Rhus Venenata — Homeopathic Remedy Profile

Poison elder, also called poison sumac or swamp sumac, grows in the swamps of North America. Rhus venenata belongs to the Anacardiaceae, the same botanical family as rhus-tox and mango, and shares with its relatives an affinity for skin, joints and periosteum in a more violent register. The dynamic preparation is a tincture of the fresh leaves and stem. Practitioners reach for it across the whole potency scale, from mother tincture painted on chilblains to 30C and above on the totality of a case.

At a Glance

Source and Preparation

Hoyt made the first provings after a memorable accident. Setting out to procure a specimen, he wore buckskin gloves and kept to the windward side of the plant. An hour and a half later he was scratching a burning scrotum. He made the tincture at eleven; by three his right hand was itching. A restless night followed. He woke with itching on the palmar surface of the wrists, and watched it spread across his whole body with dizziness, affected eyes and ears, and fever. When the storm passed, chronic dyspeptic symptoms and an inflammation of the eyes he had carried for years were much improved.

Hoyt considered Rhus venenata the more poisonous of the two Rhus. He could handle Rhus toxicodendron with impunity but was violently affected by this one despite extreme caution. Where Rhus tox had failed in a sore throat of the Rhus type, he found Rhus venenata finished the work. Persons once poisoned by Rhus tox become more liable to poisoning by the elder; children more readily than adults; blondes, Butman noted, more readily than brunettes. Once affected, a person is liable to a renewal of the eruption each year at the same season without further contact.

The Essence of Rhus Venenata

This is a bone-and-skin remedy in the Rhus sense. Restless pains wander along the periosteum, come and go suddenly, and settle where the bone lies directly under the skin. Hering pointed to the forehead and the backs of the fingers. The characteristic sensation is that of a sprain, and pains chase each other upward and downward along the long bones with a chill running up the back.

The mental picture is spare and dark. Great melancholy. Gloomy and depressed. No desire to live. Murphy gives three lines and no more, and the mental portrait should not be embroidered beyond what the provings and cases have shown. What the practitioner sees is a person whose spirit has withdrawn while the skin and the periosteum are alight.

Clinical Portrait

Skin

The skin is where Rhus venenata is strongest. Vesicles. Erysipelas of a dark red color. Erythema nodosum with nightly itching and pain in the long bones. Itching relieved (and this is characteristic) by hot water; washing with cold water or with snow improves the itching on the back.

Clarke used the remedy frequently in skin disease. Bayes told him of an old man with universal eczema and intense itching, cleared in a fortnight on Rhus venenata. A young man of twenty-seven with pemphigus came after years of allopathic treatment: specialists had given him arsenic until they could give no more, telling him at the same time that nothing but arsenic could help him. Rhus venenata 3X and 30C cleared the eruption in a few months. The recovery enabled the patient to marry.

Mouth and Throat

Tonsils red and congested, with a dull aching distress. Soreness on the left side of the throat. Frequent desire to swallow, and swallowing itself difficult. The keynote is a pain half way down the esophagus, a variant of the Rhus type that Hoyt described as pain between the shoulders on swallowing food. The mouth feels scalded. The tongue is red at the tip, fissured down the middle, with vesicles on its under surface.

Hale reported a woman who suffered several times a year from a sore mouth: intense redness of the mucous membrane of tongue, cheeks and fauces; small vesicular points; burning that felt as if mouth and throat had been scalded. Left alone, it spread to every mucous membrane, including rectum and vagina. Rhus radicans and Rhus tox only slightly relieved. Rhus venenata 3C always removed the affection quickly. This is the picture the remedy answers.

Chilblains

The remedy has a small but very definite topical use. Clarke recorded that the tincture painted on itching, burning chilblains relieves almost instantly and practically cures the eruption in a large number of cases. Two prescribing registers are at work here. Ø and low decimals belong to the herbal or drainage mode, where a material dose is doing the work, and where the ordinary cautions of any strong topical apply. 30C and above belong to the classical mode, chosen on the totality of the case, and the two are not interchangeable.

Back and Bones

Back very stiff. A sharp pain under the left scapula, extending through to the ribs. Rheumatic pains between the scapulae. Lumbago from a strain or from a cold. Sensation in the arm as if the bone would break. Motion aggravates the pain in the elbow. A paralytic drawing in the right arm, worse at the wrist, extending to the fingers. Where the modalities match, the remedy earns a place among the back-pain remedies of the Rhus type.

Abdomen and Stool

Pain in the hypogastrium before every stool. Colicky pains that expel the stool with force. Profuse, watery, white stools in the morning, and the classical hour is 4 a.m. Neuralgic pains in the anus follow. Intolerable burning and itching. Bleeding hemorrhoids with extensive itching and burning, and discharge of blood from the rectum after the stool.

Head, Eyes, Ears, Nose

Heavy frontal headache, worse walking, worse stooping. Eyes nearly closed with great swelling and redness. They ache as though pressed on, with a sensation as of sand in them. In the ear: hammering-throbbing deep after dark, jerk-like cutting stitches, and a vesicular inflammation of the ear itself. The nose is red and shiny (a redness that does not disappear on pressure), dry, sore, filled with tenacious mucus in both nostrils, sometimes reaching erysipelas, with loss of smell.

Female

Menses with very large clots, described in the provings as like pieces of meat. Soreness of the vagina during the menstrual flow. In the breast, burning in the left, extending down the left side of the body. The breast aches when it hangs down and must be supported.

Modalities

Worse:

• damp days
• hot weather
• rest, after waking, mornings
• mental exertion
• touch and pressure
• before stool
• motion (of the affected elbow)

Better:

• moderate exercise, open air
• a hot bath
• gentle rubbing and scratching
• hot water applied to the itching skin
• washing the back with cold water or snow (itching only)

Note the split. The person is generally worse in hot weather, yet local itching is relieved by hot water applied to it. The modalities of the whole and the modalities of the eruption travel in opposite directions, and both must be observed before the remedy is given.

Relationships

Clematis antidotes Rhus venenata. The California poison oak, Rhus diversiloba, is identical with it in effect. The remedy antidotes Radium and follows it well. Clarke also used it as an antidote to arsenical overdosing, which is the principle at work in Bayes' pemphigus case, where a patient could no longer tolerate the arsenic on which allopathy had staked its hope.

For skin, compare Anacardium and Comocladia in the same family. For stitching pains, kali-carbonicum. For wandering pains, pulsatilla. For pains that come and go suddenly, lycopodium. For pain at the root of the tongue, Kali iodatum.

Clinical Uses

Herpes and vesicular eruptions

Murphy marks herpes in bold among the leading clinical indications. Vesicles that itch and burn, relieved by hot water applied locally, on a skin that carries the Rhus signature of restlessness, sprained sensation and aggravation from damp, bring the remedy to mind. Annual recurrence at the same season is a strong pointer. In dermatitis of vesicular type where Rhus tox has been indicated but has not held, Rhus venenata is the next remedy of the family to consider.

Erysipelas

Dark red skin. Swelling of the face, of the eyelids, of the lips (sore, swollen, blistered, cracked). The nose red, shiny and dry. Erysipelas is one of Murphy's clinical headings, and the remedy has produced this picture in provings and cleared it in patients.

Sore throat with pain between the shoulders on swallowing

The differentiating sensation of the remedy. Tonsils red and congested, soreness on the left, and a pain that shoots half way down the esophagus or is felt between the shoulder blades when food is swallowed. Where Rhus tox has been given for the modalities of the throat and has only partly worked, this is the next Rhus to think of. See also sore-throat.

Chilblains, topically

Externally in tincture, painted on the itching, burning skin. Internally at 30C and above on the totality. Dose-based data about the crude plant apply to the topical use and not to the classical potency; the two registers must not be conflated.

Recurring vesicular sore mouth

The Hale picture. Small vesicles on tongue, cheeks and fauces, with a burning that feels as if mouth and throat had been scalded, spreading to any mucous membrane if unchecked, and returning several times a year. Rhus radicans and Rhus tox may only slightly relieve; Rhus venenata 3C is what removed it in Hale's patient.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Rhus venenata the same as Rhus toxicodendron?

They are two different remedies from the same family. Both act on skin, joints and periosteum. Rhus venenata is the more violently poisonous of the two, and its skin symptoms are the more severe. Hoyt found that a Rhus sore throat which had failed to yield to Rhus tox cleared with Rhus venenata; Hale documented a mucous-membrane picture in which Rhus tox and Rhus radicans only slightly relieved while Rhus venenata 3C acted promptly. Persons once poisoned by Rhus tox are more susceptible to poisoning by Rhus venenata.

What is the potency register for chilblain use?

Two registers coexist in the same Latin name. The tincture (Ø) is painted externally on the itching, burning skin and, in Clarke's observation, relieves almost instantly and practically cures the eruption in a large number of cases. That is topical dosimetry, and the ordinary cautions of any strong topical apply. Internally the remedy is chosen on the totality of the case and given at 30C and above, where no molecule is present and dose-based data about the plant do not apply. What acts in the classical prescription is the dynamic preparation, prescribed on the totality.

What is the leading skin picture?

Vesicles, dark red erysipelas and erythema nodosum with nightly pain in the long bones. Itching that is relieved by hot water applied locally, though the person is generally worse in hot weather. Annual recurrence at the same season is a strong pointer. Bayes cleared a universal eczema in an elderly man within a fortnight; a young man's pemphigus, which had exhausted allopathic arsenic without benefit, cleared in a few months on Rhus venenata 3X and 30C.

Is there a mental picture to prescribe on?

Murphy records three lines and no more: great melancholy, gloomy and depressed, no desire to live. The source is thin at the mental level. The remedy should not be prescribed on a mental picture alone. The physical Rhus venenata signature (vesicles, sprained sensation, wandering periosteal pain, worse damp, better hot water locally on the eruption) must be present.

References

• Boericke, W. Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica. B. Jain Publishers, New Delhi.
• Clarke, J. H. A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica. B. Jain Publishers, New Delhi.
• Hering, C. The Guiding Symptoms of Our Materia Medica. B. Jain Publishers, New Delhi.
• Murphy, R. Nature's Materia Medica. B. Jain Publishers, New Delhi.