Salix Nigra.
The bark and aments of Salix nigra, Linné (Nat. Ord. Salicaceae); United States, particularly along streams in New York and Pennsylvania.
Common Names: Black Willow, Pussy Willow.
Principal Constituents.—The bark contains tannin and salicin.
Preparation.—Specific Medicine Salix Nigra Aments. Dose, 10 to 60 drops.
Specific Indications.—Sexual erethism, irritability, and passion; libidinous thoughts; lascivious dreams; nocturnal emissions; mild nymphomania, erotomania and satyriasis; cystitis, urethral irritation, prostatitis, and ovaritis, and allied disorders following in the wake of sexual abuse or excesses.
Action and Therapy.—Salix nigra is a remedy of great value in a restricted field in therapeutics. While the bark and its preparations have long been recognized as possessing antiseptic and detergent properties, the use of the aments is of more recent date and confined almost wholly to the generative organs. To be of value, however, only the freshly gathered aments should enter into its preparations to insure medicinal results. Above all other uses, its greatest value is in that form of sexual erethism and irritability due chiefly to an irritative condition of the urethra resulting in spermatorrhea, and less in such sexual perversions as give rise merely to physiological losses; nor can it take the place of the knife when losses are due to conditions requiring surgical correction. In well indicated cases it proves a decided and valuable anaphrodisiac and tonic. The mental emotions play a lesser part in the disorders requiring salix nigra, but when the genital tract is sensitive, when the bladder becomes involved, and when sexual excesses and masturbation are the causal factors, it is a remedy of first importance. Secondarily, it is not without value where the mentality of the victim is at fault, but will be found to moderate passion and strengthen the reproductive tract when pollutions are the result of sexual intemperance, libidinous thoughts by day, and lascivious dreams by night.
