Serenoa serrulata (repens) - Saw Palmetto
"CONSTITUENTS: -
PREPARATIONS: Specific Medicine Saw Palmetto. Dose: ten drops to one dram.
Therapy: It is a sedative to all irritable conditions of these organs, and is a profound nutritive tonic, operating much like phosphorus. It increases the size and secreting power of the mammary glands where they are abnormally small and inactive. It improves the tone, and overcomes irritability of the ovaries, relieving dysmenorrhea when due to atonicity. It may be given with confidence in wasting of the testes in the early stages, and the author has retarded the development of varicocele and has developed the growth and nutrition of the testes materially by its use.
To this agent is ascribed considerable power in reducing the size of hypertrophied prostate in old men, and in quickly relieving cystic and other disorders incident to this condition. In the writer's hands it has produced no marvelous cures of this disorder, but it has been of assistance to other measures and could not be well dispensed with. It relieves irritation of the bladder to a satisfactory extent, correcting the irritable character of the urine, increases the muscular power of the patient to expel the urine and produces a sense of relief, that is in every way gratifying and satisfactory....."
(Finley Ellingwood: The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1915)