VERATRUM ALBUM
White Hellebore
White Hellebore
A perfect picture of collapse, with extreme coldness, blueness, and weakness, is offered by this
drug. Post-operative shock with cold sweat on forehead, pale face, rapid, feeble pulse. Cold perspiration on the forehead, with nearly all complaints.
Vomiting, purging, and cramps in extremities. The profuse, violent retching and vomiting is most characteristic.
Surgical shock. Excessive dryness of all mucous surfaces. "Coprophagia"
violent mania alternates with silence and refusal to talk.
Mind.--Melancholy, with stupor and mania. Sits in a stupid
manner; notices nothing; Sullen indifference. Frenzy of
excitement; shrieks, curses. Puerperal mania. Aimless wandering from home. Delusions of impending misfortunes. Mania, with desire to cut
and tear things (Tarant). Attacks of pain, with delirium
driving to madness. Cursing, howling all night.
Head.--Contracted features. Cold
sweat on forehead. Sensation of a lump of ice on vertex. Headache, with nausea,
vomiting, diarrhea, pale face. Neck too weak to hold head up.
Eyes.--Surrounded by dark rings. Staring; turned upwards,
without luster. Lachrymation with redness. Lids dry heavy.
Face.--Features sunken. Icy coldness
of tip of nose and face. Nose grows more pointed. Tearing in cheeks, temples, and
eyes. Face very pale, blue, collapsed, cold.
Mouth.--Tongue pale, cold; cool sensation, as from peppermint.
Dry in center not relieved by water. Salty saliva. Toothache, teeth feel heavy as if filled
with lead.
Stomach.--Voracious
appetite. Thirst for cold water, but is vomited as soon as
swallowed. Averse to warm food. Hiccough. Copious
vomiting and nausea; aggravated by drinking and least motion. Craves fruit, juicy
and cold things, ice, salt. Anguish in pit of stomach. Great weakness after vomiting.
Gastric irritability with chronic vomiting of food.
Abdomen.--Sinking and empty feeling. Cold
feeling in stomach and abdomen. Pain in abdomen preceding stool. Cramps, knotting
abdomen and legs. Sensation as if hernia would protrude (Nux).
Abdomen sensitive to pressure, swollen with terrible colic.
Rectum.--Constipation from inactivity of rectum, with heat and
headache. Constipation of babies, and when produced by very cold weather. Stools large, with much straining until exhausted, with cold sweat.
Diarrhœa, very painful, watery, copious, and forcibly evacuated,
followed by great prostration. Evacuations of cholera morbus and true cholera when vomiting
accompanies the purging.
Respiratory.--Hoarse, weak voice. Rattling in chest. Much
mucus in bronchial tubes, that cannot be coughed up. Coarse rales. Chronic bronchitis in the
aged (Hippozanin). Loud barking, stomach cough, followed
by eructation of gas; worse, warm room. Hollow cough, tickling low down, with blue face.
Cough comes on from drinking, especially cold water; urine escapes when coughing. Cough on
entering warm room from cold air (Bryonia).
Heart.--Palpitation with anxiety and rapid audible
respiration. Pulse irregular, feeble. Tobacco heart from chewing. Intermittent action of
heart in feeble persons with some hepatic obstruction. One of the best heart stimulants in
homeopathic doses (J. S. Mitchell).
Female.--Menses too early; profuse and exhausting. Dysmenorrhœa, with coldness, purging, cold
sweat. Faints from least exertion. Sexual
mania precedes menses.
Extremities.--Soreness and tenderness of joints. Sciatica;
pains like electric flashes. Cramps in calves. Neuralgia
in brachial plexus; arms feel swollen, cold, paralytic.
Skin.--Blue, cold, clammy, inelastic, cold
as death. Cold sweat. Wrinkling of skin of hands and feet.
Fever.--Chill, with extreme coldness
and thirst.
Modalities.--Worse, at
night; wet, cold weather. Better, walking and warmth.
Relationship.--Compare: Veratrinum-alkaloid
from seeds of Sabadilla.--(electric pains, electric shocks in muscles, fibrillary
twitchings); Cholos terrepina (cramps in calves); Camph; Cupr; Ars; Cuprum ars (intermittent,
cold, clammy sweat); Narcissus poeticus
(gastro-enteritis with much griping and cutting pain in bowels. Fainting, trembling, cold
limbs, small and irregular pulse); Trychosanthes--(diarrhœa,
pain in liver, dizziness after every stool); Agaric emetic
(vertigo; longing for ice-cold water; burning pains in stomach); Agaric
phalloides (cholera, cramps in stomach, cold extremities, urine suppressed). Veratrine (Increased vascular tension. It relaxes it and
stimulates the elimination of toxins by skin, kidneys, and liver).
Dose.--First to thirtieth potency. In diarrhœa, not below the
sixth.
