Sticta. Sticta pulmonaria.

Synonym—Lungwort.

CONSTITUENTS—

Not analyzed.

PREPARATIONS—

Specific Medicine Sticta; dose, from one-tenth to ten minims.

Specific Symptomatology—This agent acts directly upon irritation in the chest, especially when complicated with irritation of the nerve centers.

Pain beneath the scapulae extending to the occiput, sharp pain with soreness above the scapulae, or in the shoulders, especially indicate Sticta.

As given by Felter and Lloyd in the American Dispensatory, the indications are as follows: Pain in the shoulders or in the back of the neck extending to the occiput, soreness or dull pain in the chest, or in the extrinsic respiratory muscles, which is increased by deep breathing. Irritation at the base of the brain, or in those organs or parts supplied by the pneumogastric nerve. Irritative cough; cough persistent and dry, of a rasping or wheezing character; short, sharp, hacking cough, with quick darting pains in the chest walls. They also advise it in the treatment of rheumatism, which involves the muscles and smaller joints. It may be given in hay fever, where the headache is severe, and in catarrhal disorders, where there is frontal tension, with sneezing, coryza and conjunctivitis.

It is given in the exhaustive cough of phthisis, bronchitis, and laryngitis. It relieves the cough and irritation in these cases and controls hectic fever, chills and night sweats.

Therapy—In coughs of acute bronchitis, with the indications named, it is useful; in cough, with wheezing and tightness—asthmatic cough, with the characteristic quick, sharp pains, it. is indicated. It also influences directly the post-nasal mucosa.

It is valuable in some forms of catarrh, especially if there is reflex irritation. It has been used in whooping-cough and in croupal coughs.

Sticta has been suggested in rheumatism where the muscles of the chest are involved, where there is sharp, quick pain on respiration or where the muscles of the shoulder are sore and tender, where the muscles of the neck are involved.

The remedy has been used in scarlet fever to good advantage, but we have no specific directions for its administration in these cases beyond those named.

It has a specific influence in the treatment of those forms of hay fever and in those attacks of influenza characterized by the discharge of a hot, irritating, watery mucous, which afterwards becomes thick, bloody, greenish or yellow.

The catarrhal disorders to which this remedy is applicable are characterized by headache, with tearing pains through the side of the face and lower jaw, with pressure in the forehead, at the root of the nose, coryza, conjunctivitis, soreness and dull pains in the chest.

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.