Glonoine

Sudden local congestion, especially to head and chest; bursting headache rising up from neck, with great throbbing and sense of expansion as if to burst; cannot bear the least jar.

Can't bear anything on the head, especially hat; or pressure as of a hat.

Over-heating in the sun, or sunstroke.

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This is, in the first place, one of our great head remedies. It has intense pain in the head, with great throbbing and sensation of fullness and constriction of the vessels of the neck. There are so many symptoms attending this condition of congestion that it is not wise to try to give them all here. I used, in my early practice, to carry a small vial of the 1st dilution in my case on purpose for those who were inclined to sneer at the young doctor and his sweet medicine, and many a disbeliever have I convinced, in about five or ten minutes, that there might be power in small doses of sweet medicine, by dropping on the tongue a drop of this preparation, for it seldom failed to produce its characteristic throbbing headache within that time.

One lady, not willing to acknowledge that it affected her, rose to leave the room, and fainted and would have fallen to the floor if I had not caught her. No one ever asked after that experiment for any more proof of the power of homoeopathic medicine. This throbbing headache, seeming to arise from the neck, is very characteristic, and the throbbing is not a mere sensation but is visible in the carotid arteries. The vessels are full to bursting, and if their walls were not healthy there is danger of apoplexy.

No remedy equals this one for producing sudden and severe congestion of the head, and none can cure it quicker when indicated by the symptoms. The remedies that stand nearest Glonoine in their effect on the head I believe to be Belladonna and Melilotus. Belladonna and Glonoine both have the fullness, pain and throbbing, but that of Glonoine is more intense and sudden in its onset, and, on the other hand, subsides more rapidly when relieved. Again, Glonoine is better adapted to the first or congestive stage of inflammatory diseases of the brain, while Belladonna goes further and may still be the appropriate remedy after the inflammatory stage is fully initiated.

Belladonna is better by bending the head backward; Glonoine worse. Belladonna is made worse by having the head uncovered, and suffers from having the hair cut; Glonoine must have the head uncovered, can't bear to wear his hat, or wants the hair cut.

Belladonna is worse lying down, even if he keeps still; Glonoine, though sometimes worse after lying down, is also sometimes better when lying still. One symptom very characteristic of Glonoine is, that the patient carries the head very carefully, for the least jar or shaking of it greatly aggravates the pain. Another peculiar symptom is, it seems to the patient that there is not only throbbing, but there is an undulating sensation as if the brain were moving in waves synchronous with the pulse.

There is more disturbance of the heart action with Glonoine than with Belladonna, though both have it strongly. Glonoine has a sensation of rush of blood to the heart or chest.

Melilotus also has great congestion to the head, with pain and sense of fullness. Not being so thoroughly proven as Belladonna and Glonoine, we cannot so clearly indicate the exact place for it, but there is one very prominent symptom which always makes one think of it, viz.: "Glowing redness of the face." No remedy that I know of has it more strongly. Glonoine and Belladonna may both have very red face; on the other hand, a pale face, with the other congestive symptoms, does not contraindicate them, but does Melilotus.

Then, again, with Melilotus the head symptoms are often relieved by a profuse epistaxis, which is also another very prominent symptom of this remedy. I cured a very bad case of typhus cerebralis, and also a case of insanity of long standing, with this remedy, being guided to it by these symptoms.

"Loses his way in well-known streets" is a symptom of Glonoine that has several times been confirmed. The local congestions of Glonoine are often found in different diseases; for instance, climacteric flushings are often most felt in the head. Glonoine cures such cases. It is also useful in puerperal convulsions.

And another symptom often present in these cases is, a sense as if the head were expanding from fullness. Now look out for convulsions and give Glonoine, especially if there be albumen in the urine. Congestion to the head from suppressed or retarded menses sometimes finds a remedy here; also, different pathological conditions of the heart, but the symptoms must be present.

For sunstroke it is probably oftener indicated than any other remedy; also for the after-sufferings therefrom. Not only from sunstroke, but from other bad effects of radiate heat; for instance, children get sick in the night after sitting too long or falling asleep before an open coal fire.

Then, again, warm room increases the headache and warm bed the faceache.

"Burning between the shoulders" is another symptom of this remedy, like Lycopodium and Phosphorus. Ammonium muriaticum and Lachnanthes have the opposite. While we are here now I will call attention to another remedy, which, for flushings and congestions to head and face, resembles Glonoine, that is, Amyl. nit.

MELILOTUS ALBA (Sweet Clover).

Here is a remedy of undoubted great value. The best rendering of it is given by Dr. H. C. Allen in the transactions of the I. H. A., page 104, year 1887, although a very fair one is found in the "Guiding Symptoms" (Hering). The provers all had fearful headaches and haemorrhages except myself (Bowen).

The congestion to the brain is equal to that of Belladonna and Glonoine, and the most characteristic symptom of such congestion is intense redness of the face, with throbbing carotids, which is often > by a profuse epistaxis. Several years ago I cured a very bad case of mania of the religious form with the 6th potency. This lady had had one similar attack a few years before, when, after she had been given up by two allopaths, who said she must go to the asylum, I relieved her with Stramonium. She was very loquacious at that time.

This time Stramonium failed, but no indication of the intensely red face I gave her Melilotus with a rapid and permanent cure. The first cause of these attacks was overheating in the sun.

One more case will illustrate the action of this truly great remedy.

During a run of typhoid fever in a young lady she had frequent attacks of profuse epistaxis. One attack followed another, sometimes twice or three times in twenty-four hours, until I became alarmed on account of the great loss of blood.

She had been subject to frequent attacks of nosebleed since childhood, from the time she was injured in the nasal passage by a button she pushed up the nose, and which a "regular" claimed, after much violence, to have pushed down her throat, but which in reality remained in her nose a long time -several months- when it was ejected in a fit of coughing and sneezing. Two years before I carried her through a very severe attack of diphtheria, which was also attended by severe nosebleed, occurring at night, the blood hanging in clots from the nose like icicles.

Mercurius sol. 30th then stopped it very nicely. Now the blood clotted some, but not so markedly. Mercurius did no good. Every attack has preceded by the most intense redness and flushing of the face and throbbing of the carotids I ever witnessed. The nosebleed would invariably follow within a few hours this apparent rush of blood to head and face. Belladonna did no good. Neither did Erigeron, which, in Hering, "has congestion of the head, red face, nosebleed and febrile action."

Melilotus 30th relieved promptly not only these attacks of congestion to head and nosebleed, but the whole case afterward progressed without an untoward symptom to perfect recovery.

F. A. Waddell, M. D., reports a case of pneumonic congestion, in which the characteristic red face and epistaxis were present, as cured with this remedy.

Dr. Bowen, to whom belongs the credit of first introducing this remedy to the profession, reports many cases of headaches, colic, cramps in the stomach and spasms relieved and cured by it. It seems to me that this remedy should be classed with Belladonna and Glonoine, and never forgotten in comparison with remedies having strong head symptoms.