Hydrangea. Hydrangea arborescens.

Synonyms—Wild Hydrangea, Seven Barks.

PREPARATION—

Extract of Hydrangeae Fluidum. Fluid Extract of Hydrangea. Dose, from. ten to thirty minims.

Specific Medicine Hydrangeae—Dose, from five to thirty minims Thirty minims in two ounces of water, a teaspoonful every tell or fifteen minutes, will quickly relieve acute, quick, cutting, urethral pains, especially immediately after labor.

Specific Symptomatology—Frequent urination with heat, burning, accompanied with quick, sharp, acute pains in the urethra; partial suppression of urine with general irritation and aching or pain in the back, pain from the passage of renal sand are direct indications for this agent.

I am convinced after a lifetime of experience that it is more specifically, more universally a sedative to pain and distress in the kidneys and urinary bladder than any other one remedy.

Therapy—This agent is a soothing diuretic, exercising a mild, but permanent tonic influence upon the entire mucous structures of the genito-urinary tract. It is an important remedy in acute nephritis. I have for many years combined it with gelsemium, or gelsemium and cimicifuga, and have obtained most satisfactory results. In lithemia with permanent backache from. the kidneys irritation from the presence of uric acid and phosphatic crystalline precipitates, the continued use of this agent is usually curative. In urinary irritation of an acute character, or that induced by local causes, as that following confinement, this agent is often curative in a few hours. Any excess of acidity or alkalinity, however, should be corrected by other agents.

About the year 1830 experiments were conducted to prove its influence in relieving pain caused by the presence and passage of urinary calculi, and favorable reports were made of its direct usefulness. Its influence controlled the pain in a satisfactory manner, relieved general distress, and soothed irritation. Enthusiasts claimed that it dissolved the stone in the bladder.

Infusions, in some cases, are more satisfactory than exact pharmaceutical preparations. The fluid extract in hot water is often more prompt in its action. The agent is soothing, also, to the mucous surfaces of the respiratory passages.

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.