Podophyllum
Natural History.
May-apple
General.
Is especially adapted to persons of bilious temperament. It affects chiefly the DUODENUM, small intestines, liver, and RECTUM. The Podophyllum disease is a gastroenteritis 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 hemorrhoids, hypo-gastric 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 DIARRHOEA. ROLLING OF HEAD FROM SIDE TO SIDE, with 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. Diarrhoea 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 diarrhoea when not due to venous stasis or intestinal ulceration. Green, water, FETID, PROFUSE, gushing. PROLAPSE OF RECTUM before or with stool. Constipation; clay-colored, hard, dry, difficult. Constipation alternating with diarrhoea. (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. Hemorrhoids, with prolapsus ani during pregnancy. Prolapsus from over-lifting or straining; 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.
Chills at seven AM, with pain in hypochondria, and knees, ankles, wrists. GREAT LOQUACITY during fever. Profuse sweat.
Aggravation.
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-heal – (Colitis).
Dose.
Tincture to sixth potency. The 200th and 1000th seem to do good work in cholera infantum, when indicated.