American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy

It relieves undue irritation of the uterine muscular fiber, relaxes the soft
parts of the parturient canal, and thus facilitates labor and diminishes
the risks of laceration by controlling undue irritability of the muscular
fiber.
It maintains a better contraction of the uterus after delivery, but for this
purpose he administers a special dose of thirty minims of the fluid extract
after the birth of the fetal head. It was his habit in using this remedy for its
preparatory effects, to give fifteen minims, at the time of retiring each
night, for six weeks prior to confinement.
In six cases where Dr. Coffin used this remedy for the above purpose,
there was postpartem hemorrhage, and this caused the doctor to
question whether or not the agent had such a relaxing influence, as he
was not in the habit of giving either this or any other remedy to anticipate
such hemorrhage. Others deny this influence. I have never observed it.
Webster claims to have observed a case of epilepsy, attended with
amenorrhea which was kept under control with Cimicifuga in conjunction
with the bromides, when the bromides alone had previously failed.
The elder Adolphus, treated ophthalmia with this remedy, especially
when there was severe pain. He gave it in from two to five drop doses,
every four hours, day and night. He claimed that in one severe epidemic
it did not fail to cure. In the severe cases, he applied it externally, as well
as administering it internally. In those cases where there was much
nervous irritability, he combined it with gelsemium, which he was
confident enhanced its influence.
The agent has been advised in the treatment of smallpox. One of the old
writers claimed that he used it persistently through an entire epidemic,
and the results caused him to entertain the highest confidence in this
remedy. He believed he had aborted the disease in many cases, in fortyeight
hours. If given with the appearance of the premonitory symptoms,
the disease was so abridged, that no eruptions appeared. He usually gave
it in the form of a decoction, in conjunction with equal parts of asclepias,
and a small quantity of ginger. He gave enough of the remedy, to induce
the physiological influence, such as aching in the muscles and pain in
the head. The agent should have a further trial in this disease, as others
have claimed to obtain results similar to those quoted above, and the
influence of the remedy should be confirmed or disproved.
Ellingwood’s American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy - Page 125