H. M. Bunting, M.D. Given a condition of acute coryza, with sneezing, lachrymation, itching, smarting, soreness and pressure of eyeballs, dryness of nostrils with stoppage, especially of left, and a scanty thin acrid discharge, with hot, dry feeling in the pharynx, hacking cough, and rawness in the throat with desire to clear it, hoarseness, a tried feeling all over, lassitude, and general done up feeling, I know of no more efficient remedy than sinapis nigra.
For two years it has met a condition of beginning cold in cases where Aconite, Capsicum, Cepa, Gelsemium, Nux vomica and other remedies closely allied in their symptomatology failed to relieve, and in failing the catarrhal condition would extend to the mucosa of the larynx and bronchi, with the condition designated by my patients as the “Cold has gone down and settled on my chest.”.
In the period before mentioned, I have repeatedly checked what would, in my experience, have otherwise resulted in a cold and cough which in many instances, would have taken many weeks to cure.
I have relieved and cured more cases with this remedy, where the symptoms above indicated were complained of together with heat and fulness of the head, general tired feeling all over, and the complete and very common picture of a beginning coryza, than with any three other remedies.
I believe it to have a sphere of action closely allied to Aconite, Capsicum, Gelsemium and Nux-vomica, but it will be found to benefit cases where we have fallen into the too common habit of administering these or other better known remedies.
The cure of an incipient catarrhal condition of the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose and throat is a most important and praise-worthy object, when we reflect that if such a condition continues, it may affect the bronchi and lungs of an individual.
The sphere of action of sinapis with me has been solely in these incipient and early stages, and when a case presents itself, as many do, with a thickened white or yellow nasal discharge, or when cough and expectoration are the more prominent features, when, in other words, the case is not seen in its beginning with the catarrhal symptoms of the head most prominent, I do not think it has any curative field of action.
In this short sketch I merely wish to call your attention not to a new remedy, but to one that I believe to be far too infrequently used.
–The Medical Advance.
