Asarum Europaeum — Homeopathic Remedy Profile

Asarabacca, the European snake-root of the Aristolochiaceae, was known chiefly as an emetic before Hahnemann's proving pulled its finer picture into view: hypersensitiveness of the nerves, a peculiar craving for cold, and sensations of lightness as though the ground had given way underfoot. It suits chilly, sedentary, literary constitutions, and elderly people who grow dizzy easily. Prescribed most often from 30C upward, with 200C on record for lingering ocular inflammation.

At a Glance

Source and Preparation

The remedy is prepared from tincture of the root and whole fresh plant of Asarum europaeum L., a low woodland herb of the birthwort family. Boericke lists the historical dose as "Tincture and all potencies", which means the pharmacy carries two distinct registers. The herbal drug in Ø or low decimals is dosimetric; the aristolochic-acid family of alkaloids to which this genus belongs has real toxicity, and the crude plant is not a domestic tea. Classical prescribing sits at 30C and above, where no molecule remains and the symptom picture, not the pharmacology, decides the case. Every safety consideration attached to the tincture belongs to that lower register alone; it does not travel up the scale. What acts at 30C is the dynamic preparation, prescribed on the totality of the case.

The Essence of Asarum

The whole remedy turns on one hinge: the nerves are laid bare and the flesh feels light. A person who needs it flinches at the sound of a fingernail on silk, cannot bear the rattle of paper, is unsettled by the mere idea that someone might scratch a surface with a nail. Emotion runs straight to the skin as cold shivers. The head empties under any attempt to concentrate, and the body seems to lift; walking in open air, they feel they are gliding rather than stepping, hovering like a spirit.

Alongside this exposure of the nerves sits a paradoxical thermal picture. The patient is always cold. Single parts turn icy. Covers and a warm room do not reach them. And yet cold water on the face, cold air, damp weather, cold washing of the affected parts: these are what console. Sunlight and wind aggravate the eyes; heat in the affected part — the warm, flushed face, the burning eye — is what the cold application settles. The constitutional aggravation is cold dry weather, not warmth; it is the moist cold applied locally that this patient needs, not a warmer room. It is the reverse of what most chilly patients want, and it is the sign that makes Asarum recognisable in clinic.

Clinical Portrait

Mind and Temperament

Inability to think is the presenting mental symptom. Thoughts vanish under a drawing pressure in the forehead, or "as when falling asleep". The patient sits down to concentrate and finds the mind vacant. There is no desire to do anything, less from apathy than from a stupid feeling in the head. Retching, oddly, clears it: the deficiency of ideas is better after vomiting.

Over this dullness runs an exaggerated sensibility. Imagination alone is enough to set the nerves quivering. Great merriness alternates with quiet or gloominess, sometimes within the same hour. Sadness comes with weeping, hands are wrung, the person is very sensitive to violence and averse to sex, kissing, embracing. Cold shivers from any emotion. Nerves on edge.

Head

Compressive headache. Tension of the whole scalp so that combing cannot be borne and the hair itself is painful, a symptom Asarum shares with china. Pain as from contraction in forehead, temples and behind the ear, worse in the afternoon, better sitting, better washing. Headache before and after menses.

Eyes

Watering and burning. The eyes feel stiff, then cold. Better in cold air or cold water, worse for sunlight and wind. Asthenopia in those who read for a living. Sensation, when reading, that the eyes are being pressed asunder. Darting pains after ocular surgery are a specific indication, one of the remedy's small, well-attested clinical uses.

Clarke reported a single 200C dose curing a sub-acute inflammation of the eyes and lids that had persisted for months after an attack of influenza; the deciding rubrics were open-air amelioration and relief from cold-water bathing. It is the same picture in miniature.

Ears

Painfully sensitive hearing. Sensation as if the ear were plugged up with coryza. Sensation of skin stretched over the external ear on the right side, an odd, specific note. Catarrhal deafness. Noises. Heat of the external ear.

Nose and Face

Coryza with sneezing, left nostril stopped up, tickling that provokes sneezing and a discharge of clear fluid. A sharp aching pain above the root of the nose. Bloody mucus. On the face, a warm feeling relieved by cold washing; burning and stinging on the cheeks; cutting pain with cramp at the joint of the lower jaw. Dryness of the inner side of the lower lip.

Stomach

Appetite fails and food itself nauseates. Craving for alcohol. Tobacco tastes bitter to a smoker who otherwise enjoys it. Accumulation of cold, watery saliva with nausea. Violent empty retching. Vomiting with diarrhea and violent colic. On waking, alcoholics feel a horrible sensation at the epigastrium, a symptom to keep in mind whenever the picture of nervous exhaustion meets a drinker's morning. Hunger in early morning. Constant nausea, worse after eating.

Abdomen and Rectum

Oppression around the navel three or four times after each meal, lasting about an hour. Pain in the region of the descending colon with discharge of stringy mucus. Strings of odourless, yellow mucus pass from the bowels. Diarrhea of tough mucus. Undigested food in the stool. Stools worse after eating or drinking. Gelatinous or shreddy mucus. Mucous colitis. Prolapsed rectum, an old use worth remembering in chronic, chilly, nervous cases where the stringy discharge appears.

Chest and Cough

A nervous, hacking cough. Short respiration. Asthmatic breathing worse for odours and cold. Sharp pressure in the region of the last ribs, as with the back of a knife. Pain around both lungs as if they were constricted by a wire. Frequent stitches in both lungs during inspiration. Stitches in the larynx relieved by coughing.

Back and Limbs

Paralytic pain in the muscles of the nape. Weakness with staggering. Lightness of all the limbs. A curious gurgling sensation in the patella. The back gives the dysmenorrhea its character.

Female

Menses too early, long-lasting, black. Tenacious yellow leucorrhoea. Threatened miscarriage traceable to excessive nervous sensibility. What marks the remedy is the violent pain in the small of the back at the appearance of the menses, severe enough to scarcely permit her to breathe, rising to the dorsal region and taking the breath away, worse for motion.

Deschere reported a case that stands as the type: a nervous, fidgety woman of twenty-seven, intense backache for the first two days of every period, so severe she could not move, the pain climbing to the dorsal region until it took her breath away. Asar. 50C, one dose each evening, cured her. When the picture appears in clinic, this is the remedy to reach for.

Sleep and Perspiration

Great drowsiness by day, frequent yawning, restless sleep, nightly dreams about humiliations. Short breath at night. Sweat sour, easily excited, especially on the upper body; sour sweat in the axillae; sweating after lying down in the evening.

Vertigo

Lightness as if floating. The sensation of gliding through the air when walking. Faintness. Elderly people with weak constitutions who grow dizzy easily, the same territory as conium and calcarea-carb, but with the peculiar cold-amelioration and hypersensitivity of nerves that neither of those shares. Legs can go faint or lose sensation.

Modalities

Worse:

• Cold dry weather
• Penetrating noise; scratching on silk, linen or paper
• Emotion, even from imagination
• Retching (all symptoms worse except the dullness of the head, which improves)
• Sunlight and wind on the eyes
• Motion, at the beginning of menses
• After eating or drinking (stools)

Better:

• Cold bathing of the face
• Washing
• Cold air
• Damp and wet weather
• Wetting the affected parts
• Sitting (headache)
• Vomiting (mental dullness)

Relationships

Antidotes: Camphora, vinegar and vegetable acids.

Complementary: causticum, pulsatilla, silica.

Followed well by: Bismuthum.

Compare. For over-sensitiveness, Asafoetida. Among the sudden nervous-storm remedies, aconitum and argentum-nitricum. In stringy stools, Aloe, mercurius-solubilis, podophyllum and Sulph. acid. In the cholera-like picture of vomiting with diarrhea, ipecacuanha. For sensations of levitation, Sticta, thuja, gelsemium. For fidgety feet, Moschus, Tarentula, zincum-metallicum. For the geriatric vertigo, Ambra and conium. In diarrhea it stands close to china, nux-vomica and silica.

Clinical Uses

Dysmenorrhea with violent lumbar pain

The Deschere case gives the type: fidgety nervous woman, unable to move for the first two days, backache rising to the dorsal region and taking the breath away. 30C or 50C at the onset of the flow, one dose in the evening, repeated only on return of the symptom.

Ocular asthenopia and post-operative eye pain

For readers, engravers, screen-workers whose eyes burn and water and are consoled only by cold water; and for the darting pains that linger after cataract or lid surgery, when open air and cold washing settle the eye. Clarke's case is the classical instance. 30C, single doses, judged on relief.

Nervous exhaustion in the sedentary and the drinker

The literary, chilly patient with vacant head, hypersensitive to noise and imagination, sour axillary sweat, craving alcohol and waking with a horrible sensation at the pit of the stomach. Asarum meets that picture where Nux vomica meets the wrong one: Nux is irritable, driven, fiery in the morning; Asarum is empty, cold and sensitive.

Geriatric vertigo with a floating sensation

Elderly, weak, easily dizzy, the ground unfelt, gliding rather than walking. 30C, infrequently repeated, and compare with conium and Ambra before deciding.

Mucous colitis with stringy yellow discharge

Chronic loose stools of tough, odourless mucus, worse after eating and drinking, in a chilly, nervous constitution. 30C, and consider the same register in prolapsed rectum where the mental and thermal picture matches.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is Asarum different from Nux vomica in the drinker's morning?

Nux vomica is irritable, driven, angry on waking, constipated and impatient. Asarum's drinker is exhausted, chilly, empty-headed, and greeted at the epigastrium by a horrible sinking on waking. Where Nux wants quiet and dark, Asarum wants cold water on the face.

What potency is usually prescribed?

Boericke gives "Tincture and all potencies". Classical practice sits at 30C and above. Clarke used 200C in the eye case; Deschere gave 50C nightly through a dysmenorrhea. Single doses judged on response are the rule.

Why does a chilly patient improve from cold applications?

The observation is Hahnemann's, from the proving. The Asarum patient is chilly to the touch and in feeling, and yet the burning eyes, the compressive headache and the heat of the face are all relieved by cold water and open air. Clarke and Boericke both record it as the peculiar sign of the remedy.

Is the tincture safe to take at home?

No. The tincture and low decimals belong to the herbal register, and the aristolochic alkaloids of this plant family are toxic. What this profile describes is the dynamic preparation at 30C and above, prescribed on the totality of the case by a homeopath.

References

• Boericke, W. Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica with Repertory.
• Clarke, J. H. A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica — Asarum europaeum.
• Hahnemann, S. Materia Medica Pura — proving of Asarum europaeum.
• Murphy, R. Nature's Materia Medica — Asarum entry (compiling Boericke and Clarke; citing Deschere on dysmenorrhea).