URTICA


Homeopathic remedy Urtica from A Manual of Homeopathic Therapeutics by Edwin A. Neatby, comprising the characteristic symptoms of homeopathic remedies from clinical indications, published in 1927….


      Urtica urens. Small stinging nettle. N.O. Urticaceae Tincture of the fresh plant in flower.

PATHOGENESIS

      Skin.- The power of the small stinging nettle when it comes in contact with the skin, to raise oedematous wheals which sting and burn is well known. Taken internally it affects the skin in the same way and produces other general symptoms. The provers experienced, from doses of the mother tincture and first decimal dilution, itching and swelling all over the fingers and hands, formication, heat, numbness and smarting of the skin of the face, arms, shoulders and chest; the lips and nose swelled and the eyelids became oedematous and closed, an eruption like sudamina appeared on all the upper part of the body, and with the eruption an intolerable stinging sensation was felt, till later on it ceased when desquamation occurred.

Digestion.- In addition to the skin symptoms urtica causes itching fever-blisters on the lips (herpes labialis) burning in the throat, nausea, frequent hawking of frothy mucus, soreness in the abdomen, especially felt on lying down at night, stitches in the splenic region, colicky pains and tenesmus, with slimy stools. In some provers it at first caused constipation for some days, which was followed by several stools of whitish slime, accompanied by pain about the umbilicus or small dysenteric motions of greenish-brown slime, passed with urging and tenesmus, and leaving a raw burning in the anus and perhaps a small pile.

Limbs.- A characteristic pain produced by urtica is in the right deltoids muscle, a cramping pain or sharp stitch, which is worse on moving the arm, from lying on it and from rotating the arm inwards; the muscle feels tender or sore as if bruised. Urtica causes rheumatic pain and stiffness in the right wrist and in the left arm, wrist and fingers, and stiffness inside the left knee-joint.

Provers of urtica gigas of North Australia and of urtica crenulata of India had similar deltoid and finger pains, which were even more violent, being of an extreme burning character, and which after having ceased, were renewed when the painful parts were brought in contact with water.

Eyes.- Urtica causes stinging pains in the eyes and in the forehead over the eyes, and pains in the eyeballs, as if from a blow with a feeling as of sand in the eyes.

Head.- Stinging pains are felt in the right parental region and a dull aching in the occiput and sunspot, extending to the malar bones. With these pains the head feels full, as if blood rushed into it, and there is giddiness.

Respiration.- Soreness in the chest occurs, as if from a blow, felt most on the left side.

Sleep.- There is drowsiness on reading

Circulation.- The pulse is quickened, and there is a sensation of heat all over on getting into bed, which goes off by morning.

Sexual.- In one prover, who had never nursed any of her twelve children, the last of whom was 3 1/2 years old, it caused a discharge from the nipples that was first serous and then milky. In two provers the urine was suppressed for several days.

THERAPEUTICS.

      Skin.- Urtica has been employed for burns of the first degree, those involving the epidermis only. It should be applied externally in solution, and also taken internally; it is very efficacious in allaying the smarting pain. It is used for nettle- rash arising from indigestion or other caused, and rivals apis in this complaint. It is useful for irritation and burning pains about the anus, with or without the association of piles and for the internal rectal irritation that results from the presence of thread worms.

Sexual.- It is equally useful to allay the violent itching and burning of eczema of the vulva. it is specific in bee stings (ledum)

Urtica reinforces the secretion of milk in nursing women in whom it is deficient, and a case is recorded where it stopped the continued secretion of mild in a women in whom it persisted after weaning the child.

Burnett extended the use of urtica to gout, and found that given in frequent doses of the mother tincture it will cut short an attack of acute gout by promoting the discharge in the urine of the exciting morbid material. He used it also in splenic affections and to effect the excretion of gravel. Cases of ague have been cured by it when other drugs have failed.

The pains of urtica are stinging, burning, or bruised; there is a tendency to periodicity in its action, the symptoms often recurring at the same time of the year.

LEADING INDICATIONS.

      (1) Stinging and burning pains.

(2) Wheal-like oedematous eruptions of the skin that itch, burn and sting (urticaria).

(3) Deltoid rheumatism, mainly on the right side.

(4) Renewal of pains from contact with water.

(5) Gout and gravel.

(6) Burns of the first degree.

(7) Periodicity, ague, splenic affections.

(8) Deficient or too copious supply of milk in the breasts.

AGGRAVATION:

      From touch, lying on arm (deltoid pain), lying down (soreness in bowels), after sleep (burning in skin), application of water, exposure to moist, cool atmosphere, at night (fever, gout), right side, rotating arm inwards (deltoid pain).

AMELIORATION:

      From lying down (nettle-rash).

Edwin Awdas Neatby
Edwin Awdas Neatby 1858 – 1933 MD was an orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy to become a physician at the London Homeopathic Hospital, Consulting Physician at the Buchanan Homeopathic Hospital St. Leonard’s on Sea, Consulting Surgeon at the Leaf Hospital Eastbourne, President of the British Homeopathic Society.

Edwin Awdas Neatby founded the Missionary School of Homeopathy and the London Homeopathic Hospital in 1903, and run by the British Homeopathic Association. He died in East Grinstead, Sussex, on the 1st December 1933. Edwin Awdas Neatby wrote The place of operation in the treatment of uterine fibroids, Modern developments in medicine, Pleural effusions in children, Manual of Homoeo Therapeutics,