Colchicum

Colchicum
(meadow saffron)
* Affects markedly the muscular tissues, periosteum, and synovial membranes of joints.
* Has specific power of relieving the gouty paroxysms.
* It seems to be more beneficial in chronic affections of these parts.
* The parts are red, hot, swollen.
* Tearing pains; worse, in the evening and at night and from touch; stubbing the toes hurts
exceedingly.
* There is always great prostration, internal coldness, and tendency to collapse.
* Effects of night watching and hard study.
* Shocks as from electricity through one half of body.
* Bad effects from suppressed sweat.
* Dreams of mice.
Head
- Headache chiefly frontal and temporal, but also occipital and in nape of neck, worse
afternoon and evening.
Eyes
- Pupils unequal; left pupil contracted.
- Variations in visual acuity.
- Lachrymation worse in open air; violent tearing pain in eyes.
- Dim vision after reading.
- Spots before eyes.
Ears
- Itching in ears; sharp, shooting pains below right tragus.
Face
- Pain in facial muscles, moving about.
- Tingling and oedematous swelling; cheeks red, hot, sweaty.
- Very irritable with the pains. [Cham.]
- Pain behind angle of right lower jaw.
Stomach
- Dry mouth, tongue burns, gums and teeth pain.
- Thirst; pain in stomach and flatulence.
- The smell of food causes nausea even to fainting, especially fish.
- Profuse salivary secretion.
- Vomiting of mucus, bile and food; worse, any motion; great coldness in stomach. Craving
for various things, but is averse to then when smelling them, seized them with nausea.
- Gouty gastralgia.
- Burning or icy coldness in stomach and abdomen.
- Thirst for effervescent, alcoholic beverages.
- Pain in transverse colon.
Abdomen
- Distention of abdomen, with gas, inability to stretch out legs.
- Borborygmi.
- Pain over liver.
- Caecum and ascending colon much distended.
- Fullness and continuous rumbling.
- Ascites.
Stool
- Painful, scanty, transparent, jelly-like mucus; pain, as if anus were torn open, with prolapse.
- Autumnal dysentery; stools contain while shreddyparticles in large quantities.
- Ineffectual pressing; feels faeces in rectum, but cannot expel them.
Female
- Pruritus of genitals.
- Cold feeling in thigh after period.
- Sensation of swelling in vulva and clitoris.
Urine
- Dark, scanty or suppressed; bloody, brown, black, inky; contains clots of putrid
decomposed blood, albumin, sugar.
Heart
- Anxiety in region of heart.
- Impulse not felt.
- Pericarditis, with severe pain, oppression and dyspnoea, pulse threadlike.
- Sound of heart become weaker, pulse of low tension.
Extremities
- Sharp pain down left arm.
- Tearing in limbs during warm weather, stinging during cold.
- Pins and needles in hands and wrists, fingertipsnumb.
- Pain in front of thigh.
- Right plantar reflex abolished.
- Limbs, lame, weak, tingling.
- Pain worse in evening and warm weather.
- Joints stiff and feverish; shifting rheumatism; pains worse at night.
- Inflammation of great toe, gout in heel, cannot bear to have it touched or moved.
- Tingling in the finger nails.
- Knees strike together, can hardly walk.
- Oedematous swelling and coldness of legs and feet.
Back
- Aching in lumbar and lumbo-sacral region.
- Dull pain across loins.
- Backache, better, rest and pressure.
Skin
- Blotchy papular rash on face.
- Pink spots on back, chest and abdomen.
- Urticaria.
Modalities
- Worse, sundown to sunrise; motion, loss of sleep, smell of food in evening, mental exertion.
- Better, stooping.
Relationship
- Antidotes : Thuja; Camph.; Coccul.; Nux; Puls.
- Compare : Colchicine (intestinal catarrh with shreddy membranes; convulsive jerkings of
right hand; rheumatic fever, gout, endo and pericarditis, pleurisy, arthritis, deformans in early
stages; intense pain of rheumatism 3x trit.).
- Also, Carbo; Arnica; Lilium; Arsen.; Verat.
Dose
- Third to thirtieth attenuation.