GELSEMIUM SEMPERVIRENS

Yellow Jasmine


  • Centers its action upon the nervous system, causing various degrees of motor paralysis. 
  • General prostration. 
  • Dizziness, drowsiness, dullness, and trembling. 
  • Slow pulse, tired feeling, mental apathy. 
  • Paralysis of various groups of muscles about the eyes, throat, chest, larynx, sphincter, extremities, etc. 
  • Post-diphtheritic paralysis. 
  • Muscular weakness. 
  • Complete relaxation and prostration. 
  • Lack of muscular co-ordination. 
  • General depression from heat of sun. 
  • Sensitive to a falling barometer; cold and dampness brings on many complaints. 
  • Children fear falling, grab nurse or crib. 
  • Sluggish circulation. 
  • Nervous affections of cigarmakers. 
  • Influenza. 
  • Measles. 
  • Pellagra.

Mind

  • Desire to be quiet, to be left alone. 
  • Dullness, languor, listless. 
  • "Discernings are lethargic." 
  • Apathy regarding his illness. 
  • Absolute lack of fear. 
  • Delirious on falling to sleep. 
  • Emotional excitement, fear, etc., lead to bodily ailments. 
  • Bad effects from fright, fear, exciting news. 
  • Stage fright. 
  • Child starts and grasps the nurse, and screams as if afraid of falling (Bor).

Head

  • Vertigo, spreading from occiput. 
  • Heaviness of head; band-feeling around and occipital headache. 
  • Dull, heavy ache, with heaviness of eyelids; bruised sensation; better, compression and lying with head high. 
  • Pain in temple, extending into ear and wing of nose, chin. 
  • Headache, with muscular soreness of neck and shoulders. 
  • Headache preceded by blindness; better, profuse urination. 
  • Scalp sore to touch. 
  • Delirious on falling asleep. 
  • Wants to have head raised on pillow.

Eyes

  • Ptosis; eyelids heavy; patient can hardly open them. 
  • Double vision. 
  • Disturbed muscular apparatus. 
  • Corrects blurring and discomfort in eyes even after accurately adjusted glasses. 
  • Vision blurred, smoky (Cycl; Phos). 
  • Dim-sighted; pupils dilated and insensible to light. 
  • Orbital neuralgia, with contraction and twitching of muscles. 
  • Bruised pain back of the orbits. 
  • One pupil dilated, the other contracted. 
  • Deep inflammations, with haziness of vitreous. 
  • Serous inflammations. 
  • Albuminuric retinitis. 
  • Detached retina, glaucoma and descemetitis. 
  • Hysterical amblyopia.

Nose

  • Sneezing; fullness at root of nose. 
  • Dryness of nasal fossa. 
  • Swelling of turbinates. 
  • Watery, excoriating discharge. 
  • Acute coryza, with dull headache and fever.

Face

  • Hot heavy, flushed, besotted-looking (Bapt; Op). 
  • Neuralgia of face. 
  • Dusky hue of face, with vertigo and dim vision. 
  • Facial muscles contracted, especially around the mouth. 
  • Chin quivers. 
  • Lower jaw dropped.

Mouth

  • Putrid taste and breath. 
  • Tongue numb, thick, coated, yellowish, tremble, paralyzed.

Throat

  • Difficult swallowing, especially of warm food. 
  • Itching and tickling in soft palate and naso-pharynx. 
  • Pain in sterno-cleido-mastoid, back of parotid. 
  • Tonsils swollen. 
  • Throat feels rough, burning. 
  • Post-diphtheritic paralysis. 
  • Tonsillitis; shooting pain into ear. 
  • Feeling of a lump in throat that cannot be swallowed. 
  • Aphonia. 
  • Swallowing causes pain in ear (Hep; Nux). 
  • Difficult swallowing. 
  • Pain from throat to ear.

Stomach

  • As a rule, the Gelsemium patient has no thirst. 
  • Hiccough; worse in the evening. 
  • Sensation of emptiness and weakness at the pit of the stomach, or of an oppression, like a heavy load.

Stool

  • Diarrhea from emotional excitement, fright, bad news (Phos ac). 
  • Stool painless or involuntary. 
  • Cream-colored (Calc), tea-green. 
  • Partial paralysis of rectum and sphincter.

Urine

  • Profuse, clear, watery, with chilliness and tremulousness. 
  • Dysuria. 
  • Partial paralysis of bladder; flow intermittent (Clematis). 
  • Retention.

Female

  • Rigid os (Bell). 
  • Vaginismus. 
  • False labor-pains; pains pass up back. 
  • Dysmenorrhea, with scanty flow; menses retarded. 
  • Pain extends to back and hips. 
  • Aphonia and sore throat during menses. 
  • Sensation as if uterus were squeezed (Cham; Nux v; Ustilago).

Male

  • Spermatorrhea, without erections. 
  • Genitals cold and relaxed (Phos ac). 
  • Scrotum continually sweating. 
  • Gonorrhea, first stage; discharge scanty; tendency to corrode; little pain, but much heat; smarting at meatus.

Respiratory

  • Slowness of breathing, with great prostration. 
  • Oppression about chest. 
  • Dry cough, with sore chest and fluent coryza. 
  • Spasm of the glottis. 
  • Aphonia; acute bronchitis, respiration quickened, spasmodic affections of lungs and diaphragm.

Heart

  • A feeling as if it were necessary to keep in motion, or else heart's action would cease. 
  • Slow pulse (Dig; Kalm; Apoc; Can). 
  • Palpitation; pulse soft, weak, full and flowing. 
  • Pulse slow when quiet, but greatly accelerated on motion. 
  • Weak, slow pulse of old age.

Back

  • Dull, heavy pain. 
  • Complete relaxation of the whole muscular system. 
  • Languor; muscles feel bruised. 
  • Every little exertion causes fatigue. 
  • Pain in neck, especially upper sterno-cleido muscles. 
  • Dull aching in lumbar and sacral region, passing upward. 
  • Pain in muscles of back, hips, and lower extremities, mostly deep-seated.

Extremities

  • Loss of power of muscular control. 
  • Cramp in muscles of forearm. 
  • Professional neuroses. 
  • Writer's cramp. 
  • Excessive trembling and weakness of all limbs. 
  • Hysteric convulsions. 
  • Fatigue after slight exercise.

Sleep

  • Cannot get fully to sleep. 
  • Delirious on falling asleep. 
  • Insomnia from exhaustion; from uncontrollable thinking; tobacco. 
  • Yawning. 
  • Sleepless from nervous irritation (Coffea).

Fever

  • Wants to be held, because he shakes so. 
  • Pulse slow, full, soft, compressible. 
  • Chilliness up and down back. 
  • Heat and sweat stages, long and exhausting. 
  • Dumb-ague, with much muscular soreness, great prostration, and violent headache. 
  • Nervous chills. 
  • Bilious remittent fever, with stupor, dizziness, faintness; thirstless, prostrated. 
  • Chill, without thirst, along spine; wave-like, extending upward from sacrum to occiput.

Skin

  • Hot, dry, itching, measle-like eruption. 
  • Erysipelas. 
  • Measles, catarrhal symptoms; aids in bringing out eruption. 
  • Retrocedent, with livid spots. 
  • Scarlet fever with stupor and flushed face.

Modalities

  • Worse, damp weather, fog, before a thunderstorm, emotion, or excitement, bad news, tobacco-smoking, when thinking of his ailments; at 10 am. 
  • Better, bending forward, by profuse urination, open air, continued motion, stimulants.

Relationship

  • Compare: 
    • Ignatia (gastric affections of cigarmakers); 
    • Baptisa; Ipecac; Acon; Bell; Cimicif; 
    • Mag. phos (Gelsem contains some Mag. phos). 
    • Culex--(vertigo on blowing the nose with fullness of the ears).
  • Antidotes: China; Coffea; Dig. 
  • Alcoholic stimulants relieve all complaints where Gelsem is useful.

Dose

  • Tincture, to thirtieth attenuation; first to third most often used.