American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy

PREPARATIONS—
Fluid Extract Bladder Wrack, miscible with water without
precipitation. Dose, from one-half to four drams, three times a day.
Powdered Extract Bladder Wrack, of the same strength as the solid
extract. Dose, from five to thirty grains.
Solid Extract Bladder Wrack; one part equals five of the plant. Dose,
from five to thirty grains.
Therapy—This agent is, used for the specific purpose of reducing
unhealthy fat in excessive adiposity. If given in doses of from one-half to
two drams, three or four times daily, it has reduced excessively fat
patients in a satisfactory manner without interfering in any way with the
normal health functions. Wilhite, in New Preparations, 1878, gave his
observations as follows: “From our study of the drug we do not believe
fucus to be a reducer of the adipose tissue of healthy subjects. It is mostly
on those cold, torpid individuals with a cold, clammy skin, loose and
flabby rolls of fat, with relaxed pendulous abdomen, that fucus will
display its powers to the best advantage. In this class of cases fat is a
morbid condition, a result of vitiated function. With such the remedy acts
beneficially by overcoming this torpid and morbid tendency, thus
reducing the size by toning up the vascular and sympathetic systems.
Possibly it also acts upon the starchy matters of the food in some manner,
so as to prevent their easy change into fat when introduced into the
human economy.”
It is in the obesity of individuals of the lymphatic temperament that the
beneficial effects of this drug are the most marked. It has little or no
influence in the reduction of the fleshiness of persons of active habits, or
of those of the sanguine temperament In these cases strict regulation of
the diet affords the only prospects of relief, but owing to the keenness of
the appetite usually present, this regulation is rarely enforced. Fucus
shows its most decided influence upon women in whom there exist
menstrual derangements as menorrhagia and leucorrhea, owing to a
general atonic and flabby condition of the uterine tissues. In such cases
an improvement in the local derangements usually precedes the general
reduction of fat and the improved tonicity of the general system.
Fucus is advised as a specific remedy in the treatment of both
exophthalmic and simple goitre. It is especially successful in patients
not above thirty years of age. It is also suggested in the treatment of fatty
degeneration of the heart. It is of service in desquamative nephritis, and
in irritation and inflammation of the bladder. When general muscular
Ellingwood’s American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy - Page 221