Aethusa cynapium
Fool’s parsley · Plant · Apiaceae
People who respond best to Aethusa are often characterized by poor concentration and a tendency to be easily distracted. They are generally reserved, alienated, reclusive, and irritable.
Key symptoms associated with Aethusa include a confused state of mind with scattered thoughts; those affected may talk to themselves and behave foolishly. Other typical symptoms can include marked dullness and a sluggish mental state, possibly linked with an inability to study. These symptoms may be accompanied by prostration with a sense of staleness, or anxiety with associated nervous diarrhea.
Aethusa is also appropriate for children with milk intolerance, notably babies who are prone to sudden vomiting after feeding, and who may have diarrhea. Lack of nutrition may set up a cycle of hunger, frequent feeding, and subsequent violent vomiting. This may result in a state of extreme exhaustion and collapse, causing the baby’s face to appear drawn, agonized, and aged. It may also seem as though the baby’s whole body has enlarged, particularly in the heart area.
Key symptoms
- Inability to digest milk with marked gastro-intestinal disturbance
- Restlessness, anxiety and crying especially in children
- Violent onset of symptoms with brain and nervous involvement
- Vomiting of white frothy matter with great weakness
- Undigested thin greenish stools preceded by colic
- Cholera infantum with cold clammy collapsed appearance
- Inability to think or fix attention during disturbance
- Occipital pain extending down spine better lying down
Worse (aggravation)
Better (amelioration)
Fool's Parsley
The characteristic symptoms relate mainly to the brain and nervous system, connected with gastro-intestinal disturbance. Anguish, crying, and expression of uneasiness and discontent, lead to this remedy most frequently in disease in children, during dentition, summer complaint, when, with the diarrhœa, there is marked inability to digest milk, and poor circulation. Symptoms set in with violence.
Mind
Restless, anxious, crying. Sees rats, cats, dogs, etc. Unconscious, delirious. Inability to think, to fix the attention. Brain fag. Idiocy may alternate with furor and irritability.
Head
Feels bound up, or in a vise. Occipital pain extending down spine; better lying down and by pressure. Head symptoms relieved by expelling flatus (Sanguin) and by stool. Hair feels pulled. Vertigo with drowsiness, with palpitation; head hot after vertigo ceases.
Eyes
Photophobia; swelling of Meibomian glands. Rolling of eyes on falling asleep. Eyes drawn downward; pupils dilated.
Ears
Feel obstructed. Sense of something hot from ears. Hissing sound.
Nose
Stopped up with much thick mucus. Herpetic eruption on tip of nose. Frequent ineffectual desire to sneeze.
Face
Puffed, red-spotted, collapsed. Expression anxious, full of pain; linea nasalis marked.
Mouth
Dry. Aphthæ. Tongue seems too long. Burning and pustules in throat, with difficult swallowing.
Stomach
Intolerance of milk; vomiting as soon as swallowed or in large curds. Hungry after vomiting. Regurgitation of food about an hour after eating. Violent vomiting of a white frothy matter. Nausea at sight of food. Painful contraction of stomach. Vomiting, with sweat and great weakness, accompanied by anguish and distress, followed by sleepiness. Stomach feels turned upside down, with burning feeling up to the chest. Tearing pains in the stomach extending to œsophagus.
Abdomen
Cold, internal and external, with aching pain in bowels. Colic, followed by vomiting, vertigo, and weakness. Tense, inflated, and sensitive. Bubbling sensation around navel.
Stool
Undigested, thin, greenish, preceded by colic, with tenesmus, and followed by exhaustion and drowsiness. Cholera infantum; child cold, clammy, stupid, with staring eyes and dilated pupils. Obstinate constipation; feels as if all bowel action is lost. Choleraic affections in old age.
Urinary
Cutting pain in bladder, with frequent urging. Pain in kidneys.
Female
Lancinating pains in sexual organs. Pimples; itching when warm. Menses watery. Swelling of mammary glands, with lancinating pains.
Respiratory
Difficult, oppressed, anxious respiration; crampy constriction. Sufferings render patient speechless.
Heart
Violent palpitation, with vertigo, headache and restlessness. Pulse rapid, hard and small.
Back and Extremities
Want of power to stand up or hold head up. Back feels as if in a vise. Aching in small of back. Weakness of lower extremities. Fingers and thumbs clenched. Numbness of hands and feet. Violent spasms. Squinting of eyes downward.
Skin
Excoriation of thighs in walking. Easy perspiration. Surface of body cold and covered with clammy sweat. Lymphatic glands swollen. Itching eruption around joints. Skin of hands dry and shrunken. Ecchymosis. Anasarca.
Fever
Great heat; no thirst. Profuse, cold sweat. Must be covered during sweat.
Sleep
Disturbed by violent startings; cold perspiration. Dozing after vomiting or stool. Child is so exhausted, it falls asleep at once.
Modalities
Worse, 3 to 4 am, and evenings; warmth, summer. Better in open air and company.
Compare: Athamantha (confused head, vertigo better lying down, bitter taste and saliva. Hands and feet icy cold); Antimon; Calc; Ars; Cicuta. Complementary: Calc.
Dose
Third to thirtieth potency.
Generalities
Before Aethusa was known a certain class of cases of cholera infantum, and vomiting and diarrhea in children, all resulted fatally, because there was no remedy that looked like such serious cases.
Death is stamped on the face from the beginning, and if there are any remedies in the book that save life this is one of them.
It applies to the cases that come on very suddenly in hot weather in infancy, with extreme prostration.
The mother does not suspect the child is sick until she takes it from the crib; only a few hours before it was well; but when cholera infantum is prevalent in hot weather, this little one fills its stomach with milk and almost before it has had time to coagulate or form into curds the milk comes up partly in curds and partly liquid, and accompanying the vomiting there is a thin, yellow greenish, slimy stool.
Æthusa cynapium. Fool's Parsley. (Europe.) N. O. Umbelliferæ. Tincture of whole flowering plant.
Clinical
Brain-fag. Cholera infantum. Convulsions. Cough. Delirium. Diarrhœa. Dyspepsia. Ear, discharge from. Epilepsy. Excoriation. Eyes, affections of. Glands, affections of. Headache. Herpes. Hiccough. Idiocy. Infantile paralysis. Mind, weakness of. Sleeplessness. Stomach, disorders of. Trismus. Vomiting.
Characteristics
The symptoms of Æthusa are particularly clearly defined, in fact violence is one of the notes of its action─violent vomiting, violent convulsions, violent pains, violent delirium. On the other hand there is prostration and somnolence. "Fool's parsley" has not received its name for nothing─it is indeed a medicine for "fools." There is great weakness of mind or body. One very characteristic symptom is: Inability to think or fix the attention. Guided by this symptom I once gave it to an undergraduate preparing for an examination, with complete success. He had been compelled to give up …
Fool's Parsley (Umbelliferae.)
Especially for children during dentition in hot summer weather; children who cannot bear milk. Great weakness; children cannot stand; unable to hold up the head (Abrot.); prostration with sleepiness. Idiocy in children; incapacity to think; confused. An expression of great anxiety and pain, with a drawn condition and well-marked linea nasalia. Features expressive of pain and anxiety. Herpetic eruption on end of the nose. Complete absence of thirst (Apis, Puls. - rev of Ars.). Intolerance of milk: cannot bear milk in any form; it is vomited in large curds as soon as taken; then weakness causes drowsiness (compare Mag. c.). Indigestion of teething children; violent, sudden vomiting of a frothy, milk-white substance; or yellow fluid, followed by curdled milk and cheesy matter. Regurgitation of food and hour or so after eating; copious greenish vomiting. Epileptic spasms, with clenched thumbs, red face, eyes turned downwards, pupils fixed and dilated; foam at the mouth, jaws locked; pulse small, hard, quick. Weakness and prostration with sleepiness; after vomiting, after stool, after spasm.
Mind
Inability to think or fix attention, idiocy, alternating with furor.
Head
A drawn condition beginning at the alae nasi and extending to the angle of the mouth (linea nasalis).
General Face
A drawn condition beginning at the alae nasi and extending to the angle of the mouth, giving the face an expression of great anxiety and pain.
Stomach
Vomiting of milk in very large curds; children who cannot bear milk.
Stomach
Hungry after vomiting. Eats and vomits again.
Stomach
With gastric symptoms distinct linea nasalis, lips drawn tightly over the teeth.
Sleep and Dreams
Dozing of child after vomiting spells, or after stool.
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A drawn condition, beginning at the alae nasi, and extending to the angle of the mouth, giving the face an expression of great anxiety and pain.
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Intolerance of milk, in nursing children, it is forcibly ejected almost as soon as swallowed, then weakness causes drowsiness.
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Violent vomiting of curdled milk and cheesy matter.
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Spasms during dentition, with clenched thumbs, red face, eyes turned downwards, dilated, staring, immovable pupils, foam at the mouth, teeth set, pulse small, hard, accelerated.
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Great weakness, child cannot stand, or hold up its head.
Phatak's chapter on Aethusa cynapium is available in the app.
Read Phatak in the appClassical texts are in the public domain. Educational reference only — not medical advice.
