56 



FLORA HOMCEOPATHICA. 



vivid, sometimes frightful visions, and tension in the stomach ; 

 so it at once quickly subdued a fever in a laborious, reflective 

 mechanic in the country, which began with tension in the 

 stomach, followed by a sudden attack of vertigo, so as to make 

 him fall, that left behind it a kind of confusion of the under- 

 standing, with frightful hypochondriacal ideas, anxiety, and 

 exhaustion. In the morning he was pretty lively, and not ex- 

 hausted, but in the afternoon, about two o'clock, the attack 

 commenced. He got Nux Vomica in increasing doses, one 

 daily, and improved. At the fourth dose, which contained 

 seventeen grains, there occurred great anxiety, immobility, and 



stiffness 



The 



fever and all the nervous symptoms disappeared and never 

 returned, although for many years previously he had been sub- 

 ject, from time to time, to such attacks suddenly occurring, yet 

 unaccompanied by fever. 



Its tendency to cause cramps in the abdomen, anxiety, and 

 pain in the stomach, I availed myself of in a dysenteric fever 

 (without purgings) on persons living in the same house with 

 dysenteric patients. In these cases it diminished the feelings 

 of discomfort in the limbs, the feverishness and anxiety, and 



in 



in some of the patients, but as they had simple dysentery, with- 

 out diarrhoea, it made the evacuations still rarer, from its tend- 

 ency to cause constipation. In diarrhoeas, even such as are of 

 a dysenteric character, it will be more serviceable, at least as a 

 palliative remedy. During its employment I witnessed twitch- 

 ing movements under the skin, as if caused by live animals, in 

 the limbs, and especially in the abdominal muscles. 



In the Materia Medica Pura, Hahnemann has the following 

 remarks : « There are a few medicines, the greater part of 

 whose symptoms are analogous to the principal and most com- 

 mon diseases to which mankind is subject, at least in Europe, 

 and which, consequently, are most frequently employed in 

 homoeopathy. The term polychrest may be applied to them. 



