American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy

of arterial pressure, vomiting or gastric irritation; it stimulates
expectoration and perspiration, causes intense headache and
prostration. These phenomena are caused by the action of the drug on the
vasomotor centers and the cardiac ganglia. The headache is chiefly
frontal; in some persons the drug causes pain in the joints and limbs
similar to rheumatism.
The agent is certainly an efficient nerve sedative, although its most
pronounced action is on the unstriped muscles. It acts in very many
cases where these muscles are involved, with general nervous irritation,
in an immediate and positive manner. In such cases if the nerve
irritation is dominant, its efficiency is greatly increased by combining it
with gelsemium.
An overdose is promptly signalled by the appearance of the characteristic
headache, which assumes a bursting, tearing character, with injected
conjunctivae and flushed face. This will abate at once upon
discontinuance of the agent.
Specific Symptomatology—Muscular aching, local and general, aching
pains as from overworked, overstrained muscles, great muscular aching
with chilliness and rapidly increasing temperature.
It is the agent for hysteria with flushed face and heat in the head, with
restless and nervous excitement and general muscular aching.
Therapy—In the premonitory stage of acute fevers, or of acute
inflammatory troubles of whatever character, a common symptom is a
general tired feeling with aching of the muscles. In these cases there is
usually a chill or chilliness, with more or less fever with the aching. One
drop of the tincture of cimicifuga every hour will relieve this aching in
from six to twelve hours. If given with aconite for the fever and belladonna
for the rigors, the time may be reduced to three or four hours. When
indicated, its influence upon the nervous system will probably abridge
many of the other symptoms.
Through its influence upon the vasomotor centers and upon the nerve
ganglia, it has a beneficial influence upon the heart. In rheumatic
carditis or pericarditis it is a sovereign remedy acting directly in the line
of its physiological influence. In neuralgia of the heart—angina pectoris
and functional irregularity of the heart from exalted nerve influence,
either alone or combined with gelsemium, it is prompt and reliable, and
Ellingwood’s American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy - Page 122