Colocynthis

COLOCYNTH

Common name:- Bitter Cucumber; Bitter Apple.

Introduction:- It is most commonly used medicine prescribed  in our practice for the following ailments:-

Abdominal Colic ,  Neuralgias ;  Sciatica

Dr. Boericke says, that Colocynth  is often indicated in the transition season when the air is cold, but the sun is still powerful enough to heat the blood.  Most of its symptoms are developed in the abdomen and head, causing intense neuralgias. The neuralgic pains are nearly always relieved by pressure. Cramps and twitching and shortening of muscles. Constrictions and contractions. Cystospasm following operations on orifices Hyper.). Agonizing pain in abdomen., causing patient to bend double, is most characteristic. Sensations; cutting, twisting, grinding, contracting and bruised; as if clamped with iron bands..

Typical Subjects:- It is especially suitable for irritable persons easily angered, and ill effects therefrom. Women with copious menstruation, and of sedentary habits. Persons with a tendency to corpulency.

Points and features:- 

(i)         Temperament:- Disinclined to talk, to see friends, impatient, easily offended, danger within indignation; colic or other complaints as a consequence.

(ii)        Abdominal Pains:- Colic, terrible; they seek relief by bending double or pressing something hard against the abdomen.

(iii)       Dysentery-like diarrhoa; renewed after least food or drink, often with the characteristic colic pains.

(iv)       Urine:-Frequent urging to urinate, scanty; urine sometimes thick, fotid, viscid, jelly-like.

(v)        Extremities:- Sciatica:- Crampy pain in sciatic nerve, from hip down posterior portion of thigh; > from hard pressure and from heat; < in repose, driving patient desperate.

Tendency to painful cramps, with all pains.

(vi)       Modalities: < evening, anger; after eating; > from coffee, Bending double and hard pressure. 

Mind:- Extremely irritable. Becomes angry when questioned. Mortification caused by offense. Anger, with indignation (Cham.,Bry.,Nux Vom.,)

Head:- Vertigo when turning head to the left, . Lateral cutting headache, with nausea, vomiting. Pains (better pressure and heat), with soreness of scalp.  Burning pains, digging, rending, and tearing. Frontal headache; worse, stooping, lying on back, and moving eyelids.

Eyes:- Pains sharp, boring, better pressure. . Sensation on stooping, as if eye would fall out. Gouty affections of eyes. Violent pain in eyeballs which precede the development of glaucoma.

Face:- Tearing, shooting, and swelling of face; left side great soreness. Get relief from pressure (China). Neuralgia, with chilliness, teeth seem too long.Sounds re-echo in ears.. Pain in stomach, always with pain of teeth or head.

Stomach:- Very bitter taste. Tongue rough, as from sand, and feels scalded. Canine hunger. Feeling in stomach as if something would not yield; drawing pain.

ABDOMEN(Imptortant):- Agonizing cutting pain in abdomen causing patient to bend  over double., and pressing on the abdomen. Sensation as if stones were being ground together in the abdomen, and would burst. Intestines feel as if bruised. Colic with cramps in calves. Cutting in abdomen, especially after anger. Each paroxysm is attended with general agitation and a chill over the cheeks, ascending from the hypogastrium. Pain in small spot below navel.Dysentric stool renewed each time by the least food or drink. Jelly like stools. Musty odor. Distention.

Female: Boring pain in ovary. Must draw up double, with great restlessness.Round, small cystic tumors in ovaries or broad ligaments. Wants abdomen supported by pressure. Bearing-down cramps, causing her to bend double (Opium).

Urine:- Intense burning along urethra during stool. Vesical catarrh, discharge like fresh white of egg.Viscid (Phos.acid) fetid; small quantities, with frequent urging. Itching at orifice. Red, hard crystals, adhering firmly to vessel. Tenesmus of bladder. Pains on urinating over whole abdomen..

EXTREMITIES(Important): Contraction of muscles: All the limbs are drawn together. Pain in right deltoid (Guaco). Cramp like pain in hip. ; lies on affected side; pain from hip to knee. Spontaneous luxation of the hip-joints. Stiffness of joints and shortening of tendons. Sciatic pain, left side, drawing, tearing; better,pressure and heat,; worse, gentle touch. Contraction of the muscles. Pain down right thigh; muscles and tendons feel too short; numbness with pains (Gnaphal). Pain in left knee joint.

Modalities:- Worse:- from anger and indignation.   Better: doubling up, hard pressure, warmth, lying with head bent forward.

Relationship:- Complementary to  Mercurius vivus in dysentery with severe tenesmus. Similar to Graphites; intense pain along right sciatic nerve, darting, cutting, from right hip joint down foot; worse lying down, motion, stepping; better by sitting.Magnesium Phos.

 Dose:-Sixth to thirtieth potency.

Dr. E.B.Nash, M.D. in his "Leadaers in Homeopathic Therapeutics, describes about Colocynth  with comparisons  other with related medicines as follows:-

No remedy produces more severe colic than this one, and no remedy cures more promptly.

Dr. T. L. Brown once said to me in substance: If I was disposed to be skeptical as to the power of the small dose to cure,Colocynth would convince me, for I have so promptly cured severe colic in many cases, from a child to adults, and even in horses. Of course, every true Homoopath can respond amen  to that.

The colic of  Colocynth is terrible, and is only bearable by bending double, or pressing something had against the abdomen. . He leans over chairs, the table or bed posts to get relief. This colic is neuralgic in character, and is often attended with vomiting and diarrhoa, which seems to be a result of the great pain more than any particular derangement of the stomach or bowels. We often find it in connection with dysentery. My experience has been that it does not, as a rule, occur in the first stage of the disease, but later, when the disease has not been fully controlled by Aconite, Mercurius, Nux Vomica and that class of remedies, but has extended upward to the small intestines. The pains are of a crampy nature. The remedy that comes nearest to Colocynth for colic is Magnesia Phos especially in colic in children. They both have the cramping pains, but the pains of Magnesia Phos. are mostly relieved by hot applications like Arsenicum. Both Colocynth and Magnesia Phos. are also equally efficacious for neuralgic affections in other localities, for instance, in sciatica and prosopalgia, and even uterine colic of a neuralgic nature, though in this latter affection Magnesia Phos. leads. Remember the modalities, for upon the individualization depends the choice between them. Chamomilla and Colocynth resemble each other, in that both have colic from a fit of anger or other neuralgic affections from the same cause.Chamomilla succeeds in the colic of children, if there is much wind which distends the abdomen; the child tosses about in agony, but does not double up likeColocynth. Other symptoms often come in of course and help to choose between them. If both fail I have succeeded with Magnesia phos. Staphisgaria is also a remedy for colicky children, with disposition like  Colocynth and Chamomilla . In such children the teeth grow black and decay early. Again the  Staphisgaria child is often troubled with sore eyelids. In such a case there is chronic tendency to colic and Staphisgaria is sometimes the only remedy.Veratrum Album also has colic, bending the patient double, similar to  Colocynth, but the patient walks about for relief, or is much prostrated and has cold sweats, especially on the forehead. Bovista has colic relieved by bending double, after eating.

Dioscorea is a good remedy for wind Colic. The Pain begins right at the umbilicus, and then radiates all over the abdomen, and even to extremities (Plumbum, with walls retracted), and, unlike Colocynth, the pain is aggravated by bending forward and relieved by straightening the body out. Stannum is a colic remedy, and the only way the child is relieved is by being carried with the abdomen on the mother's shoulder. I have cured a case of this kind. It was a very obstinate case of long standing in a weakly child. The usual remedies had signally failed.Jalapa cured one of the most obstinate cases of long standing that I ever saw, the child crying almost continually day and night for weeks. There was in this case diarrhoa all the time. Both colic and diarrhoa were very quickly cured. I have lengthened out these indications for colic remedies in connection with Colocynth because there is great temptation, especially with young physicians, to give "paregoric," soothing syrups, etc., because it is not always easy to find the homoopathic remedy. I never have to do it, and I cure my cases. Of course there are many other remedies for the same trouble, and all have their particular  guiding symptoms. 

Colocynth not only cures neuralgic affections originating in the abdominal region, but has been very efficacious in facial and sciatic neuralgia. The pains in these localities, like those in the abdomen, are of a decidedly crampy nature. Here also Magnesia Phos. often disputes place with Colocynth, in the fact of its also having characteristically the same kind of pains. The relief from heat, although found under both remedies, is most marked under Magnesia Phos;. In sciatica, the pain of Colocynth extends from the hip down the posterior portion of the thigh into the popliteal fossa (> lying on painful side,Bryonia).Phytolacca, the pains run down the outer side of the thigh. These two remedies, with Gnaphilium, are the leading remedies for the treatment of this most distressing malady. But of course other remedies often have to be given, and the indications are sometimes found outside of the local trouble, as they are in many other diseases. One of the worst cases of sciatica I ever saw was cured with Arsenicum album, on the indications, worse at midnight, especially from 1 to 3 o'clock; burning pains; and the only temporary relief during the paroxysms, was from bags of hot, dry salt applied to the painful part.

The lady was a sister of Charles Saunders, of New York, of school reader fame, who was himself a cripple from allopathically treated sciatica. She, after suffering indescribable agony for six weeks, was cured rapidly and permanently with a dose of Jenichen's 8m of Arsenicum Album. So we see again that no remedy and no particular set of remedies can be entirely relied upon, but the indicated one  can. These are the chief uses of Colocynth.

.Some Red-Line symptoms of COLOCYNTH ( TO REMEMBER)

(I)                  Inclination to become angry and indignant.

(II)                Constrictions and contraction of internal and external parts.

(III)              All the limbs are drawn together.

(IV)              Shortening of the muscles.

(V)                Twitching of the muscles.

(VI)              Stiffness of the joints.

(VII)            Tearing pains longitudinally.

(VIII)          Colicky pains in the abdomen compelling one to bend double with great anguish and restless constriction in the bowels or pain as if cutting with knives, or pain as though the bowel was pressed between two stones.

(IX)              Pain in the hip and when walking a sensation as if the psoas muscle was too short.

Bad effects, either from mortification caused by an offense, or else from anger with indignation.