• Sudden violent congestions (cerebellar or thoracic) with nausea and vomiting
• Muscle prostration. Spasms. Burning. Vomiting without nausea.
• Full, large, soft pulse or with violent heart beat
• Red streak down the centre of tongue

Sources: Vegetable kingdom
Synonyms: Green hellebore, White American hellebore
Family: Metanthaceae

Introduction and History: Hale Introduce Veratrum viride to homeopathy. But Burt made it’s proving. His 21 month old daughter nearly died after taking a few drops of its tincture.

Constitution and Physiognomy: BLOATED, LIVID FACE; especially adapted to full blooded, plethoric persons. Great prostration

Ailments From: Puerperium, exposure to sun, going from hot to cold, suppression of menses and lochia.

Seat of Action (Pharmacodynamics): Paroxysms of auricular fibrillation. Induces fall of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Congestions especially to lungs, base of brain, with nausea and vomiting. Twitchings and convulsions. Rheumatism of heart.

Characteristic Mental Symptoms (Psychology)

1. Great loquacity with exaltation of ideas, Quarrelsome.
2. Delirious, puerperal mania – furious, screams and howls, strikes himself, incessant muttering, carphology.
3. Fear of seeing the physician, fear of being poisoned.
4. Delirium with wild staring eyes and restless hands.
5. Dreams of water.

Characteristic Physical Guiding Symptoms

1. Head thrown back, nodding or rolling motion, throbs on raising up, pains up the occiput with dim vision and dilated pupils.
2. Violent congestive conditions, especially at base of brain, medulla with nausea, vomiting and weakness.
3. LIVID, TURGID FACE, BUT BECOMES FAINT ON SITTING UP.
4. Deafness.
5. Jerking and trembling of the whole body, twitching of muscles during sleep.
6. Threatening convulsions.
7. Muscular weakness, pseudo-hypertrophic muscular paralysis, staggering erratic motion, spasms with violent shrieks and opisthotonus, especially before and after menses.
8. Burning in different places – tongue, pharynx, gullet, skin, which is cold with prickling.
9. Suddenness of complaints – pulse suddenly increases and decreases below normal, soft slow and weak; low tension.
10. Slow, full pulse, as hard as iron.
11. Pulsations all over the body, especially in right thigh.
12. Hyperpyrexia or rapidly oscillating temperature, with sweat-hot sweat or cold clammy sweat. Cerebrospinal fever.
13. PNEUMONLA; congestion of lungs, with rapid onset; anxiety; rapid, hard, strong, quick pulse, with faint feeling in stomach; slow intermittent pulse and high fever.
14. Clothes feel damp, as if they would not fit her.
15. Tongue with a narrow, well developed, red streak in the centre.

Important Characteristic Features

Head: Congestion intense, almost apoplectic. Hot head, bloodshot eyes. Bloated, livid face. Hippocratic face. Head retracted, PUPILS DILATED, double vision. Meningitis. PAIN FROM NAPE OF NECK; cannot hold head up. Sunstroke; head full, throbbing arteries (Bell, Glon, Usn). FACE FLUSHED. Convulsive twitching of facial muscles (Agar). Vertigo with
nausea.

Tongue: White or yellow, WITH A RED STREAK DOWN THE MIDDLE.
Feels scalded. Increased saliva.

Stomach: Thirsty. Nausea and vomiting. Smallest quantity of food or drink immediately rejected. Constrictive pain; increased by warm drinks. HICCOUGH; excessive and painful, with SPASMS OF OESOPHAGUS. Burning in stomach and oesophagus.

Abdomen: Pain above pelvis, with soreness.

Respiratory: Congestion of lungs. Difficult breathing. Sensation of a heavy load on chest. Pneumonia, with faint feeling in stomach and violent congestion. CROUP. Menstrual colic before the appearance of discharge with strangury.

Urine: Scanty with cloudy sediment.

Female: Rigid os (Bell, Gels). Puerperal fever. Suppressed menstruation, with congestion to head (Bell). Menstrual colic before the appearance of the discharge with strangury.

Heart: Pulse SLOW, SOFT, WEAK, irregular, intermittent. Rapid pulse, low tension (Tab, Dig). Constant, dull, burning pain in region of heart. Valvular disease. BEATING OF PULSE THROUGHOUT the BODY, especially in right thigh.

Extremities: Aching pain in back of neck and shoulders. Severe pain in
joints and muscles. Violent, electric-like shocks in limbs. Convulsive
twitchings. ACUTE RHEUMATISM. FEVER.

Skin: Erysipelas, with cerebral symptoms. Erythema. Itching in various parts. HOT SWEATING.

Fever: Hyperthermia in the evening and hypothermia in the morning. Suppurative fevers with great variation of temperature.

General Modalities

Aggravation: RAISING UP, cold, motion, lying on back, uncovering, winter.

Amelioration: Lying with head low, eating, rubbing.

Remedy Relationships

Compare: Acon, Ars, Bell, Gels, Verat.

Potency: 3x, 6x, 12x, 30, 200, 1000.

Quotations

Clinically, it is known that such diseases as Tiegel’s contracture, Thompson’s disease, athetosis and pseudo-hypertrophic muscular paralysis present a symptomatology quite like that produced by Veratrum viride upon muscular tissues – A.E. Hinsdale, MD

Therapeutic Value: Apoplexy, Cerebrospinal fever, Gastritis, Heat stroke, Hiccough, Oesophagitis.

Note: Can often appear like Belladonna and should therefore be thought of in all cases of Belladonna. Although it brings down BP and pulse, it should not be used only for these symptoms if the other characteristics are not present.