6 FLORA HOMCEOPATHICA. 



I 



ever be cured by it, at least there are no such instances recorded, 

 for almost always other powerful remedies have been used 

 simultaneously, and there is no proof of the cure being per- 

 manent. When a person has had for the first time an attack 

 of epilepsy, caused by some distressing event, and this attack 

 is formidable from its duration or frequent recurrence, one 

 small dose of tincture of Ignatia often effects a certain and 

 final cure. But it is otherwise in chronic epilepsy, where 

 it cannot produce lasting benefit, for the same reason as 

 in other chronic diseases. For its peculiar primitive effects, 

 which are commonly opposed to each other, follow, even in 

 disease, this character of opposition, so that when the first dose 

 has put a stop to the morbid condition, we ought not hastily to 

 give a second, because it would reproduce the malady, and the 

 contrary alternative would ensue, which brings with it all the 

 inconvenient consequences of palliatives. It is therefore argued 



that Ignatia should be given only in sudden attacks and acute 

 diseases. 



" This medicine should be taken in the morning, unless there 

 is danger in losing time; for when it is taken a short time 

 before going to bed, it causes agitation during .the night." 



" St. Ignatius's Bean (Ignatia amara) has been observed to 

 produce trembling of several hours' duration, twitchings, 

 cramps, irascibility, sardonic laughter, giddiness, cold per- 

 spiration. In similar cases it will show its efficacy, as ex- 

 perience has partly demonstrated. It produces febrile rigor, 

 and (in its secondary action ?) stiffness of the limbs ; and thus 

 it has cured, by similarity of action, intermittent fever which 

 would not yield to Bark: probably it was that less simple form 

 of intermittent in which the complication consisted of excessive 

 sensitiveness and increased irritability (especially of the primce 

 vise)" (Uahnem. Less. Writ., p. 327). 



Clinical Oi^RVATToxs.-Tgnatia, under certain circum- 



stances, is particularly serviceable in derangement of the ner- 



vous system in women and children. In violent screams from 



