Individual Drugs. ABIES (Tsuga canadensis). - Southwest School of ...

marked asthenia, feeble circulation, great depression, low muttering
delirium, picking at the bed clothes, and dry tongue loaded with foul
mucus and sordes, it is a most valuable auxiliary to other treatment. In
the hectic fever of phthisis, with exhausting diarrhoea and excessive
sweating, it often proves the needed stimulant and antihydrotic.
Arnica is a stimulant of great power in anemia, with weak heart and
capillary feebleness, and marked depression, diarrhoea and dropsy,
but no inflammation. During mild forms of so-called chronic
rheumatism, with cold skin and general debility it will stimulate the
nervous system, restore normal warmth, re-establish restrained
secretion, and thus relieve pain. In painful, bruised or subacute
inflammatory disorders arising from injury, with marked lowering of
nerve tone, muscular aching and chilly sensations, arnica is a remedy
of power to give comfort and hasten resolution. When myalgia is
caused by exposure, or when muscular soreness and pain are due to
strain, overexertion, or sudden jars or blows, the administration of
arnica internally, in small doses of the specific medicine preferably,
and the diluted tincture applied locally are among the most
serviceable of measures.
Arnica frequently relieves “heart-strain” due to exertion, overwork, or
from long marching. It also benefits in the heart debility that follows
severe strain, worry, or excitement. Dull aching pain in the praecordia,
due to lifting or when working against vibrating machinery, as in shoe
making, is dissipated by small doses of arnica. For lame back,
backache and feelings of soreness and debility of the back, when
accompanied by nervous depression and poor circulation, arnica is
one of the most direct of remedies. Lumbago, when due to muscular
strain or falls, is relieved by arnica. Its action is increased by rhus,
macrotys, or sometimes gelsemium. When dependent upon a loaded
bowel, venous relaxation in the hemorrhoidal circulation, piles,
fissures, sagging of the abdominal contents, pelvic weakness, or a
neuritic state of the lumbar plexus, arnica is of little or no value.
Indeed, in some of these conditions it may only result in an
aggravation of the nervous unrest so frequently attendant upon
lumbago, and allied painful disorders.
We have used arnica most successfully in paraplegia and hemiplegia
after all evidence of acute inflammation or recent injury has passed. It
is especially to be remembered in sphincteral paralyses, so common
Felter’s Materia Medica - (A) - Page 36