Strychnos ignatii - Bean of St. Ignatius
"CONSTITUENTS: Strychnine, brucine.
PREPARATIONS: Specific Medicine Ignatia. Dose: from one-sixth to one half minim. Prescribed from five to fifteen drops in four ounces of water, a teaspoonful every two hours. Fluid Extract of Ignatia. Dose: from one to ten minims. Tincture of Ignatia. Dose: from five to twelve minims.
Therapy: Some hysterical women are troubled with aphonia, others with amenorrhea and in others the menses are replaced by a severe leuchorrheal discharge. All these symptoms are benefited by ignatia. These patients are nearly all out of tone. The remedy is a vitalizer and nerve tonic, a restorer of nerve function. The patients are anemic, they have cold skin and cold extremities, and flabby inelastic tissues. There is lack of power of mental concentration. The patient is usually very forgetful.
Usually twenty drops of specific ignatia, in four ounces of water, a teaspoonful from four to six times a day will be a sufficient dose.
This agent is especially applicable to hysterical females with nervous weakness from persistent uterine disorder.
In hysteria the agent is given in small doses where the following specific conditions are present: Dragging pains in pelvis, dysmenorrhea with uterine colic, sexual apathy, congestive headache, burning on the soles of the feet, reduced general strength. It will increase sexual desire.
In nervous depression, from whatever cause, Ignatia in small closes frequently repeated and persisted in will be found an important remedy.
Ignatia is suggested as an excellent remedy for sighing respiration. It acts upon the central nervous forces like nux vomica."
(Finley Ellingwood: The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1915)