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Rochelle
OLEANDER. (NERIUM OLEANDER.) Common Rosebay.
Nerium foliis linearii lanceolatis ternis; subtusis costatis laciniis I calycinis squamosis nectariis planis, Nerium sive Rhododendrum, Matti. Valgr, T. ii. p. 447; Ger. Em., p. 1406; Camer. Epit., p. 843. Nerium floribus rubscentibus, Bauh., p. 464. Rhododendron, Dod. Pempt., p. 85. Nerium Oleander, Linn. Sp. Pi., p. 305.
Fr.: Le Laurose; Laurier-rose. Ger.: Lorbcer-rose der Oleander. But.: Oleander. Hal.: Oleander. Span.: Adelfa. Port.: Loendro. Dan.: Oleander. Arab.: Tiflae.
Nat. Order, CONTORTAE, Linn.; APOCYNEAE, Juss.- PEN-TANDRIA, MONOGYNIA.
Calyx five-cleft. Corolla salver-shaped, the throat crowned by lacerated, multifid segments. Segments of limb twisted, unequal-sided, tailless. Filaments inserted into the middle of the tube. Anthers sagittate, awned, cohering by their middle to the stigma. Ovaria two. Styles filiform, dilated at the top. Stigma obtuse; hypogynous scales wanted, but there are toothlets at the base of the calyx, outside the corolla. Follicles cylindrical. Erect shrubs. Leaves three in a whorl, elongated, coriaceous, with numerous parallel veins. Flowers terminal, corymbose.
Leaves lanceolate, three in a whorl, veiny beneath. Segments of the corona trifid or tricuspidate.
This plant is described with great accuracy by Dioscorides (lib. Iv. c. 82), under the name of He says the flowers and leaves are poisonous to dogs, asses, mules, and to almost all quadrupeds; but to men, they are, if drunk with wine with the addition of a little rue, a preservative against the bites of venomous beasts.
The weaker animals, goats and sheep, die if they drink a decoction of this plant. Galen and Pliny ascribe the same powers to it; and Theophrastus demonstrates, its poisonous effects on animals by the following fable.
He says that Lucius Apuleius, a famous magician and learned man, was once deceived by the similitude of the flowers of this plant to those of the rose.
He was wandering about under the metamorphosis of an ass, and seeking for roses, by which food he might be restored to his former shape, when at a distance he saw the Rhododaphne, covered with flowers. Fearing they might escape him, he rushed at them with open mouth, believing them to be true roses. Discovering his mistake, and being aware, from his knowledge of the properties of plants, that the flowers of the Nerium were poisonous to asses, he is seized with trembling and fear, and falls to the earth, with drooping ears.
The Arabians give a more extended application of this plant as a medicine than the Greeks. Rhases and Avicenna recommend the leaves as an application to hard apostemes, and the juice for prurigo, scabies, and other diseases of the skin; in chronic pains of the back and limbs, as a plaster, and as a sternutatory in diseases of the eyes. Gerarde states that " this tree, being outwardly applied, Bath, as Galen saith, a digesting facultie; but if it be inwardlie taken, is deadly and poisonous, not only to men, but also to most kinds of beasts." Although its poisonous properties have been described by some authors on toxicology, yet its medicinal qualities have never been tested in allopathic medicine since the time of the Arabians.
It is said that the honey of bees, which feed on. this plant in certain districts, is liable to produce injurious effects, and care should be taken not to place the flowers of the Oleander in a confined apartment, as the vapour from them has been known to cause very unpleasant symptoms.
This beautiful shrub, such an ornament to our greenhouses, has an arborescent stem, very much branched; its leaves are three together, on short stalks, linear, lanceolate, acute, entire, smooth, coriaceous, evergreen and Marked with numerous transverse ribs or veins beneath. Flowers numerous, terminal, corymbose, large, and handsome, but inodorous; usually of a rose colour, but occasionally white. Seed-vessels six inches long, ribbed, almost woody.
One of the most beautiful of insects. Sphinx Nevi, feeds on this shrub, and is often. taken on the coasts of Nice and Genoa.
Native of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Levant; Asia Minor, the East Indies, and Africa; and on the rocks of Corsica. Oriental travelers suppose this to be the bay-tree, to which the righteous man is compared by David.
About the banks of rivers, in low moist situations. In Italy, it usually decorates courtyards.
Hahnemann's instructions for the preparation of this plant are the following.
He says: " Although the medicinal virtue of the Neriam Oleander does not appear to be very volatile, and consequently a powerful medicine may be made from the dried leaves powdered, yet to prepare an alcoholic tincture, in order to obtain a medicine, the action of which should be always the same, I am accustomed to take the green and fresh leaves, gathered at the time that the plant is about to flower, to cut up about an ounce of them into little pieces, and to moisten them in a mortar, with sufficient alcohol to form a thick pulp, but well crushed; afterwards to add the rest of the alcohol (in all about an ounce), to dilute the mass, and to strain this through a linen cloth, to let it stand some days, in order that it may deposit its albumen and fibrine, then to decant the clear liquor and set it aside." Jahr recommends the first three attenuations to be made from the dried leaves by trituration.
It is now well ascertained that the effects ascribed to this plant by the ancients were based upon truth. Lindley (Veget. Syst.) says, " the common Oleander, although little suspected, is a formidable poison; a decoction of its leaves forms a wash, employed in the south of Europe to destroy cutaneous vermin, and its powdered wood and bark constitute at Nice the basis of an efficacious rat poison."
A few years ago, a child died from having eaten, one morning, a quantity of Oleander flowers; it was seized with violent colic, under which it sank in two days.
In 1809, when the French troops were lying before Madrid, some of the soldiers went a-marauding, every one bringing back such provisions as could be found.
One soldier formed the unfortunate idea of cutting the branches of the Oleander for spits and skewers for the meat when roasting.
This tree, it may be observed, is very common in Spain, where it attains considerable dimensions.
The wood having been stripped of its bark, and brought in contact with the meat, was productive of the most direful consequences, for of twelve soldiers who ate of the roast, seven died, the other five were dangerously ill (Gardener's Chronicle, 1844, p 23).
A soldier of the French African army employed a branch of this shrub for the purpose of stirring some soup, which he was preparing for his 'comrades. Five men who partook of this soup were seized with the following symptoms:-Great restlessness, a wildness and prominence of the eyes, dilated pupils, vertigo, slight convulsions' pain in the abdomen, vomiting of a greenish-coloured liquid, and insensibility.
They all recovered in eight days (Canstatt, Jahrbuch, 1844, vol. ii. p. 95).
Orfila (Tox. Gen., vol. ii. p. 439) states that Nerium exerts a narcotic action of the brain and an irritant action of the alimentary canal.
The whole of the plant is poisonous; and it is said that the honey of bees which feed on the flowers of this plant, in certain districts, is liable to produce injurious effects. Even the vapour of the flowers, in a confined apartment, has caused unpleasant symptoms. In over-doses it causes palpitation, anxiety and fainting, swelling of the abdomen, and diminution of vital temperature.
Hahnemann (Mat. Med. Pura) has the following remarks on this drug. " I was the first to introduce into medicine several vegetable and mineral substances, and I may flatter myself that in this respect I have really enriched the Materia Medica amongst these substances.
The Nerium Oleander may be so placed.
It is a new remedy, and is endowed with powerful medicinal virtues, which we do not meet with in any other medicament.
"In some kinds of mental alienations, absence of mind for example, in certain kinds of paralysis without pain, exanthematous affections of the hairy scalp, and in several affections of the back part of the head, the Oleander, if not the precise remedy to produce a complete cure, is at least an indispensable assistant.
The homoeopathic physician can also employ it with advantage in other disorders bearing analogy to the symptoms it can itself produce in persons in health.
Noack and Trinks (op. cit.): Painless paralysis. Numbness, and loss of sensation over the whole body Itching of the skin. Sleeplessness. Absence of mind. Slowness of comprehension, and of retaining objects in the mind. Loss of memory. Inability to think. Giddiness. Heaviness of the head. Eruption on the hairy scalp. Tinea capitis sicca et favosa. Pimply eruption on the face. Lienteria. Diarrhoea of undigested food. Paralysis of the lower extremities.
Camphor? Nux Vomica? Opium ?
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