Apocynum cannabinum - Canadian Hemp
"CONSTITUENTS: Apocynin, apocynein, tannin, gallic acid, gum, starch, resin, wax.
PREPARATIONS: Decoctum Apocyni, Decoction of Apocynum. Dose: from half a dram to one dram. Specific Medicine Apocynum. Dose: from half of a minim to twenty minims.
Therapy: Apocynum improves the functional operation of the heart. Dr. Best reports two cases, where the heart was laboring tumultuously, with great irregularity. The radial pulse was almost imperceptible, except upon the every third or fourth beat. All other heart remedies had been tried and failed. This remedy accomplished all that could be desired. There was a very great increase in the flow of urine, the pulse became stronger, the heart turbulence and the dyspnea disappeared, and the patient recovered. Another patient, seventy-five years of age, with very irritable heart and constant cough, was relieved by the action of this remedy, in small, frequent doses.
Apocynum strengthens the heart's action, producing an increased tonicity and a regularity of movement, and stimulates the excretion of the watery portion of the urine, changing this fluid from a scanty, thick, turbid liquid to one normal, clear and free, rapidly reducing edema.
In the latter stages of heart diseases where hydropericardium is present, with other local or general effusions, it is prompt and efficient in its action, as it most materially strengthens the heart and improves the character of the circulation, while it removes the effusion and consequent oppression.
In the later stages of pneumonia where cyanosis and difficult breathing, with increased weakness of the heart, are threatening complications, Dr. Wilkenloh depends upon apocynum. It increases the power of the heart, improves capillary circulation, assists in overcoming hepatization, and acts upon the kidneys at the same time. She gives from five to ten drops until it loosens the action of the bowels. Then she reduces it to half a drop every half hour or hour. She has confidence in it in cardiac dropsy. She gives it for dropsy from arteriosclerosis, giving it in small doses with hypodermics of strychnine. She thinks we have much yet to learn of its influence.
It has been used in all local dropsies. It has cured several cases of hydrocephalus, and should be tried in these cases.
Edema, accompanying a mild form of asthmatic breathing, with irregular heart's action, has been cured, with all the symptoms, with this remedy. The recent reports of the action of apocynum include the influence of the remedy upon the heart. Dr. Winter believes that apocynum should be used in cerebrospinal meningitis, especially after the stage of effusion. He believes if to be the rational remedy. It may be combined with the other indicated remedies and echinacea. Dr. Shafer and other observer's have used it to settle the stomach and strengthen the heart during an attack of delirium tremens, or following a debauch. Its influence in the cases used was very prompt and satisfactory. Dr. Keys confirms this observation.
In the nephritis of pregnancy with albuminuria, apocynum lessens arterial tension while it overcomes the dropsy and assists in the reduction of blood pressure which in itself abates the quantity of albumin. If the pulse is strong and rapid, this influence is enhanced by the careful use of veratrum.
In females where there are greatly relaxed or flabby tissues, anemia, and a tendency to metrorrhagia or menorrhagia, with some little effusion in the ankles, with feeble kidney action, apocynum influences all the conditions. If iron be added for the anemia the influence will be prompt and satisfactory. It has considerable reputation in the control of passive hemorrhage among certain physicians.
Apocynum has cured many stubborn, intractable and very severe cases of sciatica. We do not undertake to explain its action in this disease. Half a dram of the specific apocynum added to four ounces of water, a teaspoonful every half hour, resulted in relief after a few doses. In the treatment of this disorder Webb and others use five drops over the sheath of the nerve, sometimes giving it from four to six times in a day, often with rapid results. Any toxic effect must be watched for.
Harvey Brown adds three drams of apocynum to four ounces of water and gives a teaspoonful every four hours for sciatica.
Trowbridge has used apocynum in doses of two drops four times a day where there is irregular and too frequent menstruation. In one case in his special work as an oculist where there was exophthalmic goiter with nervous irritability and irritable heart, he gave apocynum and this corrected all the conditions as well as the irregular menstruation, which he thinks is present in every female patient with this disorder. This suggestion should have attention.
From severe injury to the thigh, a patient of Dr. Neiderkorn developed a condition closely resembling dropsy of the extremities, but described by him with symptoms similar to acute traumatic phlebitis. The appearances so closely resembled the indications for apocynum that he gave this remedy in drop doses every two hours. There was a gradual reduction in the swelling, and a satisfactory abatement of the inflammatory symptoms with early recovery.
The Removal of Dropsical Accumulations.
In the treatment of dropsy I am convinced that the physiological processes involved have been misunderstood and therefore often wrongly treated. Failures have been attributed to the remedy, when they have been due to its improper administration. That this is too often the case in the use of remedies for other conditions, I am assured.
To illustrate: Cathartics are administered for their hydrogogue action in dropsy, either to directly reduce the quantity of the fluid within the tissues or to reduce the quantity of serum directly from the blood and thus induce a reabsorption, perhaps, of the serum which has been diffused outside the capillaries throughout the tissues.
It is well known that apocynum, elaterium, and hair cap moss, when given in proper dosage, will so influence the process of absorption that the diffused serum will be taken back through the medium of the capillaries, into the circulation and the dropsy will disappear without any active hydrogogue or diuretic action.
I first made this observation in 1882, of the action of hair cap moss. Both my own observations and those of other more recent writers will confirm this influence as being possible from the use of apocynum, elaterium, magnesium sulphate in small and frequently repeated doses, and one or two other remedies to a limited extent. Whether the remedy acts through its direct influence upon the heart, and the circulation of the blood, or upon the secretory or excretory glands of the intestinal canal, as elaterium is supposed to act, or upon both these processes, as apocynum acts, or primarily upon the kidneys, there is no doubt in my mind that an influence is exercised upon the blood pressure-upon arterial tension and perhaps also upon the specific gravity of the blood which influences absorption and the osmotic processes, promoting a reabsorption of the diffused serum into the capillaries without any apparent loss of fluid by increased intestinal, renal, or other eliminative action.
If it were possible to know how this reabsorption could be always induced, it would be of great advantage, as it at once restores the quantity of fluid to the circulation, and prevents the prostration and debilitation of the patient, present, often after the removal of so great a quantity of fluid, which sometimes results in the death of the patient, before the influence of restoratives can be administered. I regret that I cannot give the dosage, exact in each case, but it is small always, usually much less than the commonly prescribed dose, and the dose should be frequently repeated. With apocynum this may be observed with twenty drops of the specific medicine in four ounces of water, a teaspoonful given every hour. With elaterium from one-thirtieth to one-fortieth of a grain should be given every hour. The fact that there is no prostration, that the patient's strength and vital forces are. retained by this process, is a strong argument in favor of a knowledge of it, and of its adoption. We must look for this influence with other remedies."
(Finley Ellingwood: The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1915)