BRASSICA NAPUS

Our knowledge of the pathogenetic effects of Brassica napus is derived from the experience of the Irish famine, during which the people ate it freely. Dropsical swellings, scorbutic mouth, voracious appetite, tympanitic abdomen, blotches like burns, dropping off of nails, and gangrene. All the symptoms of impoverished blood appear, such as growth of downy, colourless hair.

Relations.─Compare: Raphanus, Armoracea, Sinapis, Secale.

SYMPTOMS.

Very distressing frontal headache and tension.

Swollen to an enormous extent, the distended state of eyelids and upper lip producing great deformity.─Burn-like blotches on nose and forehead (also hands and feet), varying from discoloration to ulceration.

Mucous membrane of mouth and throat inflamed, ulcerated in parts, gums spongy.

Appetite increased, sometimes voracious.

Abdomen tympanitic.

Bowels torpid.

Urine deficient and irritating.

Hands and feet dry and shrunken, with blotches of a deep red, like burns, on backs of hands and dorsa of feet, the fingers and toes being frequently cold and livid; ulceration; loss of nails.

Sallow and muddy-looking; covered with downy hair.─General œdema.─Blotches, deep red, like burns, on backs of hands and feet and nose and forehead, varying from simple discoloration to most troublesome ulceration, causing destruction of cuticle and dropping off of nails, with a marked disposition in the aggravated cases to gangrene.

Reference: A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica. J. H. Clarke