Genus: Baptisia
Common name: Yellow false indigo, Wild indigo, Horseflyweed, Rattleweed
Family: Leguminosae or Fabaceae (Legume, Bean, Pea)
This sunny yellow shrubby perennial plant is native to the eastern United States and southeastern Canada. Bees, moths, and butterflies feed on its nectar. It was used by early Americans to make blue violet indigo dye from its roots. The plant was also used to protect horses and mules from horseflies by placing it into their harness. Baptisia was used medicinally by Native Americans as a remedy for fevers and as an antiseptic wash for wounds. After the flowers fade, seed pods form. The seeds inside rattle, hence the name rattleweed. The plant is poisonous if ingested, causing nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
When the root of Baptisia is prepared homeopathically, it is useful for septic conditions, flus, and sore throats that are swollen and dark dusky red. A person needing Baptisia is in such a sleepy, scattered, sore, and stuporous state as to seem drunk. There is restlessness, exhaustion, and nightmares with fever, along with the peculiar feeling that body parts are “scattered in bits.”
Keynotes:
- Stupor, confusion, mental dullness, coma
- Falls asleep mid-sentence
- Feels scattered all over the bed and tries to bring the pieces together again, restlessness
- Rapid onset of septic state
- Influenza with bruised pains, muscles feels heavy, sore, stiff
- Putrid offensive odors of mouth, stool, sweat
- Red, dusky congestion of the face, stupid besotted expression
- Red, dusky swollen throat and tonsils with a feeling of constriction, difficult swallowing
- Fever with chills and nightmares, delirium
- Painless diarrhea with gastric flu and fever
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