Natural order – Gramineae. Common name – Oat. Habitat – Cultivated in all temperate climates. Preparation – Tincture from the fresh seed.
GENERAL ANALYSIS AND THERAPEUTICS.
Acts directly upon the brain and through it affects the functions of nutrition, primarily increasing nerve force and stimulating the nutrition of the whole system. Its action is prompt and usually more permanent than that of other active stimulants. It is ordinarily used in material doses (two or thirty drops of the tincture) for the purpose of obtaining its primary effects when the nerve forces are exhausted. Nervous exhaustion in brain workers (brain fag), or from worry and anxiety. In such cases and in sexual neurasthenia its effects are sometimes marvellous. The latter may be due to excessive sexual indulgence or to onanism. Impotence following long continued sexual excesses. It has proved of great value in alcoholics who are nervous and sleepless and seem to be on the verge of delirium tremens, and it is one of the most important of the various remedies used in the treatment of alcoholism. It is especially useful in the treatment of the morphine and opium habit, and to a less extent that of tobacco. It will often prove palliative in paralysis agitans and chorea, and in the wasting diseases of the aged.
Compare Agnus c., Coni., Phosphorus, Nux vomica, Phosphorus acid, Gelsemium, Picric acid.