Swamp Milkweed. Asclepias incarnata.

Related entry: Asclepias tuberosa

Synonym—Flesh-colored Asclepias.

CONSTITUENTS—

Asclepiadin (the emetic principle), volatile oil, two acrid resins, an alkaloid, fixed oil, albumen, pectin, starch, glucose.

PREPARATIONS—

Specific Swamp Milkweed. Dose, from one to twenty minims.

Physiological Action—Emetic, diuretic, anthelmintic, stomachic. Swamp milkweed affects the heart and arteries like digitalis, and is a speedy and certain diuretic.

Specific Symptomatology—Asclepias Incarnata strengthens the heart and is given in small doses, instead of digitalis, as a diuretic in dropsy. It often promptly relieves the general distress from extreme infiltration of the tissues especially the dyspnea.

Therapy—It may be given in coughs and colds, rheumatism from cold, painful stitches in the chest with threatened inflammation of the lungs and pleura, asthma, chronic gastric catarrh, diarrhea, dysentery, dropsy, worms, erysipelatous diseases.

It improves digestion, and is a good remedy in chronic catarrh of the stomach, and in catarrhal inflammation of the respiratory organs.

It is both emetic and cathartic and may be used with advantage in the early stages of dysentery and diarrhea.

In rheumatic and catarrhal inflammations it should be given to produce slight nausea.

In doses of ten to twenty grains it acts as a vermifuge.

It is also beneficial as a local and internal remedy in erysipelas and erysipelatous diseases.

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.