He says further: "That, administered with great circumspection, it should prove useful in certain varieties of delirium, vertigos and cramps."
This is interesting coming from Hahnemann at the time when he had discovered the law, but had not as yet given it to the world.
_OEnanthe_ was considered in the last century as one of the most pernicious plants of Europe, especially for cattle, who, having eaten it, can neither vomit nor digest it and they soon die in convulsions; this from the root, however, as they eat the leaves with impunity. It is interesting to note that animals poisoned with it decompose rapidly.
Much of the following study is taken from a series of excellent papers on the drug, which have been appearing for over a year in "Le Journal Belge D'Homoeopathie," from the pen of Dr. Ch. DeMoor, of Alost, Belgium.
GENERAL ACTION.--From a very large collection of observations of cases of poisoning with _OEnanthe_, dating from 1556 to the present time and recorded in "Allen's Encyclopædia," the "Cyclopædia of Drug Pathogenesy," and in the article of Dr. DeMoor, above mentioned, we find that _OEnanthe crocata_ produces, almost invariably, convulsions of an epileptiform character and which are marked by the following symptoms:
Contraction of chest and oppressed breathing.
Dilated pupils or irregular. Eyeballs turned upward.
Convulsions are especially severe, at first tonic then clonic.
_OEnanthe_ also produces a delirium in which the patient becomes as if drunken, there is stupefaction, obscuration of vision and fainting.
The Greek name of the plant signifies "wine flower," and so-called on account of its producing a condition similar to wine drunkenness, and there is a difference, so I have heard, between wine and other beverages in this respect. Hiccoughs are also produced by the drug.
There is also great heat in the throat and stomach and a desire to vomit and to have stool, and a great deal of weakness of the limbs and cardialgia. Like other members of the same family, as _Conium_, it produces very much vertigo, this has always been present in the cases of poisoning with the plant. In a number of cases who had been poisoned by the drug the hair and nails fell out.
HOMOEOPATHIC ACTION AND APPLICABILITY.--The uses of _OEnanthe_, homoeopathically, have been taken from the reports above mentioned; the drug has never been proved, and it is doubtful if one could be found who would prove it to the convulsion-producing extremity. All the evidence in all the authorities shows clearly that the drug produces in man all the symptoms of epilepsy, and it is in that disease that clinical testimony is gradually accumulating. Accepting the theory that epilepsy is a disturbance or irritation in the cortex of the brain, it would seem that _OEnanthe crocata_, which produces congestion of the pia mater, would prove a close pathological simillimum to epilepsy. Its usefulness in this disease is unmistakable and only another proof of the truth of the homoeopathic law.