Vol.XIV #4 - Adrenalinum

Simillimum - Winter 2001

By Terje Wulfsberg

This article, based on my clinical experience, is intended to further the understanding and wider use of this interesting, promising, but so far relatively unknown remedy. I would like to thank my Norwegian colleague Petter Viksveen, and especially Simillimum editor Barbara Osawa, for their feedback and helpful suggestions.

In our literature, Adrenalinum as a remedy has been mentioned in Boericke's Pocket Materia Medica, in Clarke's Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica, in Allen's Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica, and in the work of Grimmer. I say mentioned, since none of these sources gives a full, well-rounded picture of this remedy. What is given is mostly the action and usefulness of the crude substance, mainly restricted to pure clinical information like its bronzing effect on the skin, its use in Addison's disease, its powerful local action on dilated blood vessels, etc.

Allen's Materia Medica of the Nosodes gives the only proving we have so far, made in 1904 with seven students of the New York Homeopathic College. It draws out some physical characteristics, but the picture given is far from complete. Since the results of this proving were not incorporated into Kent's Repertory, or, in later years, into the Synthesis repertory, a question must be raised as to its reliability.