SANTONINUM


Santoninum homeopathy medicine – drug proving symptoms from Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica by TF Allen, published in 1874. It has contributions from R Hughes, C Hering, C Dunham, and A Lippe….


Introduction

A crystallizable acid. C15H18O3. Santoninic acid. Obtained from different species of Russian and Levantine Artemisia, especially from “Semen cinae.” See Cina. Preparation: Triturations.

Mind

Delirium. Consciousness clear when awake, but during its restless sleep light delirium showed itself (second day). Felt very;much excited, and inclined to dance and laugh (soon). Hysterical laughter. Restless, irritable (first day); wanted everything; was satisfied with nothing (second day). The best marked symptom was a feeling of profound and most unusual depression, accompanied by so much irresolution and want of confidence in my own powers as to render me quite unfit for work of any kind; this invariably followed even a single 5 grain dose, and beginning with dulness and heaviness, ran on into very much that sort of melancholia which I imagine sometimes produces. Unconscious. Comatose.

Head

Vertigo. Dizzy feelings (in nine cases). Giddiness. Head turning and twisting, restless (first day). Dulness of the head.

Headache. In almost all cases of cured acute choroiditis, with the exudation more or less colored, it generally caused headache.

Pain in the forehead; (after 5 grains). Fullness about the temples.

Eyes

Blue rings around the eyes. Eyes rolled convulsively. Distortion of the eyes. Pressure in the supraorbital region. Pressure in the eyes. Pupil. Dilated pupils. Pupils insensible. Pupils dilated for several days. Pupils enormously dilated and insensible.

Pupils enormously dilated. Vision. Visions (in eight cases).

Flickering before the eyes. Objects seemed to totter and dance, and the child seemed to see various figures, cherries, animals, etc. Photophobia and lachrymation (second day). When the narcotism seemed to have disappeared (i. e., when he had got used to it), he went to dine at a restaurant; the experiment was over and forgotten; during lively conversation in a friendly circle, in comes the waiter with yellow egg soup; it smelt peculiar to him, and also looked quite red; perfectly shocked, he sent the soup back as entirely spoilt; to the amusement of his friends, he persisted obstinately in asseverations which to them were inexplicable; they came to words, and my hot-headed colleague left the “good-for-nothing eating-house” in a pet. The conversation turned causally upon a gentleman’s coat, and led to a dispute; one said it was yellow, the other a fine violet color; the gentleman, whose coat was gray, and was not aware that one had made herself violet-sighted, the other violet-blind (or yellow-sighted), was astounded; they, too, in their discussion, had forgotten the cause, and could not, without the help of a third person, shake off the illusions. The blue sky in the evening twilight looked green, not so during the day. Objects seemed green, as if beheld through green glass. All objects became green and wavering. Vision green. Everything looked green.

Between five and six o’clock he thought he perceived a very faint greenish tint upon white window curtains, but ascribed it at first to his imagination. At six o’clock the gas flame, chandeliers, the fire in the stove, and all white object strongly illuminated, assumed a very intense yellowish tinge; other objects retained their ordinary colors. This effect continued without intermission during the whole evening, and did not diminish until half-past ten o’clock, and was still appreciable at midnight and until two o’clock in the morning, when the doctor went to bed. If the dose exceed 5 grains in the adult, a curious effect upon the retina is produced, the patient, for an hour or more, occasionally seeing all objects tinted green or yellow, as though he were looking through colored spectacles. Yellow sight (in thirty cases); violet sight (in nineteen cases). Very sudden yellow vision; all objects seem enveloped in a yellow mist (four hours after 2 grains). Sees things yellow (second day). Intense yellow and green vision, lasting an hour (three-quarters of an hour after 3 grains). Yellow vision. A yellow tinge imparted to surrounding objects, similar to that assumed by the salt itself when exposed to the light for any time. He became conscious, while reading, of a yellowish tint on the paper and of a yellow haze in the air; his own hands, and the complexion of others, appeared of a sallow unhealthy color, and the evening sky, which was really of a pale-yellow color, seemed to be light-green (after three hours); vision was not perfectly distinct for some hours, and was accompanied by a certain vagueness of definition.

Twenty minutes after swallowing 5 grains I observed flames to assume a decidedly yellow color, as though spirits were being burnt; ordinary white glass globes became deeply tinted with yellowish-green, and writing-paper presented the same phenomena in somewhat less marked degree; during three hours the tints gradually increased, after which they faded by slow stages, until vision was restored to its normal standard. At first light- colored objects seemed yellow, dark-colored of their natural hue; afterwards both light and dark became yellow-green, and red seemed violet. Red and blue always seen in their complementary colors green and orange. Carmine red looked fallow, brick-red bronze; Berlin blue, greenish. Saw everything that she looked at through a yellow light. All objects seem yellowish-green. Visual aberration, green and yellow being the prevailing colors. The symptoms were more or less present until the Santonin was expelled from he stomach and bowels by a full dose of castor oil.

All objects seem intensely yellowish-green (second day). The patients see objects yellow after the second dose; in those patients affected with atrophy of the arteries of the retina, as well as in those suffering from subacute choroiditis, with absorption of pigment, the yellow coloration of vision in not observed; in certain of the latter cases objects, on the contrary, appear whitish. The phenomena of visual illusion in persons poisoned by it are reducible to distinct classes. Every one, however small the quantity taken, could not recognize violet light; saw the spectrum as if curtailed at the violet end; overlooked everything of a pure violet color; whilst in all mixtures containing violet and yellow, the complementary yellow appeared to predominate; this has been called yellow-sight. Quite different is the next higher degree of intoxication; the subject of it is then unable to distinguish colors which on the healthy make a different, even an opposite impression, such as lilac and dark-gray, or violet and black; he not only confounds these colors with one another, but a great many dissimilar seem all alike to him; the colors which are mistaken for each other had always a different degree of purity and strength, which, however, continues unalterably the same for each other, so that when one had exactly thus mistaken, one can with perfect certainty and precision determine a priori by calculation with which two of all the other colors these two will be confounded; there is hardly a single color which can with certainty be distinguished from the rest; each one resembles an endless number of others, and thus the infinite host of colors which a healthy person can appreciate is reduced to an extremely small number; this stage manifests itself in the fact that all colors, the darker they really are, the more they resemble a tint between violet and ultramarine; with the determination of these, all other changes of color are determined.

Nose

Hallucinations of smell (in six cases).

Face

Convulsive movements of the muscles of the face, especially of the lips and lids. Slight twitching of facial muscles set in (second day). Face pinched; drawing in of lips over the teeth, with pinched expression of mouth and nose (next morning). Face pale. Pale around the mouth, worse in the afternoon (first day).

One cheek white, the other red, resembling a hectic flush (first day); red color of one cheek for several days.

Mouth

Grating of the teeth during sleep. Teeth clenched. Tongue deep red (second day). Dryness of the tongue. Frothing from the mouth.

Burning pains apparently torment her, as she forces everything in her mouth (second night). Hallucinations of taste (in five cases).

Throat

The glands of the neck, parotid, and submaxillary commenced swelling in about five days, and continued to increase until the throat was so filled as nearly to prevent swallowing.

Stomach

Deficient appetite (after 5 grains). Intense thirst. Continual thirst for ice-water, which she swallowed greedily (next morning). Frequent eructations. Eructations. Nausea (soon).

Nausea and vomiting; (fourteen cases). Vomiting. Vomiting (after first dose); violent (after second dose). Vomiting and purging, with severe abdominal pains. Vomiting of yellowish slimy mucus set in at 11 P.M. and continued till forenoon. Excessively vomiting, accompanied by severe pain in the stomach and belly (after half an hour). One night, after taking a spoonful of nourishment, he choked and threw up half a teacupful of blood and pus, and died without any struggle. Dull pain in the pit of the stomach (second day).

TF Allen
Dr. Timothy Field Allen, M.D. ( 1837 - 1902)

Born in 1837in Westminster, Vermont. . He was an orthodox doctor who converted to homeopathy
Dr. Allen compiled the Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica over the course of 10 years.
In 1881 Allen published A Critical Revision of the Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica.