AMMONIUM PICRICUM

(Ammonia Picrate)

PHARMACY- am-pie. Ammonium picricum. Ammonia picrate. Picric acid and its combinations are very powerful medicinal substances of the nitric acid group.

Historical dose: Trituration and all potencies, third trituration.

CLINICAL - Bilious headache. Periodical neuralgia. Vertigo. Whooping cough.

HOMEOPATHIC - Am-pie. is intensely bitter and, like Pic-ac. and other picrates, has a strong action on the liver. Hale commended Ammonium picricum in congestion of brain and spinal cord.

Heavy, pressive pains in occiput and mastoid region, on sides of head to temples and eyes. Periodic bilious headache (Sang., Cimic.). Occipital headache (Am-pie.), proceeding down the spine and also a pain traveling the reverse way. Neuralgia. Face darkly flushed. Mind obtuse, disinclined to labor. Malarial fever. Whooping cough.

Head - Periodical neuralgia in right side of occiput, boring extends to ear orbit and jaw. Periodic bilious headaches (Sang.).

Vertigo - Vertigo on rising.

COMMENTS - Hale noted a case he cured with Am-pie. It concerned a middle-aged woman. sho1t. stout, florid, who, every six or eight days, would wake in the morning with violent pain in occipital region. heaviness of head, and vertigo on rising. Pain. worse on getting up, extended over sides of head to temples and eyes. In the afternoon, she had nausea and vomiting of sour bilious matter.

Another case concerned a doctor who had been thrown from his carriage and injured about the back of his head. He seemed more frightened than hurt in a few days, however, he noticed that on turning in bed or stooping or on any sudden motion he would be seized with a "wild feeling" in the occiput, trembling beating of heart with intermission and great alarm. Am-pie. completely relieved him after other medicines had been given in vain.

Allen noted the indication "Periodical neuralgia in right side of occiput, boring extending to the ear orbit and jaw' vertigo on rising, especially in irregular menstruation.''

Clarke gave great relief with Pic-ac. in a case of spinal paresis in which a pain rising up the spine into the head was complained. Clarke thought it was the Pic-ac. element in this ammonia salt that accounts for its action in these cases of Hale's.

REFERENCES - Boericke. Clarke. Hale.