Matthew Lobel, whose name is
given to this family of plants, was a physician and botanist attached to the court of James
I. There are two British species, L. Dortmanna, found in
shallow lakes, and L. urens, which grows in heathy
places. L. inflata, the North American variety, is the
most important of all, medically. According to Hale, this plant was used by the Indians as
an emetic detergent, in the same way as Verat. alb. was
used by the ancients to produce "Helleborism." But the chief modern exponent of Lobelia is Samuel Thompson, of New Hampshire, who founded the
modern Botanic School. His chief remedies were, besides Lobelia,
cayenne pepper and the vapour bath. There can be little doubt that he accomplished much with
these, but his unbounded faith in Lobelia led, in some
instances, to fatal poisoning. Such a result is not altogether unknown in qualified
practice; but as Thompson had no medical degree these cases brought him into trouble.─The
records of them have furnished some of the symptoms of the pathogenesis. Lob. i. probably obtained the name of "Indian Tobacco"
from the similarity of its action to that of Tabacum in
producing intense nausea, vomiting, profound depression at the epigastrium, and collapse. It
was a true instinct On the part of Teste that led him to class Lob.
i. with Sul.; and though the provings and
clinical experience do not fully bear out what he says about its skin action, the results of
botanic practice, confirmed by Cooper, show that it has an antipsoric action, and relieves
morbid states due to the suppression of discharges. In a paper read before the Brit. Hom. Society, November 1, 1888 (M.
H. Rev., xxxii. 717) Cooper explains that he got no good out of Lob. i. until under the advice of a herbalist he used a solution
of Lobelia made with common vinegar. Here is one of his
cases. A young woman, 23, of consumptive family history on both sides, had, when 14 to 15
years old, severe pain in left, and sometimes right, side, and round lower abdomen, with
faint feeling. This lasted till the monthly period came on regularly and then she was well
till 20, when diarrhœa came on, which nothing was able to check and which kept her in bed
for months at a time. The symptoms were: Pains all round abdomen and up the back, much < after undressing, feeling of exhaustion or failing to pieces
inside and out, cannot bear anything to touch her. Four or five motions daily when taking
medicine; if she leaves it off continual motions all day; it literally runs from her:
watery, sometimes light-coloured, sometimes dark, never bloody. Menses very irregular,
sometimes five to six weeks between; all symptoms, especially diarrhœa, < then; much tenderness all over abdomen, especially in
ovarian regions, legs ache fearfully, pains all over body; faints continually. Since the
illness began subject to neuralgia of face, one or other side or both, extending to chest,
coming and going suddenly at any time. In spite of treatment of all kinds, including that of
a skilful repertorian, she grew worse. She went into a hospital, and there a small pile was
removed with but temporary benefit; and after this the vagina as well as the rectum began to
discharge copiously an excoriating fluid. Lob. i. ac.
Ø, eight drops three times a day, was now given. She began to improve at once, and in a few
weeks was quite well. In this case the difficulty first showed itself when the menstrual era
was commencing; was relieved when the flow was regularly established; reappeared
simultaneously with menstrual irregularity. In the next case there was an analogous history.
A lady of 52, when 37, was exposed to a severe chill which checked the catamenial flow.
After this she had threatened phthisis with bronchorrhœa, which after two years gradually
went off, leaving her subject to severe constantly recurring seizures of vertigo. Nine
months before coming under Dr. Cooper's care she felt as if something was forming in the
utero-vaginal region, causing much bearing down. She was obliged to go to bed, and then
there occurred a profuse pouring away of apparently serous fluid from utero-vaginal and
vesical mucous membranes, with paroxysms of agonising, burning, and scalding, < in evening. Vagina swollen, extremely tender, bathed in
moisture; urination always very painful and followed by paroxysm of general scalding. She
was unable to sit up and decubitus could only be maintained with the knees drawn up, or on
the left side. At night she would be awoke by finding her back resting in a pool of water,
and the sense of uterine bearing down was almost intolerable. The bowels were unaffected;
urine free from all but a trace of albumen. A hardness and dulness to percussion existed all
down right side of abdomen. Lob. infl. acet. Ø, 1/3
drop every four hours. From that time the patient had not to keep her bed for a single day,
and all her symptoms cleared up. The Lob. i. was in this
case assisted by Nat. chlor. (Liq. Sodæ chlor. of B.
P.), 1/3 drop doses occasionally, which relieved the bearing down more than anything else.
All that remained of the illness was a slight weakness in lower abdomen felt every autumn.
Cooper recalls in connection with these cases a symptom recorded by Jahr: "Violent pain
in the sacrum with fever supervening upon suppression of the menses during their flow."
Alongside this action of Lob. i. may be placed another,
also vouched for by Cooper, the power of eliminating foreign substances like that possessed
by Silica. A woman got a piece of mutton-bone down her
windpipe and into one of the bronchia. She was taken to the London Hospital, but the idea of
operation was abandoned as hopeless and she was sent out. Lob. i.
ac. Ø was given, five drops three times a day. Soon a most violent cough was set
up, in the course of which the patient coughed up a large quantity of fetid, pus and finally
the bone. B the action of Lob. i. in determining to the
periphery it meets a large number of conditions due to suppression, including cases of
phthisis. Cooper adds the following note to the above: "The interest of knowing that Lob. i. meets very serious symptoms connected with a profuse flow
of serous discharge from the utero-vaginal mucous surfaces is to some extent marred by my
having employed the acetous preparation, and subsequent trials of it would certainly have
been made with the fresh plant tincture had I been able to obtain the living plant. As it
is, my inferences, re the action of Lob. i., are all derived from the acetous tincture. The
indications for Lob. i. are difficult to discover, being
broad and general rather than precise and localised. Its power over serous discharges from
mucous surfaces accounts probably for its influence on certain very obstinate forms of
chronic diarrhœa, these being more serous than watery, and it is probably owing to a
similar influence over sebaceous secretions that it removes in time the most obstinate wens
on the scalp, causing them sometimes to gradually disappear and at others to point and
discharge their contents, and that it causes the hair to grow when used locally in
seborrhœa capitis. It is particularly called for in ailments that never finish up, whether
beginning from acutely inflammatory causes or not; it also fights with symptoms occasioned
by mechanical irritants in a way that I have never found any remedy do, e.g., where a spicula of bone presses on the brain (compression)
or where a bone is lodged in bronchus. The late Dr. Coffin (Botan.
Jour., Aug., 1849, p. 271), in a boastful way, professed to cure children and
adults whose lives were despaired of from poisoning by various substances by (decoctions?
of) Lobelia, but whether by directly evacuant action or
not it is not stated. But in my own hands a few drops mixed in water cured a baby of severe
convulsions that I afterwards found were caused by a diabolical nurse giving the little one
Chlorodyne. In symptoms existing along with hereditary syphilis and in the tuberculosis of
childhood it acts with full power; in tabes mesenterica, in persistent earaches and
headaches due to suppressed discharges, where the lips are dry and hot and continual
feverish colds are prominent, it is specific. Here it stands side by side with Ars. iod. and our foremost antipsorics. In severe inflammatory
conditions existing along with anthrax, or with malignant deposits in different regions, Lobelia in repeated as well as in single doses will often arrest
urgent mischief. A few drops of Lob. i. ac. in boiling
water takes away the pain and tension of inflamed piles; the patient sits on a utensil thus
filled. In the broncho-pneumonia of childhood and in imperfect recoveries from chest
affections, especially where tubercle threatens, Lobelia
is indispensable. Treatment with Lobelia should always
be begun with a single dose, if the symptoms permit, as in some cases it produces violent
depression. In veterinary practice it is said to have proved curative in the tetanus of
horses; a disease it is also said to produce. It must be kept in mind when studying Lob. i. that the herbalists used it in two forms: the decoction to produce emesis, and through which they seem to have
obtained its antidotal action, or by virtue of which they aborted acute gout; and the acetous tincture, which they gave in chronic diseases, and in
moderate doses."─Lob. i. may
cause a rash which exfoliates, and it has cured many cases of psoriasis. It meets a
condition in which the secondary digestion is at fault. The patient is thin, poor, and has
no appetite. It cures the condition which favours pediculi corporis. Referring to the skin
action of Lob. i., Hale quotes P. H. Hale as saying
that, with the intense nausea it causes, there is sometimes a prickling
itching of the skin, and acting on this hint P. H. Hale thinks he has seen
benefit from its use in suppressed urticaria, with nausea and
vomiting. The symptom Teste gives is this: "Eruption between the fingers, on
the dorsa of the hands and on the forearms, consisting of small vesicles accompanied by a
tingling itching, and resembling the itch pustules exactly." As with Sulph. "faintness at the stomach" is a grand
characteristic which will be found in a large proportion of the cases calling for the
remedy. Jeanes, who proved Lob. i., gives these as the
chief symptoms: "Constant dyspnœa, < by
slightest exertion and increased to an asthmatic paroxysm by even the shortest exposure to
cold; sensation of weakness and pressure in the epigastrium, and rising
thence to the heart with a constant heartburn; feeling as of a lump or quantity
of mucus, and also a sense of pressure in larynx; pain in forehead from one temple to the
other; pain in neck; in left side; high-coloured urine; weakness and oppression in
epigastrium, with simultaneous oppression of the heart." I have italicised "rising
thence to the heart" because I think this a particularly characteristic feature. There
is something like it in the œsophagus; a kind of globus hystericus. Hale quotes Dr.
Cutler's (allopath) account of his own case. He had been asthmatic ten years, liable to very
severe and prolonged attacks, and during the intervals scarcely ever passed a night without
more or less of it, and as often as not was unable to lie in bed. In the middle of an attack
he had a tablespoonful of afresh plant tincture. In three or four minutes his breathing was
quite free; but there was no nausea, and thinking that necessary he took another spoonful
ten minutes after the first, and this occasioned sickness. Ten minutes later he took a
third, and this produced a sensible effect on the stomach coats, and a very little vomiting
and "a kind of prickling sensation through the Whole system even to the extremities of
the fingers and toes. The urinary passage was perceptibly affected, by producing a smarting
sensation in passing urine, which was provoked by stimulus on the bladder." But all
these symptoms very soon subsided, and vigour seemed to be restored to the constitution
which he had not experienced for years. The necessity of taking Lobel.
in doses sufficient to cause pathogenetic symptoms was insisted on by Thompson, and though
it led to some disasters seems to have been the means of saving some lives. Thompson tells
how as a boy he chewed this herb and so learned practically its effects. He used to give it
to other boys out of sport. One day whilst mowing he gave a sprig of it to a companion. By
the time they had got six rods the man said he thought the sprig would kill him: he never
felt so ill in his life before. He was in a profuse perspiration, trembled all over, and was
as pallid as a corpse. Unable to walk, he lay down and vomited "two quarts." He
was helped to his house; ate a good dinner, and returned to work in the afternoon. After
this he "felt better than he had for a long time." This gave Thompson his first
notion of the medicinal virtues of Lobel. In Walter
Besant's Life of Edward Henry Palmer, the great
Orientalist, Palmer's own account of his cure by Lobel.
is given. In 1859 he was seized with pulmonary disease, which rapidly increased until he was
told he had probably only a few months to live. On the advice of a herbalist named
Sherringham he took a single large dose of Lobel. i.,
and this is what he experienced: (1) Violent attack of
vomiting; (2) cold chill mounting up from feet to hands,
which he could no longer move; to heart, which ceased to beat; to throat, which ceased to
breathe. A doctor was sent for. "I felt myself dying," he said afterwards,
describing the experience I was being killed by this dreadful cold spreading all over me. I
was quite certain that my last moments had come. By the bedside stood my aunt, poor soul,
crying. I saw the doctor feeling my pulseless wrist, watch in hand; the cold dews of death
were on my forehead; the cold hand of death was on my limbs. Up to my lips, but no higher, I
thought I was actually dead. I could see and hear but not speak, not even when the doctor
let my hand fall on the pillow and said solemnly, "He is gone!" There was no pain,
he said, and he was in no concern except about a book he wanted to finish. He recovered
suddenly. New strength came to him. The consumption was arrested and was no more trouble to
him for the rest of his life (H. W., xviii. 405).─The
prickling sensation experienced by Cutler is characteristic, as also is tenderness of the sacrum. Carleton Smith (H. P., viii. 272) thus describes these: Extreme tenderness over
sacrum; cannot bear even pressure of soft pillow; cries out if any attempt is made to touch
the part; she sits up in bed, leaning forward to avoid contact. After each vomiting spell
breaks out all over with sweat, followed by sensation as if thousands
of needles were piercing her skin from within out. Lob.
i. is indicated in whooping-cough with dyspnœa threatening suffocation. Must
keep mouth open to breathe. The headaches of Lob. i. are
remarkable. Teste describes them as follows: Pressive headache, at occiput, less frequently
at the forehead, sometimes one-sided (left), < by
motion; in evening and especially at night. Continual periodic headache, in afternoon and
increasing till midnight, every third attack being alternately more or less violent. The
brain is racked by the cough, which causes an intolerable pain. Heat and sweat about head
and face, Cooper has recorded this case (M. H. R.,
xxxiv. 289): Girl, æt. 9, seized with very bad headache affecting whole head and continuing
night and day for two days, Merc. and Verat. v. being given in vain, Lob. i.
acet. Ø, two or three drops in a little water given in the morning after a bad
night, gave immediate relief and restored the appetite. Cooper considered it a meningitic
headache, and he finds Lob. i. ac. and Kali iod. 30 especially useful in these (excessive sensitiveness
being a leading indication for the latter). A headache that has been frequently verified is:
"Dull, heavy pain passing round the forehead from one temple to the other, immediately
above eyebrows." Headache following intoxication; <
afternoon till midnight; < from tobacco. A peculiar
symptom of Lob. i. is semilateral coating of tongue.─Sudden
pallor with profuse sweat. Gastric derangements, extreme nausea and vomiting. The nausea of Lob. i. is continuous and accompanied by constant flow of saliva.
This is the indication for it in morning sickness and in effects of suppressed or missed
menstrual period. Vomiting; face bathed in cold sweat. The nausea of Lobel. has been used in the same way as that of Tabac. and other emetics to produce relaxation of muscles, as,
for example, rigid os. Sometimes this is effected by direct physiological action, but it may
be homœopathic as in this cured case: "With every uterine contraction violent
dyspnœa, which seems to neutralise labour pains; rigid os, and perineum." But it is
also of service locally, as in an enema; also in cases of difficult catheterism. G. W.
Boskowitz (H. R., xv. 357) relates the case of a man,
40, who had twice had gonorrhœa, the second attack, three years before, having left him
with a gleety discharge. For a year the stream had been diminishing until at last it took
him half an hour to empty the bladder. Many surgeons had tried to pass an instrument and had
failed. Boskowitz also failed several times, until one day he dropped fifteen drops of Lob. i. Ø into the urethra and held the meatus, to retain it,
for five minutes. It produced a smarting which soon passed away; and then No. 10 sound
passed with ease. This sound was passed twice a week until No. 24 entered easily, and after
this there was no further trouble. Boskowitz has used Lob. i.
in many similar cases with like success. Guernsey gives this as a leading indication when
found prominent: "Urine has a deep red colour and deposits a copious red
sediment." Dyspnœa (as well as nausea) occurring in connection with imperfect
menstrual evolution may indicate Lobel. H. M. Broderick
(Med. Adv., xviii. 568) has recorded this case: Young
lady, 18, ill two years under allopathic treatment. Symptoms: Laboured breathing, sense of
tightness across chest compelling her to take deep inspirations, which caused pain in heart
region. Pulse full, very rapid; cough after each deep breath. Unable to lie down from
oppression and pain. Twitching of muscles of face. Menses never regularly established; would
go several weeks over time and then would last only a day. Lob. i.
3x was given in water. After the second dose she went to bed and slept. The remedy was
repeated just before next menstrual period. She had no more attacks and menstruation became
normal. Among the peculiar sensations of Lobel. i. are:
As of lump in pit of throat. As of foreign body in throat. As if œsophagus contracted from
below upward. As of a lump or heavy load in stomach. As if a lump rose up to meet food and
obstruct. its descent. Fulness in trachea as if from chest. As of a lump in larynx. As if
the heart would stand still. As of a band about chest. As if blood stagnated in chest (> moving about). As if thousands of needles were pricking her
skin from within outward. Lobel. i. is suited to persons with light hair, blue eyes, and fair
complexion; inclined to be fleshy. Symptoms are < by
touch (right deltoid sore. Sits up in bed, leaning forward to avoid contact with bedclothes
on sacrum. Cannot bear even a soft pillow over sacrum. Pressure at epigastrium = oppression). Motion; slightest exertion <. Bending forward <
pain under right shoulder-blade. Effort to move =
fainting. Every rapid movement = dyspnœa and
suffocation. Going up or down stairs < dyspnœa.
Symptoms generally > afternoon, < evening and night. Rapid walking >
sensation of congestion, weight or pressure in chest as if blood from extremities was
filling it. Sickness (of pregnancy) < morning.
Coldness > by warmth. Cold <
dyspnœa; < from current of air. Warm food = vomiting. Headache is <
by tobacco or tobacco smoke.
