(The following was reported by Dr. Joseph Adolphus, in American Medical Journal:)
A lady who had for several months suffered untold agonies, as she described her sufferings; her pain was described as if a weight of many pounds was lying on her brain; the sense of pressure and tearing inside the skull was fearful; her head felt as if enveloped in ice; the pains ran down the back of her neck, and finally reached the lower end of sacrum, so that a slight touch of the coccyx caused exquisite agony. This was a case in which coccygodinia was associated with the cerebral and spinal disease. I failed to relieve the pain for more than a few hours at a time with all other remedies I had tried; at this juncture, when despair was taking the place of hope, I thought of Passiflora, which I then administered in teaspoonful doses every two hours; the result was something to be remembered, for she enjoyed excellent and refreshing night's rest the following night, waking up in the morning much refreshed, nearly free from pain, with a good relish for breakfast. I continued the medicament every four hours for several days, for no further uses for medicine seemed indicated, as there was a rapid and complete recovery.
A lady complained of pain in her rectum continuously; the coccyx was also quite tender to the touch. There were several erosions on the lips of the os uteri; leucorrhœa and severe pain in the small of the back when a certain spot (over last dorsal and first and second lumbar vertebræ) was pressed on. I found she had been treated secundum artem for the uterine trouble, locally and constitutionally, to no certain satisfactory result. Her respirations were often twenty-eight to thirty per minute, much wakefulness, and at times feeling of constriction across her breast and a sense as if her heart would stop beating. Teaspoonful doses of the Passiflora incar. was the specific in her case. She continued it every four hours two weeks, but from the outset of treatment she felt the right remedy was administered.
These rectum troubles in women are frequently met with in practice. I find the Passiflora incar. the best single remedy I have for them.
Recently a man consulted me for a constant pain in his heart; he described it as sharp and like a pang—often causing a sense of immediate dissolution, and fear of death was on him all the time; pulse irregular in rhythm, now rapid, next slower, occasionally a beat missing; sounds very normal, but accentuated and sharp. Passiflora incarnata was a specific in this case; no doubt the center and probably the local ganglia were irritated from some cause, and, whatever it was, the medicament removed both.
By the way, I must not forget to say you will find it a valuable medicament in sleeplessness and tossing restlessness in your fever patients. I use the tincture in teaspoonful doses every four hours. It appears the remedy has a soothing effect on the whole nervous system, without any appreciable narcotic properties.
(From the Transactions of the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Maine Homœopathic Medical Society we take the following from a paper by Dr. A. I. Harvey on Passiflora:)
It does no good where the inability to sleep is due to pain or distress of any kind; but in cases where we find that the nervous erethism is not controlled by the action of Coffea, Opium, Sulphur, or other apparently indicated remedy. Passiflora is in its place as a succedaneum for Morphia or other sedatives. The dose varies from ten drops to one dram of the tincture, according to the age of the patient. I do not hesitate, in the case of an adult, to give dram doses of the tincture every hour until the patient sleeps, and have seen it act in the happiest manner in restoring the rhythm of the heart's action, when that organ has been deranged in its movements by the combined effects of exhaustion and loss of sleep.
Passiflora has also given me much aid in a case of morphine habit of six years' standing, which I cured wholly and entirely by the use of this remedy. It is recommended in the above mentioned doses for delirium tremens, trismus, tetanus and kindred diseases of the nervous system, repeated every hour or half-hour until relief is obtained. The remedy leaves no after effects, is incapable of creating an appetite, and, so far as my observation extends, it is perfectly harmless even in large doses, often repeated.
(Dr. Scudder claimed that the one great indication for Passiflora in all cases is a clean tongue; when the tongue is foul the remedy will do no good.)