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

Specific Indications.—Nervous exhaustion; nervous debility of
convalescence; cardiac weakness of nervous depression; nocturnal
losses following fevers and from the nervous erethism of debility;
nervous headache from overwork or depression.
Action and Therapy.—Oatmeal water is sometimes useful to dilute
“baby foods” and milk when children are not well nourished and
suffering from summer diarrhoeal disorders. It is also used as a
demulcent drink in diarrhea and dysentery of adults. When so used, it
should be about the consistence of milk.
Oatmeal gruel, when not otherwise contraindicated, as in diabetes
mellitus or amylaceous indigestion, is an excellent and easily
digested food in convalescence from exhaustive illness. It may be
sweetened if desired.
A paste, made by moistening a small quantity of oatmeal, held in the
hands, with water, will soften roughened skin of the palms and fingers;
and also remove the odor of some substances, as iodoform.
Tincture of Avena is a mild stimulant and nerve tonic. It is regarded by
many as a remedy of some importance for nervous debility, and for
affections bordering closely upon nervous prostration. It seemingly
acts well in the exhaustion following typhoid and other low fevers and
is thought to hasten convalescence, particularly where there is much
nervous involvement and enfeebled action of the heart. In the nervous
erethism or the enervated conditions following fevers and giving rise to
spermatic losses it is sometimes effectual, but it seldom benefits such a
state when due to prostatic irritation, masturbation, or sexual excesses.
It may be given to relieve spasms of the neck of the bladder; and in
some cases of relapsing rheumatism. Webster asserts it is useful, not as
an antirheumatic, but for the debility underlying the rheumatic
diathesis, so that the patient is less affected by meteorologic
influences. Probably its chief value as a medicine is to energize in
nervous exhaustion with or without spasms. It is useful in headache
from exhaustion or overwork, or the nervous headache of menstruation.
It is not a remedy of great power and will be found effective, probably,
in but few of the conditions mentioned. However, many agents of this
type sometimes, in exceptional cases, accomplish that which no other
remedy seems to do. To fortify some of the claims made for this remedy
Felter’s Materia Medica - (A) - Page 47