Coca
Erythroxylon coca. N. O. Linee, suborder Erythroxylee. Tin
The Divine Plant of the Incas. Coca has been used for centuries by natives of West South America as an intoxicant and also as a remedy for "Veta," the condition induced in persons on coming to live in high tablelands:, faintness, throbbing heart and head, dysentery. Coca is like tea and coffee in arresting tissue-change and enabling those who take it to undergo unusual fatigues.
HOMEOPATHIC -- Coca is useful in a variety of complaints related to mountain climbing. Altitude, mountain sickness. Coca is the mountaineer's remedy. Such symptoms as palpitations, dyspnea, anxiety and insomniamphysema. Muscle exhaustion.
Like Chin., Coca produces ringing in the ears and deafness and also fever. Cocaine poisoning causes a sensation as if small foreign bodies were under the skin, generally like grains of sand or else as of a worm under the skin.
CLINICAL - Altitude sickness. Angina pectoris. Asthma. Constipation, chronic. Cough. Deafness. Debility. Fever. Heart disease. Hemorrhoids. Mountain sickness. Rheumatism. Scrofula. Scurvy. Voice, weakness.
Causations - Ascending, high altitudes.
Constitutions - Suitable to old people. Short breathed people, weakly, nervous, fat, plethoric people. Children with marasmus. Modalities - Better from wi≈ne. Better quick motion in open air, riding in open air. Better after sunset. Better lying on face. Worse from cold air, Worse mental or physical exertion, walking.Worse sitting, salty food. Worse from climbing mountains.
MIND - Mental prostration alternating with exhilaration. Timid, bashful, ill at ease in society, craves solitude and obscurity. Sense of impending death. Hallucinations of hearing, unpleasant about himself. Loquacious excitement with blissful visions. Mental depression and drowsiness. Great mental excitement. Exhilaration, before menses. Sense of right and wrong abolished. Personal appearance neglected. Melancholy, bashful. Ill at ease in society. Irritable, delights in solitude and obscurity. Sense of right and wrong abolished. Prefers solitude and darkness. Muddled feeling in brain. Loss of energy.
Abdomen - Flatulence. Tympanitic distention of abdomen. Pressure and tension in hypochondria after meals. Violent pains with bloated Di
Chest - Sudden attack of cramp in chest, became cold and unable to continue the ascent. Intense oppression in chest. Rush of blood to chest with slight headache.
Ears - Tinnitus. Noises in ears. Ringing, buzzing, and humming in ears with fever,
Eyes - Diplopia. Aching pain behind eyes causing feeling as if squinting inwards. Intolerance of light with dilated pupils. Dark cloud before eyes. Flickering before the eyes. White, dark and fiery spots before the eyes. Indistinct vision soon followed by headache and nausea.
Female - The menses flow in gushes, awakening her from sound sleep. Nymphomania during menses, and after childbirth.
Food - Retards hunger and thirst. Craving for alcohol and tobacco. Great satiety for a long time. No appetite but for sweets. Aversion to solid food. Ailments from salt food.
Head - Headaches of high altitudes. Fainting fit from climbing mountains. Headache with vertigo, preceded by flashes of light. Like
Heart - Angina pectoris from climbing mountains or over-exertion. Palpitations with weak heart and dyspnea. Violent and audible palpitations with flushing. Rapid pulse with violent sweating. Pulse extremely slow and intermittent, loses one beat in four.
Kidneys - Fine stitches in female urethra before urinating. Frequent desire, with increase, flow. Nocturnal bedwetting. Film on urine.
Urine smells like sweat. Yellowish red flocculent deposits, oily scum on surface.
Limbs - Crawling, numbness of arms. Weakness of limbs. When walking takes involuntary quick steps, head inclined forward with vertigo. Feeling of internal cold with numbness of hands and feet.
Lungs - Altitudes sickness. Rapid breathing. Want of breath, worse ascending, high altitudes. Cough from cold air or fast walking. Short of breath, es
Male - Diabetes with impotency. (Ph-ac.) Sensation as if penis were absent. Emissions. Nervous prostration from sexual excess. Spermatorrhea and partial impotence. Satyriasis.
Mouth - Decay of teeth. Tongue furred. Peppery sensation in the mouth. Mouth dry, especially on waking.
Nose - Sense of smell greatly diminished. Nosebleed from high altitudes.
Rectum - Dysentery of high altitudes. Flatus from bowels, smells like burnt gunpowder. Constipation from inactivity of rectum, stools dry, like walnuts. Hemorrhoids, painful on walking or sitting. Sphincters relaxed.
Skin - Itching and prickling under the skin. Like a worm or insects crawling under the skin, moving away when t
Sleep - Sleeplessness. Awaken with a shock in brain. Can find no rest anywhere, but sleepy. Nervousness with nightly restlessness during teething. Inclination to sleep, but can find no rest. Great drowsiness.
Stomach - Incarcerated flatus, rises with noise and violence, as if it would split the esophagus. Empty feeling or full feeling in stomach. Dyspepsia, especially in hypochondriacs.
Temperature - Sense of flushing, especially up the back with palpitations. Chilliness and headache in afternoon. At night heat and sleeplessness, with throbbing in arteries. Flushes of heat on the back and burning in abdomen. Extreme weariness accompanies the fever. Night sweats.
Throat - Hoarseness, worse after talking. Loss of voice. Weak vocal cords. Belchings, rise with noise and violence, as if it would split the esophagus. Uvula feels swollen, swallowing difficult. Dryness early in morning. Tuberculosis of larynx.
Vertig
COMMENTS - Cooper cured a case of chronic rheumatism in an aged woman who had this symptom with the fraction of a grain of Cocaine given in single doses at long intervals.
In a case reported in Lancet, June, 1886, a man who had a 4 per cent. Solution of Cocaine applied to a tooth, swallowed twenty to thirty drops of the solution. Half an hour after, he was seized with: (1) Feeling of faintness and giddiness, (2) next, an attack of palpitation with a sense of flushing especially up the back.
There was marked diminution of smell, great difficulty in producing vomiting, a scarlatina-like rash over the body, especially about the neck, dimness of vision, relaxation of sphincters and weakness of limbs, the mind remained clear, but the pulse was fast, weak and intermittent.
A striking case was recorded in the British Medical Journal of December 13, 1890: At a meeting of the Paris Aca
Medecine on December 2nd, M. Hallopeau presented a communication in which after distinguishing two forms of cocaine poisoning namely, the acute in which the symptoms are produced immediately after a dose and speedily pass off and the chronic in which they are due to the prolonged use of the drug.
He related a case which in his opinion showed that the poisonous effects, while coming on acutely, might last for a considerable time. On March 7, 1890, a man had about eight milligrams of hydrochlorate of cocaine injected into his gum as a preliminary to the extraction of a tooth. Toxic symptoms at once supervened.
There was intense precordial oppression with thready pulse, extreme excitement and loquacity, the patient walked about the room, hitting out at random with his fists and crying out that he was dying. In ten minutes he became quiet and the tooth was extracted after which he was able to walk home, arriving there, however in a state of extreme prostration.
Then ensued a train of nervous symptoms, such as continual headache intractable sleeplessness, bad taste in the mouth with attacks of excitement accompanied by giddiness faintness and a sense of impending death.
All brain work was impossible, the patient could not do the simplest sum in arithmetic and was in a state of profound depression. A sense of formication and numbness in the hands and forearms was almost incessant. This condition lasted four months and it was two months after the injection before the least improvement was observed and then progress towards recovery was very slow.
M. Hallopeau thinks the symptoms indicate a poisonous action of cocaine on the nervous centers and especially the brain. As it is
impossible to suppose that so small a quantity of the drug should have remained in the circulation, he is driven to conclude either that
it was stored up in the cells of certain nervous centers or that it produced in them persistent lesions.
use in dentistry are "mental depression and drowsiness and intense oppression in chest, dilatation of pupils, acceleration of pulse
and breathing and mental excitement."
W. J. Guernsey quotes in H. P., November, 1888 from Med. Register, August 11, 1888, the experience of J. E. Shadle, who applied
pledgets of a 4 per cent. Solution on Cocaine to the nasal cavities of a man of 35, preparatory to operation. On each occasion he
complained of a "cold, gone, relaxed feeling about the external genitals and a sensation as if he penis were absent. Towards the end
of treatment he noticed a permanent weakness of the sexual organs and finally seminal losses and impotence set in and continued
until the Cocaine was entirely withheld."
Compare this with the experiences of R. K. Ghosh with Coca (which he find∂s in drop doses, act better in such cases than in the
potencies) in palpitation and dyspnea on ascending, when arising from nervous causes, especially self-abuse in complains from
self-abuse generally.
Excessive secretion of urine with or without sugar, bedwetting nocturnal, nymphomania after childbirth during menses from
irritation of eczema or other disorders of the vulva in satyriasis. The homeopathicity of Coca in bedwetting is shown by its effect in
relaxing the sphincters in one of the cases named above.
There are some characteristic headaches in Coca. In general "headaches of high altitudes" may be taken as a strong indication.
Coca has also a "tight" headache, as if a rubber band were stretched across the forehead.
After the invigorating effects, the sense of lightness and ability to climb a mountain without fatigue, have passed off or when the
intoxication has been carried to a further degree, a sense of heaviness, numbness and
There is extreme weariness and especially weakness of the legs. A peculiar symptoms is: Sensation as if esophagus would be rent
by force of rising flatus. Effects of cold, cough from cold air, rheumatism from slightest cold.
COMPARE - (1) Ars., Guar., Cypr., Cham. (2) Arn., Calc., Ars. - effects of climbing. (3) Stram. likes company and light, Coca likes
solitude and darkness. (4) Scutel., Valer., Cann-i., Thea, Coffea, Tab.
RELATIONS - Antidoted by: Gundlach discovered the best antidote to be Gels. SOURCES - Boericke. Clarke. Phatak.