From these remarks of Dr. J. H. Clarke and Dr. J. Compton Burnett, as well as from my own, I think there can be no doubt, whatever, that the Lemna exercises a powerful influence upon the Schneiderian mucous membrane. How far it is capable by its specific action of removing large groups of polypi remains, as yet, an open question.
My own experience of the treatment of nasal polypi is that we have very few remedies that can at all be depended upon for giving even temporary relief. Even from Calcarea carbonica and Teucrium marum verum I have not had the effects that some practitioners testify to their possessing.
Lemna has so far given relief in my hands to cases of nasal polypi and to cases where the nostrils were plugged by swollen turbinates and other causes in a matter far surpassing the effect I have obtained from any other remedy.
In saying this I do not at all wish it to be understood that we have in it a specific for all such cases.
We must remember that the symptoms in all such obscure diseases must be our guide for the selection of our remedy, and that, therefore, the important point is to work out the specific indications for the drug as we learn them from clinical observation, in the hope that on some future occasion pathogenesis may render these still more certain.
The indications that I myself have noticed as belonging to Lemna are either a putrid smell in the nose or a loss of all sense of smell and a putrid taste in the mouth, especially on rising in the morning, with a general foulness of the mouth, due apparently to the dropping down of impure material from the post-nasal region. Along with this there sometimes seems to prevail a disposition to "noisy diarrhœa."
Dr. Burnett has noticed that Lemna patients have their nasal symptoms aggravated in damp and rainy weather, and I have to some extent confirmed this observation.
I hope on some future occasion to return to the subject of Lemna; it is in every way well worthy of being prosecuted further.
Thus, for example, a lady patient, æt. fifty-eight, suffering from pains flitting about her head and legs, with pains in her eyes during heavy rain, and in whom drowsiness by day and restless sleep at night existed, had all these symptoms removed by a single dose of Lemna, and the pallid, dullish, sickly look in her face changed to a complexion that was natural and healthy.
The truth would seem to be that Lemna's symptoms are specially aggravated in heavy rains; Calendula's, when heavy clouds are about; Rhododendron's, in thunder storms, and Dulcamara's, in damp surroundings and in foggy weather.