Guaiacum

Guajacum was first introduced into Europe by the Spaniards in the year 1508, from the AVest Indies, and was supposed to be a per- fect specific for syphilis. It became so celebrated in this capacity that it was sjld at the rate of seven gold crowns per pound.

The Guajac tree, from which this resin is derived, is a native of the West Indies, and grows to the height of from thirty to forty feet, and near a foot in diameter. The wood is hard and ponderous, of a dark olive-brown within, and whitish toward the hark, having

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a peculiar, acrid scent and well-known in trade by the name of lignum vitas. It is used for making block-sheaves, wooden pulleys, and other articles, for which it is peculiarly fitted by its extraordinary hardness and toughness. The gum resin is obtained from the wood in four different ways: 1. By exudation; 2.

Jagging; 3. Heating billets previously perforated ; and 4. By boiling chips. The resin is a brownish-red substance, becoming greenish by exposure to the light; brittle, presenting a splintery, vitreous fracture, and some- what translucent.

It has a faintly-bitter sweetish taste, followed by a pricking in the back of the throat. We' may use this drug either in the form of triturations or in tincture form.

Guajacum is peculiarly adapted to arthritic and rheumatic affec- tions. A large dose of guajacum causos dryness of the mouth, sensation of heat at the stomach, nausea, loss of appetite, and a re- laxed condition of the bowels ; it also produces, in some cases, great perspiration, and even mild ptyalism. It may also cause headache. Pearson noticed that its continued use occasioned heartburn, flatu- lence and costiveness.

If these symptoms should be present in a case of arthritic rheumatism of the extremities, or even in rheumatic or arthritic irritation of the stomach or bowels, they would indicate the use of guajacum.

MERCURIAL RHEUMATISM.— In mercurial rheumatism and bone-pains, guajacum may prove valuable.

ARTHRITIC RHEUMATISM.— It is certainly homoeopathic to arthritic rheumatism characterized by lancinating stitches in the extremities, darting pain from the feet upward toward the knees.

In his Letters on Homoeopathy, Attomyr relates a case of rheum- atism, where a small dose of guajacum seems to have effected a very remarkable cure.

A robust young woman, twenty-three years old, took cold. Soon after, she expe- rienced violent stitches on the outer side of the right calf, which gradually affected that whole side of the body ; the affected parts were hot, the pain was tearing and stitching, and lasted so steadily that the patient had no rest day or night. In seven weeks she dwindled clown to a skeleton. In the meanwhile, a cough, with copious expectoration of fetid pus, had supervened.

She loathed all kinds of food. Early every morning, she was attacked with nausea, vomited a quantity of watery mucus, and sank back upon her couch quite exhausted. The leg was very much swollen, drawn to the thigh, and had become almost rigid. The tibia and tarsal bones seemed swollen.

Pulse soft, small, very much accelerated. Skin hot, especially in the palms of the hands; tongue coated brown; spirits depressed. This condition had gradually supervened under the ordinary allceopathic treatment. Schellhammer was called, who gave her a drop of the millionth part of guajacum; two doses of this drug cured this pulmonary phthisis, this hectic fever, this contraction of the knee- joint, these violent pains, and enabled the patient, within a period of three weeks, to walk about again as before, in a state of robust health, save a little weakness in the knee-joint where a horde of leeches had been sucking her blood.

154 GUMMI GTJ1TJE.

The rheumatism to which guajacum is homoeopathic, is of the neuralgic order. Hahnemann has instituted a short proving of this drug which has yielded a few symptoms confirming homoeopathicity to rheumatism. They read as follows : rheumatic stiffness in the left side of the nape of the neck, and in the left side of the back down to the small of the back ; there was no pain when the parts were kept in a state of perfect rest, nor did contact cause any pain ; but when the parts were moved or turned ever so little, the pain was intense.

Prickings in the glutei muscles, as if she were sitting on pins ; this pain is sometimes felt in walking. Tingling in the upper and lower extremities. Lancinating stitches between the tibia and fibula, toward the knee.

Guajacum may induce serious inflammatory symptoms in the larynx and trachea. Two persons swallowed by mistake a decoction of six ounces of Guajac wood in the evening before bed-time. Two hours after, they were attacked with a violent, spasmodic, inflam- matory affection of the wind-pipe, particularly of the larynx, accom- panied with violent palpitation of the heart ; the patients came near dying of suffocation, and were accidentally found in this condition before help came too late.

LARYNGITIS AND TKAOHEITIS.— This observation may be made available in the treatment of laryngitis and tracheitis, when this affection develops itself suddenly in consequence of a metastatic shifting of the inflammation from some external part, more par- ticularly from the lower extremities, to the respiratory organs. The presence of palpitation of the heart furnishes an additional indica- tion in such a metastatic rheumatic inflammation. In

CHRONIC PULMONARY CATARRH, especially in the case of gouty subjects, it sometimes manifests a curative action.