Chromium. Chromium Sulphate.

Chromium was discovered by Vaquelin in 1797, and its salts had been used in the arts, but it is only within a little more than a decade that it has been suggested in medicine. The leading materia medicas do not mention chromium sulphate. Kolipinski, in 1902, presented this remedy to the American Therapeutic Society. He stated that he had been using it with results that would justify its general adoption. He gave it in doses of four grains, three times a day. Since that time, familiarity with it, and an absence of toxic symptoms have caused the dosage to be increased to more than double this amount in certain cases, and occasionally thirty or forty grains have been given with only mild vertigo and some uncertainty of muscular action. It has been continued over long periods without unpleasant results.

It is used first for its influence upon the prostate gland; also in neurasthenia, exophthalmic goiter, and locomotor ataxia. It has cured these conditions, especially the second, without the usual auxiliaries of rest and travel. Its effect upon exophthalmic goiter has been a pleasing one, in some cases, and in many it has exercised a beneficial effect. It has been used in uterine fibroid, in interstitial fibroid, in all forms of prostatic trouble, and in senile pruritus.

It has been given for impotency and faults with the menopause and growths in the female breast. It has been prescribed for nervous vomiting or the vomiting of pregnancy, and for various forms of headache. The conditions for which it is now preferred are enlargement of the prostate, enlargement of the thyroid gland or exophthalmic goiter, and the several nervous conditions named above. In the tachycardia of exophthalmic goiter, the irregular action of the heart is controlled usually and a normal action is induced. The latter symptoms with trembling, slowly ceasing. The remedy acts more promptly in early cases than in later ones, and this same holds true in locomotor ataxia.

In my own cases of enlarged prostate, while I thought I had good results from its action, I found that I got better results by combining it with thuja, and later with thuja and saw palmetto. I would certainly advise its further observation.

Two cases of lateral sclerosis of the spinal cord were cured with this remedy. Another physician used it in heartburn of long standing, five grains three times a day, and cured his patients.

The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1919, was written by Finley Ellingwood, M.D.
It was scanned by Michael Moore for the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine.