PODOPHYLLINUM May-apple (PODOPHYLLUM)

Is especially adapted to persons of bilious temperament. It affects chiefly the duodenum, small intestines, liver, and rectum The Podophyllum disease is a gastro-enteritis with colicky pain and bilious vomiting. Stool is watery with jelly-like mucus, painless, profuse. Gushing and offensive. Many troubles during pregnancy; pendulous abdomen after confinement; prolapsus uteri; painless cholera morbus. Torpidity of the liver; portal engorgement with a tendency to hæmorrhoids, hypogastric pain, fullness of superficial veins, jaundice.

Mind.--Loquacity and delirium from eating acid fruits. Depression of spirits.

Head.--Vertigo, with tendency to fall forward. Headache, dull pressure, worse morning, with heated face and bitter taste; alternating with diarrhœa. Rolling of head from side to side, moaning and vomiting and eyelids half closed. Child perspires on head during sleep.

Mouth.--Grinding the teeth at night; intense desire to press the gums together (Phytol). Difficult dentition. Tongue broad, large, moist. Foul, putrid taste. Burning sensation of tongue.

Stomach.--Hot, sour belching; nausea and vomiting. Thirst for large quantities of cold water (Bry). Vomiting of hot, frothy mucus. Heartburn; gagging or empty retching. Vomiting of milk.

Abdomen.--Distended; heat and emptiness. Sensation of weakness or sinking. Can lie comfortably only on stomach. Liver region painful, better rubbing part. Rumbling and shifting of flatus in ascending colon.

Rectum.--Cholera infantum and morbus. Diarrhœa of long standing; early in morning; during teething, with hot, glowing cheeks while being bathed or washed; in hot weather after acid fruits. Morning, painless diarrhœa when not due to venous stasis or intestinal ulceration. Green, watery, fetid, profuse, gushing. Prolapse of rectum before or with stool. Constipation; clay-colored, hard, dry, difficult. Constipation alternating with diarrhœa (Ant crud). Internal and external piles.

Female.--Pain in uterus and right ovary, with shifting noises along ascending colon. Suppressed menses, with pelvic tenesmus. Prolapsed uteri, especially after parturition. Hæmorrhoids, with prolapsus ani during pregnancy.

Extremities.--Pain between shoulders, under right scapula, in loins and lumbar region. Pain in right inguinal region; shoots down inner thigh to knees. Paralytic weakness on left side.

Fever.--Chill at 7 am, with pain in hypochondria, and knees, ankles, wrists, Great loquacity during fever. Profuse sweat.

Modalities.--Worse, in early morning, in hot weather, during dentition.

Relationship.--Compare: Mandragora-also called mandrake--(must not be confounded with Podoph. Great desire for sleep; exaggeration of sounds and enlarged vision. Bowels inactive; stools large, white and hard). Aloe; Chelid; Merc; Nux; Sulph. Prunella-Self-head--(Colitis).

Dose.--Tincture to sixth potency. The 200th and 1000th seem to do good work in cholera infantum, when indicated.