Sodium Phosphate.

Other tomes: Potter

Formula—Na₂H(PO₄).

Dose, from ten to one hundred grains.

Physiological Action—If the sodium phosphate, in from one dram to one and one-half dram doses, be taken in cold water before breakfast, it produces a full, satisfactory and painless bowel movement, neutralizes excessive gastric acidity, and promotes a sense of well-being. Its regular use overcomes many cases of chronic constipation due to inactivity of the liver.

It improves the tone and greatly increases the functional activity of the liver, and stimulates the functional activity of the glandular organs concerned in digestion and food appropriation. It is an excellent eliminative if given in doses of one-half dram three or four times daily. There is no cathartic effect, but its stimulant effects are maintained and an admirable general tonic influence induced. It is an actual brain and nerve food of rare value, a greatly underestimated remedy. To children it is given in doses of from three to ten grains in some convenient menstruum, the dose repeated every two hours. It may be given with the food of infants or dissolved in milk.

Specific Symptomatology—The Phosphate of Sodium in certain liver disorders of infancy is specific. The specific conditions are white pasty stools, often hard, sometimes spongy, so light in weight that they will sometimes float on water. This indication is present when there is a deficiency of the biliary secretion.

Therapy—The group of symptoms which this remedy will almost invariably cure are the following: general inanition and malaise, paleness of the mucous membranes, and almost complete loss of appetite.

The child cries if laid on its back, or whenever moved, because of soreness of the muscles, is dull, inclined to sleep most of the time, always irritable, or often restless during the night, not sleeping long at a time. The temperature is sometimes less than normal, but often there is a variable temperature, and sometimes there is a remittent fever with morning and evening exacerbations or an intermittent fever and usually a slight rise in temperature.

In all cases there is a deficiency of the red blood corpuscles, and gradual, sometimes rapid, emaciation; there is an excess of phosphates in the urine, because the phosphates of the system, which should supply the nutrition of the osseous structures, are not performing that function, but are being excreted as a waste product.

The symptoms above described suggest very many remedies or combinations of remedies, but the author has often dispensed with every other remedy, however strongly suggested, and depended upon the Phosphate of Sodium alone, and has seen the patient improve from the first. These symptoms are the precursors of disease of the bones— caries, necrosis, rachitis, in fact the above description accurately describes the earlier symptoms of rickets, which may be often prevented by the early and persistent use of this remedy.

Co-Operatives—It acts in harmony with cholagogue cathartics, with podophyllum, leptandrin, chionanthus and iris versicolor. In the conditions in which these agents are suggested, this sodium salt is sometimes of unmistakeable service.

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.