Gelsemium sempervirens

 Generalities

 – Gels. centres its action upto the MISCLES and MOTOR NERVES.

 – In muscles it causes overpowering ACHING; TIREDNESS; HEAVINESS; WEAKNESS AND SORENESS esp. felt in the muscles of the extremities.

 – Affection of motor nerves produce all types of functional paralysis – of eyes; throat, larynx, anus, bladder etc. or TREMORS or twitchings; of single muscles, face, chin, tongue etc.

 – Circulation becomes sluggish causing passive arterial or venous congestion; with sense of fulness and heaviness in different organs; heart, liver etc.

 – Catarrh of MUCOUS MEMBRANES cause watery discharges.

 – General state of paresis, bodily and mental.

 – Complete relaxation and prostration.

 – Wants to lie down quietly; half reclined; wants to be held.

 – Dulness; dizziness, drowsiness; eye or visual effects; tremors; and polyuria; one or two of these symptoms usually accompany most of the diseased conditions in which Gels. is indicated.

 – Inco-ordination of muscles, which do not obey the will.

 – Chorea of pregnancy.

 – Convulsions; hysterical.

 – Nervous affections of cigar makers.

 – Body feels light in onanists or hysterical subjects.

 – Influenza.

 – Measles.

 – Pellagra.

 – Post diphtheritic paralysis.

 – Paralysis agitans.

 – Ill effects of fright, fear, depressing emotions, anger, bad news, unpleasant surprise.

 – Masturbation, traumatic shock.

 – Alternate pelvic organ symptoms with head symptoms.

 – Weak, tired, delicate, timid, excitable, easy to anger persons, children and adolescents.

 – Never well since the flu.

 – Coma, and apoplexy; sub-arachnoid.

 Worse

 – EMOTIONS.

 – DREAD.

 – Shocks.

 – Ordeals.

 – Motion.

 – Surprise.

 – Weather – HUMID; SPRING; foggy.

 – Heat of sun; summer.

 – Periodically.

 – Tobacco.

 – Thunder storms.

 – Cold – damp weather.

 – dentition.

 – When thinking of his ailments.

 Better

 – Profuse urination; sweating.

 – Shaking.

 – Alcoholic drinks.

 – Mental efforts.

 – Bending forwards.

 – Continued motion.

 – Afternoon.

 – Reclining, with head held high.

 Mind

 – Confusion; acts as if crazy.

 – Dazed.

 – Apathetic.

 – Depsire to be quiet or left alone.

 – Wants to throw himself from a height.

 – DREAD; of falling; of ordeals, death, pain.

 – Indifferent regarding his illness.

 – Answers slowly.

 – Cataleptic immobility, with dilated pupils, closed eyes but conscious.

 – Child starts, grasps the nurse and screams as if afraid of falling.

 – Discerning power slow.

 – Effects of grief, can not cry; broods over her loss.

 Head

 – VERTIGO; spreads from occiput; as if drunk, with visual symptoms.

 – Dull HEAVY or band like headache; around the occiput; to over eyes; agg. tight cap; amel. shaking; lying with head high; after profuse urination.

 – Swelled feeling in head.

 – Meningitis – congestive stage, pain at the back of head and dilated pupils.

 – Pressure pain from the vertex to shoulders.

 – Pain in temples extending into ear, wing of nose and chin.

 – Soreness of the scalp.

 – Apoplexy; sub-arachnoid.

 – Blood rushes from the occiput to the forehead.

 – Hot, with cold limbs.

 – Migraine begins at 2 or 3 a.m.  amel. in the afternoon.

 – Can not hold erect.

 – Fontanelle pulsate strongly.

 Eyes

 – Pupils dilated.

 – HEAVY DROOTING EYELIDS.

 – Diplopia; when looking sideways, during pregnancy.

 – Blind spells.

 – Sight dim or swimming.

 – Photomania.

 – Affections of vision before migraine.

 – Eyes; red sore aching; suffused.

 – Detached retina; from injury or myopia.

 – Glaucoma.

 – Orbital neuralgia with contraction and twitching of muscles.

 – Amaurosis from masturbation.

 – Hysterical amblyopia.

 – Eye pains extend to occiput.

 – Retinitis.

 – Gauze before.

 – Corrects discomfort in eyes even after accurately adjusted glasses.

 – Vitreous hazy.

 Ears

 – Sudden loss of hearing for a short time.

 – Pain while swallowing.

 – Impaired hearing from cold.

 Nose

 – Stuffed.

 – Coryza, with thin acrid watery discharge.

 – Sensation as if hot water flowing from the nostrils.

 – Summer cold.

 – Sneezing; early morning.

 Face

 – Hot heavy, full, dusky red; besotted or expressionless.

 – Chin quivers.

 – Lower jaw dropped.

 – Lower jaw wags sideways.

 – Paralysis.

 Mouth

 – Tongue; heavy, numb, partially paralyzed; speech thick, as if drunk, he can hardly speak.

 – Saliva coloured yellow as from blood.

 – Tongue, numb, trembles while protruding.

 – Thick yellow coating on tongue.

 – Muscles around the mouth seem contracted.

 Throat

 – Swallowing difficult.

 – Paralytic dysphagia esp. agg. from warm food.

 – Swallowing causes pain into the ear.

 – Feeling of a painful lump in throat that can not be swallowed, in hysterical women.

 – Pain from throat to the ear.

 – Tonsillitis.

 – Post-diphtheritic paralysis.

 – Sore throat during menses.

 – Paralytic dyspagia after cerebral apoplexy.

 Stomach

 – Usually thirstless; but thirst with sweat.

 – Little appetite but can take food or drink.

 – Feeling of emptiness of weakness in the stomach, or bowels.

 – Cramps in stomach, agg. riding or sittinng erect.

 – Hiccough, agg. evening.

 Abdomen

 – Passive congestion of liver.

 – Griping in the gall bladder.

 – Periodical colic.

 – Copious yellow stools.

 – Diarrhoea; painless; in nervous persons; after sudden emotions as grief, fright, bad news, anticipation of an unusual ordeal.

 – Stools, cream coloured; tea-green.

 – Paralysis of sphincter ani.

 – Prolapse or rectal pains after labour.

 – Involuntary stools.

 Urinary

 – Profuse, clear, watery urine; with chill and trembling, amel. headache.

 – Incontinence from excitement; from paralysis of sphincter.

 – Alternate dysuria and enuresis.

 – Flow intermittent.

 – Retention.

 – Constant urination; hysterical.

 Male

 – Involuntary emissions without erections.

 – Genitals cold, relaxed.

 – Dragging pain in testes.

 – Profuse warm sweat on scrotum.

 – Sexual power exhausted, slightest caress causes an emission.

 Female

 – Uterus heavy sore; feels as if squeezed (antiflexion).

 – Dysmenorrhoea; with scanty flow; pains extend to back and hips.

 – Labour pains go up; backward or down the thighs.

 – Deep yellow leucorrhoea; with aching across lower part of the back.

 – Os rigid.

 – False labour pains.

 – Threatened abortion from sudden depressing emotions.

 – As of a wave from uterus to throat, with choking feeling, – impedes labour.

 – Nervous chills-first stage of labour.

 – Coition difficult from contraction of vaginal muscles.

 – Epileptiform convulsions at menstrual period or from suppressed menses.

 – Twitching of muscles of the whole body with drowsiness, before puerperal convulsions.

 – Severe after pains.

 Respiratory

 – Hoarseness; during menses; in hysteria or after depressing emotions.

 – Tiresome, slow breathing.

 – As of a lump behind the chest.

 – Spasms of glottis; long crowing inspiration, sudden and forcible expiration.

 – Dry cough, with sore chest and fluent coryza.

 – Burning in larynx and chest, when coughing.

 Heart

 – Sore.

 – Feeling as if heart would stop beating, if she did not move about.

 – Pulse slow, soft, weak, full and flowing.

 – Weak slow pulse; of old age.

 – Pain in heart on rising from seat.

 Neck and back

 – Neck feels bruised, unable to hold the head.

 – Dull pain up and down in spine; amel. walking; with occipital pains.

 – Pains under scapula.

 Extremities

 – Hard aching in humerus (R).

 – Hands; hot dry numb esp. palms.

 – Wants hands in cool water.

 – Cramps in muscles of the forearm.

 – Professional neurosis.

 – Writer’s cramp.

 – Heavy lower limbs.

 – Excessive trembling and weakness of limbs.

 – Knees weak agg. descending; tottering gait; can not direct his legs.

 – Coldness of wrists and hands.

 – Feeling of partial luxation of patella when walking.

 Sleep

 – DROWSINESS.

 – Starts on falling to sleep.

 – Heavy stupid sleep.

 – Sleepiness of students.

 – Sleeplessness from mental excitement; thinking or tobacco.

 Skin

 – Hot dry; moist; yellow.

 Fever

 – Chill with aching and languor; mixed with heat or alternating with heat; chill up and down back.

 – Cold hands and feet.

 – Heat – with drowsiness.

 – THIRST ABSENT; with trembling.

 – Cold sweat.

 – Bilious remittent; malarial; typhoid; cerebro-spinal fevers.

 – Measles.

 – Nervous, shuddering, chill; preceded by visual disturbances.

 COMPLEMENTARY.

 – Arg-n; Sep.

Source: Phatak Materia medica