American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy

It promotes waste, and elimination of effete material f rom the blood.
Specific Symptomatology—This agent will prove serviceable when the
stools are clay-colored, the urine scanty and the skin inactive and
jaundiced. In small doses it is indicated in irritable conditions of the
mucous membranes of the digestive tract, with altered secretion. This
condition is characterized by a neuralgic pain over one eye, or involving
one side of the face, usually the right side; nausea or vomiting of an acid
liquid, with burning and distress in the esophagus or stomach; gastralgia
and gastrodynia, with vomiting or regurgitation of food, especially after
the eating of fats or rich pastry; diarrhea, with a burning sensation after
the passage; cholera morbus, with violent pain around the umbilicus, or
in the lower part of the abdomen, and watery diarrhea with great
depression.
Therapy—The oleo-resin has been very successfully employed in hepatic
jaundice, arising intestinal disorders, and the consequent dropsy.
Chronic jaundice, arising from duodenal catarrh and obstruction of the
biliary ducts, should be treated with Iris. It is said that malarial jaundice
(so-called) may be cured by this drug alone, and that it exerts a favorable
influence in bilious remittent fevers and chronic ague. This agent is
directly indicated in that condition of the stomach which induces sick
headache. It not only ameliorates the attack, but assists in the removal of
the cause and in breaking up the tendency to recurrence of the
condition.
This agent is employed in the treatment of syphilitic and strumous
affections. In the treatment of syphilis this agent is a very useful remedy
in those cases in which the glandular organs are inactive. Here the
effects of Iris are strikingly conspicuous from the first. It will be found an
excellent auxiliary also to the influence of other well known alteratives.
It has also been largely employed in the successful treatment of many
affections of the skin. Kinnett recommends it strongly in psoriasis.
In the treatment of certain cases of eczema of a persistent chronic
character, as well as of other pustular and open ulcerating or oozing skin
diseases, this agent, in from five to ten drop doses every two or three
hours, will be found most useful. It may be diluted and applied externally
also. Prurigo, crustalactea, and tinea yield readily to its influence at
times.
It is a favorite remedy in the treatment of enlargement of the thyroid and
Ellingwood’s American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy - Page 266