Euphorbiaceae Family of Homeopathy Medicines

The euphorbiaceae as an order contain an acrid principle which in some cases is oily in character, in others resinous; in case it is the latter, it escapes from the plant as a milky juice drying into a gum. These oils or gums have two properties. If applied to the skin, they produce redness and vesication. The vesicles fill with yellowish-white serum and may even suppurate and form scabs of a honey color. They all act more or less intensely as purgatives, producing a watery diarrhoea, associated with colic, tenesmus, flatulence, burning, nausea and vomiting.

Economically important- rubber, castor oil, tung oil & many are ornamental

The medicines we derive from this order are

1. Croton tiglium- croton oil seed
2. Acalypha indica- indian nettle
3. Euphorbium officinarum- gum euphorbium-spurge
4. Euphorbia corollata,
5. Jatropha curcas,
6. Mercurialis perennis-dog’s mercury
7. Hippomane mancinella
8. Ricinus communis.- castor oil
9. Stillingia sylvatica- queen’s delight
10. Hura brazilliens- Assacu 

COMMON FEATURES

Mind
1) COMPRESSION- is the key note – tendency to produce lots of tension,constriction, oppression which builds up in the system- both mind & body- burst out from any  orifice of the body in the form of gushing diarrhea, vomiting physically and mentally as insanity (loosing the top of head) if it causes a break down at the mental level.

2) EQUANIMITY (evenness of temper)is easily disturbed- expressed as fear of losing reason, of ghosts, of being poisoned, thinks that ghosts will take away her(mancinella) OR feels that she left alone in this world (hura)

3)Tendency to produce anxiety, fretfulness, as if something happen, sense of apprehension, agitation, grumbling

4) Fear– of misfortune, of people, of being poisoned, of ghost

5) Feeling of everything cramped up inside, nothing flows out, leading to fear of insanity

6) Irritable, easily, angered easily, impatient, shows sudden swings in emotion also there is feeling of

7)  Loneliness, & fear that he would loose dear ones

8) Aversion to work or mental labour

9) There is profound calmness, tranquility, calmness, tenderness and compassion 

Physicals

1) GIT– sense of constriction, band around feeling, – colic, oppression, as if in a vice. Rumbling, gurgling, bourborygmi or movement

• Excessive nausea and forceful vomiting
• Discharge is accompanied by BLOOD
• Sudden, cutting , violent FORCEFUL, GUSHING evacuation- profuse diarrhea

2) SKIN- tightness,tension, hidebound feeling  

• Violent, itching,burning,erysipelas, vesication , as if hot coals were applie
• Pains of cancer, ulcers, gangrene and pimples

3) Acrid- active principle of plant juice– leads to extreme irritation, unendurable burning& drying up of mucus membrane associated with extreme drowsiness

4) Enlarged , swollen sensation- choking

5) Female – menstrual irregularity, breast –lancinating pain in nipples, radiating breast pain

6) Eyes- intense inflammation & pain

7) Respiratory system– cough- dry, hacking with soreness. Good remedy for bronchitis & hay fever

8) PAINS– as if knife, needles were thrust 

Individual drugs

MANCINELLA (manganeel apple)

• Skin symptoms most marked.
• Dermatitis, with excessive vesiculation, oozing of sticky serum and formation of crusts.
• To be remembered in mental depressed states at puberty and at climacteric, with exalted sexuality. [Hering.]
• Loss of vision.
• Pain in the thumb.

Mind

• Silent mood, sadness.
• Wandering thoughts.
• Sudden vanishing of thought.
• Bashful.
• ear of becoming insane.

Skin

• intense erythema.
• vesicles.
• fungoid growths.
• erysipelas.
• large blisters, as from scalds.
• heavy, brown crusts and scabs.
• pemphigus. 

Hura brasiliensis (assacu)

• Used in leprosy, when skin feels as if it were hide bound tense vesicles; sensation of splinter under thumb-nails.
• Skin of forehead feels drawn tight.
• Stiff neck, pain in back.
• Throbbing in finger tips.
• Itching, pimples on all projecting portions of bone, malar bones, etc.

Euphorbia corollata

Euphorbia corrolata has

1. a deadly nausea.
2. sudden and powerful vomiting of food in stomach.
3. throws up large quantities of water mixed with mucus.
4. then of clear fluid like rice-water.
5. copious watery evacuations of the bowels.

These symptoms are accompanied by great anxiety, deadly prostration and cold sweat. Attacks that recur after short intermissions. Vomiting of food, water and mucus and copious evacuations. Feeling of clawing in stomach, cold sweat. (Verat. Alb.)

Euphorbium officinarum (spurge-resinous juice of euphorbia resinifera)

• An irritant to the skin and mucous membranes.
• Burning pain in bones.
• Pains in limbs and paralytic weakness in the joints.
• Important respiratory and skin symptoms.
• Terrible burning pains.
• Pains of cancer.
• Everything appears larger than it really is.

Jatropha curcas (purging nut)

• Of value in cholera and diarrhoea.
• The abdominal symptoms are most important.
• Suppressed measles (h. Farrington).
• Stool
• Sudden, profuse, watery, like rice-water.
• Diarrhoea; forced discharge; loud noise in abdomen like gurgling of water coming out of a bung-hole, associated with coldness, cramps, nausea, and vomiting.

Ricinus communis  (castor-oil)

• has marked action on gastro-intestinal tract.
• increase the quantity of milk in nursing women. (urtica uens)
• vomiting and purging.
• languor and weakness.

 Acalypha indica  (indian nettle)

• A drug having a marked action on the alimentary canal and respiratory organs.
• It is indicated in incipient phthisis, with hard, racking cough, bloody expectoration, arterial haemorrhage, but no febrile disturbance.
• Very weak in the morning, gains strength during day.
• Progressive emaciation.
• All pathological haemorrhages having notably a morning aggravation.
• Cough dry, hard, followed by hoemoptysis; worse in morning and at night.
• Spluttering diarrhoea with forcible expulsion of noisy flatus, bearing down pains and tenesmus.

Croton tiglium- Croton Oil Seeds.
Affects mucous membrane of intestinal tract, producing transudations of watery portions of blood, a copious, watery diarrhoea (ver.), and develops an acute eczema over whole body (rhus).

The bowels are moved as if by spasmodic jerks, “coming out like a shot” (gamb.); as soon as patient eats, drinks,  or even while eating; yellow watery stool.

Constant urging to stool followed by sudden evacuation, which is shot out of the rectum (gamb., grat., pod., thuja).

Swashing sensation in intestines, as from water, before stool (rumbling before stool, aloe).

Drawing-pain through the left chest into the back. – nursing women; every suck the child gives produces pain from nipple back.  (goes to back, crot. t.; from nipple all over body-phytolacca, to uterus, puls., sil.).

Intense itching of skin, but so tender is unable to scratch; >> by gentle rubbing; eczema over whole body.

Intense itching of genitals of both sexes (rhus); vesicular eruption on male; so sensitive and sore is unable to scratch.

Cough; as soon as the head touched the pillow a spasmodic paroxysm of cough set in; suffocated, must walk about the room or sleep in a chair. asthma, with cough; cannot expand the chest.

Aggravation. Diarrhoea; every motion; after drinking; while eating or nursing (arg. n., ars.); during summer; from fruit and sweetmeats (gamb.); the least food or drink.