Delirium; and raving; with vomiting; alternating with sopor—Coma, with thirst for

water.—Loss of mental functions with drawn features.

Persons become prematurely old; the development of children is

arrested.—Blood altered, tending to hemorrhages, coagulability lost; blood black.—Symptoms

periodic, return every year.—Persistent cedema with tendency to

• ▸ulcers.
• ▸—Faintness.
• ▸—Reeling.
• ▸—Prostration.
• ▸—Collapse—The bite was felt through the whole body

like a streak of lightning, she sank to the ground.—Bitten part seat of violent pain.—The swelling

was insensible.

Vertigo: with falling forward, with nose-bleed and anxiety; with nausea and vomiting,

so that he fainted; with loss of vision——Ecchymoses in membranes of brain, effusion of bloody

serum into ventricles.—Tearing at every change of weather, with sticking.—Headache: with

coated tongue and bad appetite; with inclination to sigh.

Eyes: dark yellow; red, inflamed, and watery; staring; sunken.—Pupils: dilated; 1.

• ▸dilated, r.
• ▸contracted.
• ▸—Paralysis of lids; dropped over eyes.
• ▸—Vision: dim; dim in I.
• ▸eye, lost in r.
• ▸;

lost.

• ▸Excessively swollen.
• ▸Lips and tongue swollen, livid, protruding.
• ▸Tongue dry, brown, black.
• ▸Speech difficult.

Face: swollen (and neck), with pressing out of eyes; tense and blackish, with closure of

throat; convulsed; red; pale and hippocratic, with cold sweat on forehead; covered with drops of

sweat.—Lips: blue; lips and tongue swollen, covered with saliva and pale; livid and

protruding.—Acid burning in lips, mouth, and throat.

• ▸Scorbutic line on gums.
• ▸—Sensation of swelling in the teeth (H.
• ▸W.
• ▸, xxviii.

25).—Swelling of salivary glands; of mouth; of mouth and throat, with dryness, so that

swallowing was impossible.—Tongue: swollen; and brownish-black, protruding; so that he could

not speak; with closed jaws and difficult speech.—Tongue: black; fuliginous and breath fetid;

yellow, tip red; white, tremulous; white in middle, moist on edges, with thirst.—Speech:

inarticulate; and thick; lost on account of weakness.

Swelling like a goitre—Closure of throat so that she could swallow only water and

milk, afterwards biting in fauces, the swelling of which became blackish.—Viscid mucus adheres

to pharynx.

Nausea: with shuddering; with attack of faintness—Retching; with suffocative

sensation.—Vomiting: after milk; of all food and drink; with weakness; faintness; shivering, and

thirst; coldness of body; with colic; with colic and thirst; bilious diarrhoea of bitter yellow fluid;

green substances; green liquid; viscid greenish fluid.—Pain: in epigastrium; < pressure; in

epigastric or umbilical region —Uneasiness in epigastrium.—Digestion slow.

Hypochondria tense; sore.—Abdomen tense, pressure causes distension of facial

muscles.—Swelling with raging pains and spasms even to faintness, and after drinking milk

vomiting of a mass of round worms, then freedom from worm troubles which he had

• ▸before.
• ▸—Sudden flatulent distension, with colic, pain in back, and vomiting.
• ▸—Rumbling.
• ▸—Pain in

abdomen; in umbilical region, < pressure.

Diarrhcea: frequent; bilious.—Fetid; and black.—Bloody stools; in masses

of dark, offensive blood (apparently from the tongue, which had been scarified).—Stools:

copious; numerous, with shivering, urging, and thirst; involuntary; and frequent, mixed with

blood and mucus; and involuntary micturition.—Discharge of black, coagulated blood; of blood

just before death.—Pain and tenesmus.—Urging to pass stool and urine; desire for stool, with

coldness to touch.—(After diarrhoea, greenish and bloody, most violent pain in the enlarged liver,

with jaundice and fever, pain extending from liver to shoulder and down to hip; Vipera

immediately removed the pain and reduced the liver to its normal size.)

• ▸Ineffectual desire.
• ▸—Strangury.
• ▸—Involuntary micturition.
• ▸—Urine:

increased; suppressed; dark yellow, as in jaundice.

Suffocation.—Dyspneea; with sticking in heart—Anxious breathing,

as in croup, threatening asphyxia.—Breathing ceased suddenly, heart stopped, face became livid,

&c., tracheotomy was performed, blood drawn from arm flowed scantily, was dark, mixed with

bright streaks.

Veins of chest and abdomen thick and hard.—Swelling of chest as far as umbilicus

• ▸after bite on face (Edema of lungs before death.
• ▸—Pain: in |.
• ▸side; over four or five r.
• ▸ribs on

pressure —Oppression, with anxiety; with violent efforts to breathe and swallow.

Sticking in heart; with cold sweat and faintness ——Pain in heart with

faintness —Dragging pain so that he tears his clothes, becomes faint.—Anxiety at same time for

four years, with soreness of the bitten foot and paralysis of r. arm.—Heart's action: slow; feeble;

and no pulsation in radial or carotid arteries, but that in crural was very strong. —Pulse: rapid;

interrupted; slow, febrile; irregular; weak.—( Vip. is a very valuable remedy for varicose veins

and for acute phlebitis, the vein is swollen, bordered by an area of inflammation, which is very

sensitive to touch, but particularly with the sensation, on letting the leg hang down, as if it would

• ▸burst from the fulness of the veins.
• ▸—Phlebitis of r.
• ▸arm, < hanging arms down.
• ▸)

Pain: in shoulders; in arm, extending to chest.—Arm swollen; livid red; red,

covered with spots; painful—Paralysis of r. arm recurring for years after, a bite on

foot—Swelling: of the hand not bitten; of hand, not pitting on pressure, with pain as if it would

burst, with pain on touch; and stiffness.—Hands violet-coloured, covered with

phlyctenules——Skin of hand dead and detached in large plates, subjacent tissues livid.—Stitches

in finger-tips after bite on arm.

Shuffling gait caused by paralysis.—Convulsive

• ▸movements.
• ▸—Cramps.
• ▸—Weakness.
• ▸—Feeling as if something moved up along thigh (after bite on

• ▸ankle).
• ▸—Tension in knees and ankles.
• ▸—Knees stiff.
• ▸—Leg swollen, cold, and insensible.
• ▸—Paralysis

of foot with shuffling gait —Paralysis, then ulcers.

Patient is obliged to keep the extremities elevated. When they are allowed to hang down, it seems as if they would burst, and the pain is unbearable (Diad).

Varicose veins and acute phlebitis. Veins swollen, sensitive; bursting pain. Severe cramps in lower extremities.

Livid. Skin peels in large plates. Lymphangioma, boils, carbuncles, with bursting sensation, relieved by elevating parts.

Skin: pale; yellowish; jaundiced on face and trunk, with red patches on limbs; livid; in

spots; black petechial spots over whole body, which was cold to touch.—Herpetic eruption, with

itching about the wound.—Roseola-like eruption on inside of arm and down side of

body.—Ulcers.—Blisters about the bite, bursting and leaving ulceration, muscles were laid bare,

were dark red, dry, looked like smoked meat, insensible to touch, the sore was

offensive.—Gangrene.—Crawling in soles, then also in palms.

Disposed to yawn.—Sleepiness; and heaviness; with inability to sleep, and also

almost constant necessity to change the position. —Sleeplessness; from pain.—Night restless.

Chilliness: with sweat; with cold sweat; with rigidity and clammy sweat; then

fever.—Temperature diminished, resists cold badly.—Heat: in morning, with thirst, restlessness,

and moderate pains; towards evening; at night, with delirium; then shivering —Fever of irregular

type; intermittent fever—Burning: running up arm; rising from heel to tongue; on chest and

abdomen, with longing for cold applications though skin was cold to touch; of fingers (from

rubbing a stick with which a snake had been bruised), with swelling —Sweat: after vomiting;

after chamomile tea, copious sweat from abdomen to toes except over the bitten limb; cold; cold,

clammy.—Skin dry.

• ▸Epistaxis.
• ▸Goitre.
• ▸Heemorrhages.
• ▸Jaundice.
• ▸Liver, enlargement of.
• ▸Neurasthenia.

• ▸Phlebitis.
• ▸Senility, premature.
• ▸Tongue, swelling of.
• ▸Varicosis.

Compare: Hemorrhage of fluid blood, Sanguisuga. < Hanging down limbs, Calc.,

• ▸Alm.
• ▸, Am.
• ▸c.
• ▸, Sbi.
• ▸, Thu.

• ▸Pelius berus-Adder (Prostration and fainting, faltering pulse, skin yellow, pain about navel.
• ▸Swelling of arm, tongue, right eye; giddiness, nervousness, faintness, sickness, compression of chest, could not breathe properly or take a deep breath; aching and stiffness of limbs, joints stiff, collapsed feeling, great thirst).
• ▸Eel serum (heart and kidney diseases.
• ▸Failure of compensation and impending asystole).

Twelfth potency.

Violent pain in enlarged liver, with jaundice and fever; extends to shoulder and hip.

Limbs swollen and red.—Livid spots on the bitten limb every year at the time of the

bite —Y ellowish, livid, mottled spots ——Trembling.—Pain in limbs: < touch; alternating with pains

in abdomen.—Limbs: benumbed: relaxed.—(Burning feeling in limbs in three

cases—neurasthenia, an old sprain, and varicose veins.)