Lobelia inflata


Lobelia inflata signs and symptoms of the homeopathy medicine from the Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica by J.H. Clarke. Find out for which conditions and symptoms Lobelia inflata is used…


      Lobelia inflata. Indian Tobacco. (Fields and roadsides from Canada to Southern U.S.A.) *N. O. Lobeliaceae. Tincture of fresh plant when in flower and seed. Trituration of dried leaves. Acetum.

Clinical

Alcoholism. Alopecia. Amenorrhea. Angina pectoris. *Asthma. Cardialgia. *Cough. Croup. Deafness. Debility. Diarrhoea. Dysmenorrhoea. Dyspepsia. *Emphysema. Faintness. Gall-stones. Gastralgia. Haemorrhoidal discharge. Hay-asthma. Heart, affections of. Hysteria. Meningeal headaches. Miller’s asthma. Morning sickness (of drunkards, of pregnancy). Morphia habit. Palpitation. Pleurisy. Psoriasis. Rigid os. Seborrhea. Shoulders, pain in. Tea, effects of. Urethra, stricture of. Vagina, serous discharge from. Vomiting, of pregnancy. Wens. Whooping-cough.

Characteristics

Matthew Lobe, whose name is given to this family of plants, was a physician and botanist attached to the court of James I. There are two British species, *L. Dortmanna, found in shallow lakes, and *L. urens, which grows in heathy places. *L. inflata, the North American variety, is the most important of all, medically. According to Hale, this plant was used by the Indians as an emetic detergent, in the same way as *Veratrum alb. was used by the ancients to produce “Helleborism.” But the chief modern exponent of *Lobelia is Samuel Thompson, of New Hampshire, who founded, the modern Botanical School. His chief remedies were, besides *Lobelia, cayenne pepper and the vapor bath. There can be little doubt that he accomplished much with these, but his unbounded faith in *Lobelia led, in some instances, to fatal poisoning. Such a result is not altogether unknown in qualified practice, but as Thompson had no medical degree these cases brought him into trouble. The records of them have furnished some of the symptoms of the pathogenesis. *Lobelia i. probably obtained the name of “Indian Tobacco” from the similarity of its action to that of *Tabacum in producing intense nausea, vomiting, profound depression at the epigastrium, and collapse. It was a true instinct on the part of Teste that led him to class *Lobelia i. with *Sul., and though the provings and clinical experience do not fully bear out what he says about its skin action, the results of botanically practice, confirmed by Cooper, show that it has an antipsoric action, and relieves morbid states due to the suppression of discharges. In a paper read before the Brit. Hom. Society, November 1, 1888 (*M. H. Rev., xxxii. 717) Cooper explains that he got no good out of *Lobelia i. until under the advice of a herbalist he used a solution of *Lobelia made with common vinegar. Here is one of his cases: A young woman, 23, of consumptive family history on both sides, had, when 14 to 15 years old, severe pain in left, and sometimes right, side, and round lower abdomen, with faint feeling. This lasted till the monthly period came on regularly and then she was well till 20, when diarrhoea came on, which nothing was able to check and which kept her in bed for months at a time. The symptoms were: Pains all round abdomen and up the back, much worse after undressing, feeling of exhaustion or falling to pieces inside and out, cannot bear anything to touch her. Four or five motions daily when taking medicine, if she leaves it off continual motions all day, it literally runs from her: watery, sometimes light-colored, sometimes dark, never bloody. Menses very irregular, sometimes five to six weeks between, all symptoms, especially diarrhoea, worse then, much tenderness all over abdomen, especially in ovarian regions, legs ache fearfully, pains all over body, faints continually. Since the illness began subject to neuralgia of face, one or other side or both, extending to chest, coming and going suddenly at any time. In spite of treatment of all kinds, including that of a skilful repertorian, she grew worse. She went into a hospital, and there a small pile was removed with but temporary benefit, and after this the vagina as well as the rectum began to discharge copiously an excoriating fluid. *Lobelia i-ac., O eight drops three times a day, was now given. She began to improve at once, and in a few weeks was quite well. In this case the difficulty first showed itself when the menstrual era was commencing, was relieved when the flow was regularly established, reappeared simultaneously with menstrual irregularity. In the next case there was an analogous history. A lady of 52, when 37, was exposed to a severe chill which checked the catamenial flow. After this she had threatened phthisis with bronchorrhea, which after two years gradually went off, leaving her subject to severe constantly recurring seizures of vertigo. Nine months before coming under Dr. Cooper’s care she felt as if something was forming in the uterovaginal region, causing much bearing down. She was obliged to go to bed, and then there occurred a profuse pouring away of apparently serous fluid from uterovaginal and vesical mucous membranes, with paroxysms of agonizing, burning, and scalding, worse in evening. Vagina swollen, extremely tender, bathed in moisture, urination always very painful and followed by paroxysm of general scalding. She was unable to sit up and decubitus could only be maintained with the knees drawn up, or on the left side. At night she would be awoke by finding her back resting in a pool of water, and the sense of uterine bearing down was almost intolerable. The bowels were unaffected, urine free from all but a trace of albumen. A hardness and dulness to percussion existed all down right side of abdomen. *Lobelia infl., acet. O 1/3 drop every four hours. From that time the patient had not to keep her bed for a single day, and all her symptoms cleared up. The *Lobelia i. was in this case assisted by *Nat-chlor. (Liq. Sode chlor. of *B. P.), 1/3 drop doses occasionally, which relieved the bearing down more than anything else. All that remained of the illness was a slight weakness in lower abdomen felt every autumn. Cooper recalls in connection with these cases a symptom recorded by Jahr: “Violent pain in the sacrum with fever supervening upon suppression of the menses during their flow.” Alongside this action of *Lobelia i. may be placed another, also vouched for by Cooper, the power of eliminating foreign substances like that possessed by *Silica. A woman got a piece of mutton-bone down her windpipe and into one of the bronchia. She was taken to the London Hospital, but the idea of operation was abandoned as hopeless and she was sent out. *Lobelia i-ac. O. was given, five drops three times a day. Soon a most violent cough was set up, in the course of which the patient coughed up a large quantity of fetid pus and finally the bone. By the action of *Lobelia i. in determining to the periphery it meets a large number of conditions due to suppression, including cases of phthisis. Cooper adds the following note to the above: “The interest of knowing that *Lobelia i. meets very serious symptoms connected with a profuse flow of serous discharge from the uterovaginal mucous surfaces is to some extent marred by my having employed the acetous preparation, and subsequent trials of it would certainly have been made with the fresh plant tincture had I been able to obtain the living plant. As it is, my inferences, re the action of *Lobelia i., are all derived from the acetous tincture. The indications for *Lobelia i. are difficult to discover, being broad and general rather than precise and localized. Its power over serous discharges from mucous surfaces accounts probably for its influence on certain very obstinate forms of chronic diarrhoea, these being more serous than watery, and it is probably owing to a similar influence over sebaceous secretions that it removes in time the most obstinate wens on the scalp, causing them sometimes to gradually disappear and at others to point and discharge their contents, and that it causes the hair to grow when used locally in seborrhea capitis. It is particularly called for in ailments that never finish up, whether beginning from acutely inflammatory causes or not, it also fights with symptoms occasioned by mechanical irritants in a way that I have never found any remedy do, e.g., where a spicula of bone presses on the brain (compression), or where a bone is lodged in bronchus. The late Dr. Coffin (*Botan. Four., Aug., 1849, p. 271), in a boastful way, professed to cure children and adults whose lives were despaired of from poisoning by various substances by (decoctions? of) *Lobelia, but whether by directly evacuant action or not it is not stated. But in my own hands a few drops mixed in water cured a baby of severe convulsions that I afterwards found were caused by a diabolical nurse giving the little one Chlorodyne. In symptoms existing along with hereditary syphilis and in the tuberculosis of childhood it acts with full power, in tabes mesenterica, in persistent earaches and headaches due to suppressed discharges, where the lips are dry and hot and continual feverish colds are prominent, it is specific. Here it stands side by side with *Arsenicum Iodium, and our foremost antipsorics. In severe inflammatory conditions existing along with *anthrax, or with malignant deposits in different regions, *Lobelia in repeated as well as in single doses will often arrest urgent mischief. A few drops of *Lobelia i-ac. in boiling water takes away the pain and tension of inflamed piles, the patient sits on a utensil thus filled. In the bronchopneumonia of childhood and in imperfect recoveries from chest affections, especially where tubercle threatens, *Lobelia is indispensable. Treatment with *Lobelia should always be begun with a single dose, if the symptoms permit, as in some cases it produces violent depression. In veterinary practice it is said to have proved curative in the tetanus of horses, a disease it is also said to produce. It must be kept in mind when studying *Lobelia i. that the herbalists used it in two forms: the *decoction to produce emesis, and through which they seem to have obtained its antidotal action, or by virtue of which they aborted acute gout, and the *acetous tincture, which they gave in chronic diseases, and in moderate doses.” _ *Lobelia i. may cause a rash which exfoliates, and it has cured many cases of psoriasis. It meets a condition in which the secondary digestion is at fault. The patient is thin, poor, and has no appetite. It cures the condition which favors pediculi corporis. Referring to the skin action of *Lobelia i., Hale quotes ***P. H. Hale as saying that, with the intense nausea it causes, there is sometimes a prickling itching of the skin, and acting on this hint ***P. H. Hale thinks he has seen benefit from its use in suppressed *urticaria, with nausea and vomiting. The symptom Teste gives is this: “Eruption between the fingers, on the dorsa of the hands and on the forearms, consisting of small vesicles accompanied by a tingling itching, and resembling the itch pustules exactly.” As with *Sulph. “faintness at the stomach” is a grand characteristic which will be found in a large proportion of the cases calling for the remedy. Jeanes, who proved *Lobelia i., gives these as the chief symptoms: “Constant dyspnoea, worse by slightest exertion and increased to an asthmatic paroxysm by even the shortest exposure to cold, sensation of weakness and pressure in the epigastrium, and *rising thence to the heart with a constant heartburn, feeling as of a lump or quantity of mucus, and also a sense of pressure in larynx, pain in forehead from one temple to the other, pain in neck, in left side, high-colored urine,

John Henry Clarke
John Henry Clarke MD (1853 – November 24, 1931 was a prominent English classical homeopath. Dr. Clarke was a busy practitioner. As a physician he not only had his own clinic in Piccadilly, London, but he also was a consultant at the London Homeopathic Hospital and researched into new remedies — nosodes. For many years, he was the editor of The Homeopathic World. He wrote many books, his best known were Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica and Repertory of Materia Medica