Aralia. Aralia racemosa.

Related entry: Aralia hispida

Synonym—American Spikenard.

CONSTITUENTS—

Volatile oil, resin, sugar, pectin, starch.

PREPARATIONS—

Specific Medicine Spikenard. Dose, from five to forty minims.

Specific Symptomatology—Suppression of the menses from cold. Suppression of the lochia with pain in the uterine region. Chlorosis, dysmenorrhea. Acrid leucorrhea with an offensive odor. Bearing down pain from prolapsus uteri. Indolent, irritable, fetid ulcers.

Therapy—The agent is also prescribed with advantage in asthmatic breathing, humid asthma, hay-fever, bronchitis, and laryngitis in the early stage, coughs and colds, earache and deafness.

Chronic pulmonary complaints, phthisis, scrofulous enlargement of glands, chronic catarrh, pain in the stomach in gouty subjects, rheumatism, syphilis. Cachectic conditions are benefited by this remedy, also irritation of the bladder and kidneys, with scanty urine.

Aralia racemosa is stimulant and diaphoretic with a special affinity for the respiratory organs. It may be given to produce perspiration in the early stages of coughs and colds and to asthmatic patients whose complaint is aggravated by catarrh from taking cold.

In chronic complaints of the uric acid or gouty diathesis, and in syphilis, it increases waste, removes morbific products from the system, and gives tone to all the organs.

As a local application in chronic ulcers and chronic skin diseases it is both stimulant and antiseptic.

In foul smelling and acrid leucorrhea, used as an injection, it acts as a disinfectant and may be employed to advantage.

A preparation made from the fresh root should always be employed, to get the best results.

The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1919, was written by Finley Ellingwood, M.D.
It was scanned by Michael Moore for the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine.