Berberis Vulgaris - General symptoms - Clarke

GENERAL

General

Barberry. (Britain.) N. O. Berberidaceae. Tincture of the bark of the root.

The usual preparations of Berberis are made from the root bark.

Chills and fever are among the prominent effects of Berb. vulg. "Coldness of body with hot face, commencing 11 a.m.; burning heat in afternoon, agg. during night." Ague with enlargement of spleen, of spleen pains.

Affections of liver and kidneys are strongly marked; but Berb. is a medicine of wide range.

Movement agg. its complaints.

Stitches are frequent, and a "bubbling sensation" or "bubbling stitches" are characteristic.

A bubbling feeling as if water were coming up through the skin.

Tearing, burning pains or bubbling sensation in joints.

The mental condition is one of indifference, apathy.

Melancholy, with inclination to weep.

There is aversion to darkness, terrifying apparitions in the twilight.

In the head there is vertigo and heaviness.

Darting and shooting pains often changing their localities; agg. movement, amel. open air.

Heat of head after dinner or in afternoon.

Puffy feeling in head; as if it were becoming larger.

Scalp tense. The face is pale, with dingy grey tinge, sunken cheeks, deep-set eyes, surrounded with bluish and blackish grey border.

Mouth dry and sticky; painful white blisters on tip of tongue.

The pit of the stomach is puffed up.

Sticking pain in region of liver and gall-bladder shooting up to left shoulder, agg. by pressure.

Gall-stone colic, followed by jaundice.

Gnawing pain in right hypochondrium, shooting up to left scapula.

Pains shoot down from tenth rib to navel.

Burning in either inguinal region (especially right).

Berberis produces both constipation (sheep-dung stools) and diarrhoea, and a number of symptoms about the anus.

Haemorrhoids, with itching or burning, particularly after stool, which frequently is hard and covered with blood.

Fistula in ano with painful pressure in perinaeum, extending deep into pelvis (left side).

The urinary organs are markedly affected.

The emission of urine is frequently accompanied by pains in thighs and loins.

Lancinating, or tearing, bubbling pains in region of kidneys; agg. stooping and rising again, sitting or lying; amel. standing.

Violent sticking pains in bladder, extending from kidneys into urethra, with urging to urinate.

Many cases of (especially right) renal colic have been cured by it.

Frequent urging to urinate.

Urine dark yellow, red, becoming turbid, copious; mucous sediment, or transparent, jelly-like or reddish, bran-like sediment.

Urine slimy when passed, depositing copious loamy yellowish sediment.

Greenish urine depositing mucus.

During urination burning in urethra, or bladder, pressure in bladder, cutting, burning, or stitches in urethra.

Dragging or lancinating pains in spermatic cord, extending into testes.

Cold feeling in prepuce, glans, testes, and scrotum.

In the female a marked symptom is absence of pleasurable sensation during coition.

Uterine symptoms and leucorrhoea associated with painful urinary symptoms.

Dysmenorrhoea, pains radiating in all directions down thighs, &c.

Vagina intensely painful; reddened.

Violent pain in back, with menses which are too scanty.

It is a leading remedy in lumbago; pains extend from back, round body, down leg; with red sediment in urine.

Numbness, stiffness, and lameness in kidney region.

Many old troubles in the back.

Sufferings agg. by fatigue.

Aching in small of back; agg. sitting; or lying; in the morning on awakening.

Neuralgia under finger-nails.

B. Simmons has verified a symptom of Berb. which may be regarded as characteristic.

A gentleman of 52 complained of rheumatic pains in his legs and loss of walking power.

After he had walked a short distance he was compelled to stop from a feeling of intense weariness, heaviness, lameness, and stiffness of the legs, which fell sore as if bruised.

A single dose effected a complete cure, improvement commencing on the fourth day.

Stuart Close (H. P. xix. 218) records the cure with Berb. 200 of a woman who had cutting, burning pains in the balls of the feet on stepping.

On, standing with most of the weight on the heels she had no pain.

On rising in morning sensation in soles as if stepping on needles.

There is great weakness, like fainting, after a walk, with perspiration and heat on the upper part of the body; cold, pale, sunken face and oppression of breathing.

Great relaxation, with disinclination to do anything.

On the indication "tumours and sessile growths," Ozanam cured a case of polypus of vocal cords, red, with a sessile base. Thuja ^Thuja had failed.

Berb. 200 was given at first with good effect, the attenuation being gradually reduced with increasingly good effect until the growth disappeared entirely under the 1x, Guernsey admirably sums up the remedy as follows "Affects particularly the lumbar region; kidneys; uterus.

The patient is sometimes unable to tell the exact locality, but the pain is somewhere in the back and shoots up the back; or into the spermatic cord, or testes, bladder, buttocks or legs.

The pain may shoot up or down, or both ways.

Pains may be felt all over the body, emanating from the back; the pains are of a sticking, pricking, lancinating, or jerking character, flying about now here and now there.

There is often a bubbling sensation in the region of the kidneys; this sensation may occur elsewhere, but it is usually found here." Great sleepiness during day and after dinner.

After riding much, great sense of weakness in kidney region.

Suited to Bilious diathesis.

Cases where renal or vesical symptoms are prominent.

Catamenia insufficient, with acute drawing pains in the whole body, painful inflation of the abdomen, pain in the loins, shootings in the chest, dejected aspect, with violent pains in the head.

or with ill-humour, disgust of life, dejection, smarting pains in the vagina, sensation of burning and excoriation in the anus, and pains in the arms, as far as the shoulders and the nape of the neck.

Clinical

Biliary colic. Bilious attack. Bladder affections. Calculus. Duodenum, catarrh of. Dysmenorrhoea. Fevers. Fistula. Gall-stones. Gravel. Herpes. Irritation. Jaundice. Joint affections. Knee, pain in. Leucorrhoea. Liver disorder. Lumbago. Ophthalmia. Oxaluria. Renal colic. Polypus. Rheumatism. Sacrum, pain in. Side pain. Spermatic cords, neuralgia of. Spleen, affections of. Tumours. Urine, disorders of. Vaginismus.