Guaiacum.

Related entry: Guaiacum under diaphoretics

The wood and resin of Guaiacum officinale.

Preparation.—Tincture of Guaiacum.

Dose.—From five drops to one drachm.

Therapeutic Action.—Both the wood and resin are alterative, diaphoretic, stimulant and diuretic. Guaiacum wood is sightly acrid and stimulant, depending upon the extractive principle which it furnishes. Its decoction occasions thirst, dryness of the mouth, warmth in the stomach with increased heat of the surface, and a more frequent pulse; and if the patient be confined to bed, it serves to promote cutaneous transpiration; or if the surface is exposed to the cool air, increased renal activity follows, and, if long continued, cardialgia, flatulency, and constipation; and it has been said to produce an eruption like measles when given in large doses.

Guaiaci Resina.

Guaiac Resin is an acrid stimulant, its acridity depending upon the extractive principle or bark mingled with the resin.

In small and repeated doses Guaiacum effects changes upon the system and many morbid or constitutional states or taints are gradually removed without exerting any sensible effect upon the system, save a slight increase of the secretions. Owing to these silent, inexplicable, and imperceptible changes which it effects, it has been termed alterative.

Guaiac resin is a popular remedy in chronic rheumatism, or the declining stages of the acute. In the same disease, if complicated with secondary syphilis or scrofula, it has been found serviceable.

The American Eclectic Materia Medica and Therapeutics, 1898, was written by John M. Scudder, M.D.