Mucuna urens

Mucona urens. Horse-Eye. (Hot regions of Venezuela.) N. O. Leguminosae. The pulverised bm is macerated in five times its weight of alcohol.

Clinical

Haemorrhoidal discharges. Haemorrhoids. Cluuntoteriatiot.— In New, Old, and Forgotten Remedies (p. 220) is a letter by Delgado Salads, of Venezuela, pointing out that the name Dolichos, riven to Cowhage or Cow-itch in homoeopathic literature (see Val. 1.), is not in accordance with latest botanical terminology. Cowhage is really a MucunaMucuna and Dolichos being separate genera of the Leguminosae. They are so described in tiieireasury of Botany. (Allen §gives Linnaeus as the authority for the name Dolichos pruriens) Palaaos has used M. urens, with which, he says, modem botanists consider Cowhage identical ; but he does not name his plant Jtf. pruriens, an alternative name of Cowhage, and as he says, further, that M. urens is a '' special plant which grows in the caud regions of Venezuela," and that the beans are " very difficult to obtain,'* I think it best to give the plant a separate notice. This is the more desirable as ralacios uses an entirely different preparation. In Dolichos (I retain the name for the sake of distinction) the entire pod is used, the stinging hairs being the most important part of it. Salads uses the pulverised bean for making his tincture. His chief use for it is in haemorrhoids and complaints arising from the haemorrhoidal diathesis. The keynote symptom is burning. There may or iazy not be bleeding. Affections of liver, uterus, bladder, testicles, when accompanied by haemorrhoids, are likely to be cured by M. urens. He gives one drop daily of the tincture, and sometimes makes an ointment of it as well. He places more reliance in it than in Hamamelis and jEscuI, A., There is no pathogenesis.