Abstract
Since the discovery of homoeopathy by our great master Dr. Hahnemann, the number of homoeopathic medicines is increasing day by day. There are a number of books of materia medica to understand the clinical utility of such medicines by different ways of study. Here in this article, we will understand the indications of homoeopathic medicine URTICA URENS in a descriptive way from the vast clinical experience of different stalwarts of homoeopathy.
Introduction
Homoeopathy is the medicine of vital stimulation : its aim, not physiological action, but vital reaction. And the amount of stimulus required to provoke reaction, in an organism rendered hypersensitive by disease, is seldom material.
In order to make such therapy possible, it was imperative that innumerable drugs should be fully tested as to their subversive powers, and their pathogenesis registered. Such ” Provings”, carefully conducted and faithfully recorded, form the Materia Media Pura of Hahnemann ; who thus made the Law similia similibus curentur practical, and, in long years of patient investigation, established also its corollaries.
Time has added, and adds, invaluable drugs to our wealth of available data. But not one jot or tittle has had to be superseded, for this reason: that Hahnemann dealt with, and taught us to deal with facts-” facts simply expressed in the changeless language of nature ” — and facts are for all time.
let’s study one of the drug Urtica urens from such proving as a clinical experiences of our stalwarts,
The dictionary calls the Urtica urens as “neglected weeds with stinging hairs”. And yet, no home in town or country should be without stinging- nettle tincture, Urtica urens, if only because of its magic power over BURNS, for almost instant relief of pain, and rapid healing. (This applies, of course, to fairly superficial burns- “burns of the first and second degrees”.)
Someone, doing a chemical experiment, exploded a small tube of boiling sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol) into face and eyes. It was quickly washed away, but there were extensive superficial burns, and a corneal ulcer.
Good old RUDDOCK, in the Domestic Homoeopathy, advised: a soft rag, moistened with a few drops of Urtica in water quickly wiped the pain out, and healed in a couple of days-so far as the skin was concerned.
One remembers as hotel boy, hurried into hospital, having severely scalded his face. He had to be admitted on account of shock, and Urtica was quickly applied. Next morning it was difficult to see where the scalds and been, except on edges of lips, etc., when had not been well covered. Otherwise there was no vesication, and no inflammation.
A doctor who could not believe the fairy tales told him regarding this power of Urtica, was advised to “burn his finger and try”. He did accidentally burn it a few hours later, and was convinced. The pain went in a few minutes, and it soon healed.
One could multiply, indefinitely, instances of the soothing and healing power of stinging nettles in burns.
One remembers with a shiver the burnt and scalded children of student days; and their shrieks, day after day, when we were instructed to get the dressings off-stuck to intensely painful wounds. But when one uses Urtica (pace asepsis!) there is no need by removing the dressings, to constantly interfere with healing. Be glad that they do “stick”: and merely water them well, from time to time, with Urtica lotion, to cleanse and keep them almost. They will drop off, as healing takes place. I have seen a small ulcer with a surface of pus, heal quickly under the little scab of pus when kept moist with Urtica.
Old burns, also! that have never healed. One small boy came up with terrible scars and contractions on thigh, and with considerable areas still ulcerated. These began to heal rapidly when compresses of Urtica were applied. And a cottage woman, one remembers, where an old burn just above the wrist had refused to heal, did heal promptly under the magic touch of a stinging nettle compress.
Burnett says, Urtica has been well proved; and has never been proved, for finer symptoms, in the potencies. But several provings are recorded.
One, a most dramatic one, in “a woman who drank two cupfuls of a hot infusion of two ounces of the herb”. The result was a most intense urticaria, “with burning, itching, numbness, swelling, oedema and vesication. Face, arms, chest and shoulders were affected-the whole upper part of the body down to the navel. The itching was so intense that the vesicles were scratched off, and exuded a large amount of serum. The look of the patient was monstrous: eyelids completely closed; upper lip, nose and ears frightfully swollen”. But the most astonishing thing was that in this woman, who had had no children for 3 years, and who had nursed none of her children, the breasts swelled up and discharged, first serum, then perfect milk; and a very copious secretion of milk lasted for eight days”.
Other provers got nettle-rash” especially on fingers and hands”.
We will quote two cases of nettle-rash, showing, inter alia, that the potency is of less importance than the remedy.
The first, After a prolonged course of Camembert cheese, there came occasional urticarial swellings of palms; but only when hot with walking. Camembert was suspected and let alone. Again Camembert, as a test, with the same result. Then Camembert was left finally alone. (This was in the early days of the Boer War, about 1900.)
Years later (some years after the Great War) in a strange place in the country one afternoon, a cup of tea with goat’s milk was drunk. A few hours later, after getting home, terrific irritation began, first in one place, then in another, then every where, till the victim was obliged to retire and tear off her clothes, in agonies of itching from scalp to heels, and she was forced to rub, till black and blue. She had been inclined to laugh at nettle-rash-till then! Happily Urtica was remembered, and a few drops of the strong tincture in water, sipped, brought speedy relief, and it was all gone by night, never to return since, i.e. in some ten years.
A second case. “She looked as if she had fallen, stripped, into a bed of nettles: not an inch free from weals. She got Urtica Urens 10M., one dose, and was clear next morning.” 2
[Compare: Bombyx; Rhus; Apis; Chloral; Astac; Puls (urticaria); Boletus luridus and Anacard (urticaria tuberosa)]1
LACTATION. Urtica has been used to promote the secretion of milk, and also to suppress it, in women who are weaning. In a case quoted in Clarke’s Dictionary, a woman with a lump in her breast was seen six weeks after childbirth, with stinging pain in the lump and in various parts of the body, and with entire absence of milk. Nothing helped of Urtica was given, “when in three days the breasts filled with milk, and the pains were relieved. The breasts had now to be supported and account of their fullness”.2 [Compare: Medusa, Nat mur, Lac can; Ricin]1
DELTOID RHEUMATISM. Another notable feature of the provings of Urtica was a very severe right deltoid rheumatism, and Urtica has proved curative in this distressing condition.
AGUE-MALARIA. In a charming and characteristic little story, he gives an account of his” first acquaintance with the nettle as a medicine”. “Twenty years ago I was treating a lady for intermittent fever of the mild English type, when one day my patient came tripping somewhat jauntily into my consulting room and informed me that she was quite cured of her fever, and wished to consult me in regard to another matter. I at once turned to my notes of her case, and inquired more closely into the matter of the cure, in order to duly credit my prescribed remedy with the cured, and the more so as ague is not always easily disposed of therapeutically. `Oh!’ said the lady, `I did not take your medicine at all, for when I got home I had such a severe attack of fever that my charwoman begged me to allow her to make me some nettle-tea, as that was a sure cure of fever. I consented, and she at once went into our garden, where here are plenty of nettles growing in a heap of rubbish and brickbats, and got some nettles, of which she made me a tea, and I drank it. It made me very hot. The fever left me, and I have not had it since.”
Burnett adds, “Honour to the charwoman of nettle-tea fame”
Burnett continues, “The thing escaped my mind of years, but one day being in difficulty about a case of ague, I treated it with a tincture of nettles and cured it straight away, and my next case also, and my next, and almost every case ever since, with very nearly uniform success.
Some of my cases of ague cured with nettle tincture were the most severe ones, invalided home from India and Burmah. And quite lately a patient in Siam, to whom I had sent a big bottle of nettle tincture, wrote to me, `The tincture you sent us has very greatly mitigated the fever we get here. Please order us another bottle.’”
Burnett says, “It is distinctly curious to note the remarkable effects of Natrum muriaticum and Urtica urens in gout as well as in ague and malarialism.”
GOUT. Urtica urens was one of Burnett’s great remedies, not only for malaria and ague-cake (he found in it a powerful “splenic”, but also” for its gravel-expelling power” and for gout.
He says, “Patients under the influence of small material doses of Urtica will often pass quantities of gravel”; (one of his patients” used to point to a spot under her spleen as her gravel pit”) and he says, “when I observed others who, being under the influence of Urtica urens, passed grit and gravel pretty freely for the first time in their lives, I came to the conclusion that Urtica possesses the power of eliminating urates from the economy. And it slowly became clear to my mind that Urtica might be the very remedy I had long been in quest of, viz., a quickly- acting, easily-obtained homoeopathic remedy for the ATTACKS of gout, or some of them; for of course we, of experience, never expect uniform results, any more than we expect all the trees of the forest to be of the same height”.
And he says, “in acute gout, it cuts short the attack in a safe manner. His usual way was to give five drops of the mother tincture in a wineglass full of quite warm water, say every two or three hours; and a few hours later he would hear, “Oh! the pain is gone, and I have passed a lot of gravel.” Acute gout was more common in his day, than with us: but I remember one case in a lady, whose foot was red and swollen and intensely painful, and who was in the habit of getting gouty attacks, Urtica urens cured very promptly.
For his success in curing acute gout, Dr.Burnett came to be known as “Dr. URTICA” in London West-end Clubland.2 [Compare: Lycop and Hedeoma (uric acid conditions)]1
Then again, FOR SUPPRESSION OF URINE, AND URAEMIA. One remembers a small boy, dying of tubercular meningitis, where the urine was suppressed, and the body had a highly urinous odour. A few drops of the strong tincture of stinging nettles caused the passage of urine, and the odour disappeared, and life was protected, prolonged. The same restoration of the urinary function was seen in a case of uraemia in the hospital a few years ago.
Burnett’s little book is crowded with brilliant cases, told in his inimitable style; we are here giving only the results of his experiences. As said, he used Urtica “in small material doses”, repeated pretty frequently (since they were acute illness) for some days.
In the course of his so using the remedy he got, as we have seen some pretty severe provings in some of his patients, which show the homoeopathicity of the drug: as able to cause, as well as to cure.
Urtica is said to be used for bee stings.2
Conclusion- from above wonderful journey through the clinical experiences of different stalwarts we can conclude that when Urtica urens used in the tincture and lower potencies it can be useful in different clinical conditions like burns, bee stings, agalactia, acute gout, nettle rash, uric acid diathesis, malaria, suppression of urine and uraemia etc.
References
- Boericke W. Boericke’s new manual of homoeopathic materia medica with repertory : including Indian drugs, nosodes, uncommon rare remedies, mother tinctures, relationships, sides of the body, drug affinities, & list of abbreviations. New Delhi: B. Jain Publishers; 2007.
- Margaret Lucy Tyler. Homoeopathic Drug Pictures. B. Jain Publishers; 1990.
