Hypericum Perfoliatum

[PERFORATED ST. JOHN'S WORT. NATURAL ORDER, HYPERICINE^.]

This perennial is found in Europe, along the edges of woods, roads, in ditches. Its stem is erect, round, angular, set with small leaves, smooth, opposite, and perforated with a number of fine foramina. "We make a dark-purple tincture of the plant, shortly after it has done flowering.

Mr. Mueller has furnished a proving of this plant, which shows that hypericum irritates the nervous system and induces vascular erethism and congestion. It causes heaviness in the. head and a sensation as if the head were elongated ; it acts also upon the sexual organs of women, causing painful and scanty menstruation with a sensation of a tight bandage in the region of the uterus ; its effect upon the circulation is characterized by violent cerebral congestion, flushed, bloated face, with dilatation of the pupils, rapid pulse, changeable mood from singing to weeping with cries, thirst, white coating of the tongue and weakness and trembling of the limbs. In

NERVE TRAUMATISM hypericum is a most useful medi- cine ; hypericum is to the nervous tissue what arnica is to the mus- cular tissue ; hence its frequent use in the treatment of the severe pain which occasionally follows surgical operations, resulting from injury to some nerve or nerve filament.

Mrs. P ran a pin into her foot. It penetrated the lasting-top of her shoe.

After the first pain had subsided, she thought nothing more of the accident until the evening of the same day. While superintending supper, she was suddenly seized with intense pain at the site of the pin-prick. The toes became rigid, the ankle stiffened, chills chased each other down the back and then nausea and vomiting set in. The patient fainted.

After recovering consciousness she still complained of the agonizing pain. Her face exhibited a strange expression; the eyes were set and the lips drawn tightly across the teeth. Hypericum*000 was given, in water, at intervals of half an hour. The pain soon began to subside, but the rigidity continued for twenty-four hours.

(Dr. E. A. Farrington, in Medical Cotmselor, April, 1879.)

Mad. S., thrust a pin into the ring-finger of the right hand, near the first joint, wounding one of the phalangeal branches of the median or ulnar nerve ; the wound healed in a few days ; but neuralgic pains soon appeared, following the course of the radial and ulnar nerves to the elbow-joint ; they increased in severity, the fingers and hand became stiff and sensitive to motion, and ached almost constantly. These symptoms continued daily, without intermission, for six months of unsuscessful treat- ment.

Finally I was on the point of excising or dissecting out the offending nerves near the seat of the injury, when hypericum200 was given, which was followed, within four or five days, by a rapid diminution of the painful symptoms, and a week after, the patient was wholly relieved, and has remained so ever since, nearly four months ago. (Dr. G. W.

Pope in Horn. World, December, 1869.)

RHEUMATISM. — Hypericum may also be of use in rheumatism characterized by excessive painfulness of the affected parts, showing

VOL. II. — 12.

194 IGNATIA AMAEA.

the nerves to be involved. "Articular rheumatism, with great effusion around the joint and muddy urine, looking like the settlings of beer; bruised sensation in all the joints." (Lilienthal.)