THERAPEUTICS OF FUNGI

DR. Harpreet Kaur Sawhney

B.H.MS. (N.I.H.); B.Sc. PSYCHOLOGY; D.N.H.E
Member Homeopathic Council of Canada
Lifeline Homoeopathic Clinic, 2 Laval Drive, Winnipeg, Manitoba,Canada

ABSTRACT
Fungi, as a biological group, have been classified into a kingdom on its own, separating them from the
plant kingdom . Some of the homoeopathic remedies obtained from this kingdom are described in
terms of provings, parts used, characteristic symptoms and single rubric representations .
INTRODUCTION
A fungus is any member of a large group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as
yeasts and moulds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms.
These organisms are classified as a kingdom Fungi, which is separate from plants, animals, protists and
bacteria.
Fungi have a worldwide distribution, and grow in a wide range of habitats; including extreme
environments such as deserts or areas with high salt concentrations or ionizing radiations, as well in
deep sea sediments. Most grow in terrestrial environments, though several species live partly or solely
in aquatic habitats.
Around 100,000 species of fungi have been formally described by taxonomists, but the global
biodiversity of the fungus kingdom is not fully understood. On the basis of observations of the ratio of
the number of fungal species to the number of plant species in selected environments, the fungal
kingdom has been estimated to contain about 1.5 million species.
Homeopathic drugs prepared from fungus
Approximately 32 remedies in the Materia Medica are represented by species belonging to the fungi
kingdom but in this article description of prominent 13 drugs will be covered.
1. Agaricus emiticus
2. Agaricus muscarius / Amantia muscaria / Fly Agaric
3. Agaricus phalloides
4. Agaricus pantherinus
5. Boletus laricis
6. Boletus luridus
7. Boletus satanas
8. Bovista
9. Phallus impudicus
10. Polyporus pinicola
11. Russula
12. Secale corntum (Claviceps purpura)
13. Ustilago
Toxicology /Poisoning
Muscarine poisoning
Mainly due to Amantia muscaria/ fly agaric
In the past , fruit bodies of the fly agaric (Agaricus muscarius) were steeped in milk and was used
for poisoning flies. It has been discovered only in the present century that both the Fly Agaric
and the Panther cap (A. pantherina) contain but a small amount of muscarine, and their toxicity
is due to another toxic principle.
Muscarine poisoning sometimes manifests itself while the meal is still being eaten- as a rule ,
however, within 2 hrs after it.
The symptoms are: conspicuous perspiration, salivation, lacrimation, vomiting and diarrhoea,
fall of blood pressure, slowing down of the pulse and shivering. A remarkable symptom is the
contraction of pupils accompanied by slight disorders.
Psychotropic poisoning
Involves serious cases characterized by the irritation of brain tissue. For a long time the
intoxication caused by the Fly Agaric was the only form of mushroom poisoning accompanied by psychic
disturbances.
In Europe, poisoning by mycoatropine is caused by 3 Amantia species Panther cap ( A.
pantherina) , Fly Agaricus, A. regalis.
The course of poisoning caused by all 3 species is substantially the same :
Nausea is experienced between half an hour and 3 hrs after consumption,
accompanied by vomiting, headache, quickened heart beat and a persistent
dilation of pupils occasionally leading to vision disturbances.
Often the condition of the affected person resembles alcoholic intoxication, the
patient becomes talkative, shouts obscenities, sometimes laughs or weeps,
strikes himself and keeps on running to and fro.
These states of excitement may be dangerous for the sick person and must
therefore be mitigated.
Subsequently the patient faints, recovers from time to time, hallucinates,
screams, defends himself against invisible danger, etc. but finally falls into a
profound sleep from which he usually awakens into a normal state without
remembering his previous behaviour.
DESCRIPTION OF INDIVIDUAL DRUGS
1) AGARICUS EMITICUS
PARTS USED: Tincture of fresh fungus
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS:
(a) Vertigo so severe one must be carried to bed; is not able to sit or stand
(b) Violent burning pains are caused in the stomach
(c) Craving for ice-cold water (during the worst attacks of anxiety)
(d) Better from cold water
(e) Worse by smelling vinegar

2) AGARICUS MUSCARIUS
COMMON NAME: Fly agaric/ Amantia muscaria
PROVER: Sehreter and Stapf
PARTS USED: Trituration of the carefully dried up cap
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS:
(a) Twitching- ceases during sleep
(b) Sensations as if pierced by needles of ice
(c) Violent bearing down pains
(d) Symptoms appear diagonally as right arm and left leg
(e) Loquacity, delirium
(f) Sensitiveness of spine to touch
(g) Reading difficult, as type seems to move to swim
(h) Itching of toes and feet as if frozen
(i) Cough ends in a sneeze
(j) Paroxysms of yawning; yawning followed by involuntary laughter
(k) Vertigo from sunlight
(l) Expectoration of little balls of mucus

CLINICAL SYMPTOMS:
(a) Diplopia : reads with difficulty, type seems to move
(b) Myopia: spasms, with aching in left eyeball
(c) Chorea: Tremulous propulsion of the tongue, inarticulate speech
(d) Typhus: burning thirst

SINGLE RUBRICS FOR AGARICUS MUSCARIUS
(a) Loquacity, awareness
(b) Rage constant
(c) Appetite wanting, coition, after
(d) Sexual passion, sleep, after
(e) Nodules, Vagina in
(f) Pain bearing down, uterus, lifting, after
(g) Convulsions, coiton,after
(h) Convulsions, suppressed, foot sweat, after
(i) Convulsions, suppressed, milk
(j) Pain, stitching, internally, cold needles, like
(k) Pulse, irregular, stool after
(l) Delusion, diminished, whole body is
(m) Delusion, hell , at gate of, obliged to confess his sins
(n) Delusion, dead, person, sees, sister
(o) Delusion, spoonful, a, seems like a lake
(p) Delusion, legs, dont belong to her
(q) Delusion, hole, small, appears like a frightful chasm
(r) Delusion, mushrooms, fancies he is commanded to fall on his knees and confess his
sins and rip up his bowels by a
(s) Excitement, alternates with delirium
(t) Plans revengeful
HEAD
Coldness- scratching, after
Coldness- with external heat
Pain- boring-sitting, while
Pain, temples, midnight
Pain, dinner, after
Pain, sides, forenoon
Pain, sides, walking in open air
Pain, forehead, standing, while
Pain, stretching aggravates

3) AGARICUS PHALLOIDES
COMMON NAME: Amantia bulbosa
PARTS USED: Trituration of fresh fungus
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS: The poison is a
toxalbumin, resembling the poison in the rattles snake
and the poison excreted by the cholera and diphtheria
germs.
It acts on the red corpuscles, dissolving them so that
blood escapes into the alimentary canal and the whole
system is drained.
(a) Extreme prostration and chilliness
(b) Sweat - cold
(c) Violent thirst
(d) Tongue-cold
(e) Sharp changes from rapid to slow and from slow to rapid breathing
(f) Incessant cramps in stomach
(g) Hard, tense abdomen
(h) Frequent whitish watery stool; or bilious, bloody stools
(i) Constant restlessness
(j) Staggers as if intoxicated, and, with odd gesticulations, labours to express his
sufferings but cannot articulate a syllable

4) AGARICUS PANTHERINUS
COMMON NAME: Spotted amantia
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS:

(a) General overpowering sense of fatigue
(b) Loss of power of coordinating muscular
movements
(c) Answers in monosyllables with an expression of
annoyance
(d) Trembling
(e) Invincible drowsiness





5) BOLETUS LARICIS
COMMON NAME: White agaric/ Boletus purgans
PROVER: Burt
PARTS USED: Trituration
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS:
a. The gastro- enteric irritation common to the fungi
was very well marked
b. Motion will aggravate headache
c. Disposition to yawn and stretch when chilly
d. Great restlessness after midnight
e. Faintness after stool
f. Aching distress in all joints
g. Profuse perspiration at night with hectic chills and fever
h. Chronic diarrhoea and dysentery
i. Loud rumbling in bowels
j. Hepatic complaints, especially jaundice






6) BOLETUS LURIDUS
COMMON NAME: Boletus nigrescens
PARTS USED: Trituration
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS:
a. Poisoning effects show delirium, sunken
features, violet color of nose and lips
b. Violent pain in epigastrium
c. Meteorism
d. Intense thirst with loss of stool
e. Urticaria tuberosa ( speedily followed by death)
f. Subsultus tendinum
g. Cold sweat



7) BOLETUS SATANAS
PROVING: There are two fragmentary proving of this fungus and
observations on 6 persons poisoned
PARTS USED: Trituration
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS:
a. Troublesome dryness in mouth and throat
b. Unquenchable thirst
c. Sudden desire to vomit, no nausea between
attacks
d. Frightful pain in stomach
e. Faintness while vomiting
f. Limbs cold, cold sweat over whole body



8) BOVISTA
COMMON NAME: Lycopedron/ Puff-ball
PROVER: Hartlaub ( proved in 1828)
PARTS USED: Trituration
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS:
The puff ball, exerts its influence on the circulation, causing
relaxation of capillary system, thereby producing
hemorrhagic diathesis.
(a) Stammering
(b) Everything falls from hands
(c) Enlarged sensation
(d) Colic relieved by eating
(e) Cannot bear tight clothing around waist
(f) Tension headaches- senasation as if head were enlarging
(g) Sweat in axilla smells like onion
(h) Tip of coccyx itches intolerably
(i) Urticaria on excitement
(j) Moist vesicular eruptions with formation of thick crusts

SINGLE RUBRICS FOR AGARICUS MUSCARIUS
a. Sadness, society, in amelioration
b. Head, constriction, breakfast amelioration
c. Pain, extending nose, to
d. Cosmetics allergy




9) PHALLUS IMPUDICUS
COMMON NAME: Stink horn
PROVER: Kalieniczensko took five or six teaspoonfuls of an
infusion of phallus in 24 hrs and the effects were observed.
PARTS USED: Mother tincture/ Infusion of whole fungus
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS:
a. Vertigo, dullness, vision disordered
b. Viscid sweta
c. Gastro-enteric disturbances






10) POLYPORUS PINICOLA
COMMON NAME: Pine agaric
PROVER: Dr. burt
PARTS USED: Ttincture of fresh plant
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS:
a. Great lassitude, congestion of head with vertigo,
face hot and flushed
b. Prickling sensation all over
c. Restless at night from pain in wrists and knee
d. Headache about 10 a.m. , with pain in back, ankles and legs increasing until 3 p.m. ,
then gradually better.





11) RUSSULA FOETENS
COMMON NAME: Russ
PROVER: Alphonse Barrelet observed the effects of eating
cooked Russula foetens, which produced a very severe
poisoning
PARTS USED: Tincture of fresh mushrooms
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS
a. Hallucinations, muscular tremors and clonic spasms
b. Eye symptoms more pronounced, complete blindness with peculiarity of the
pupil- sometimes-normal, sometimes- dilated and sometimes contracted.
c. Patient could hear but completely blind



12) SECALE CORNUTUM
COMMON NAME: Ergot of Rye/ Claviceps purpura
PROVING: No proving
PARTS USED: Tincture of fresh spores collected just before harvest
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS
Secale contracts the muscles of blood vessels and uterus, decomposes the blood, producing
haemorrhage which is thin, fetid, watery, black, oozing, continuously. Produces contraction
of the unstrapped muscular fibers, hence a tight feeling
throughout the whole body. This produces an anemic condition,
coldness, numbness, petechiae, mortification, gangrene.
a. Debility, anxiety, emaciation, though appetite and thirst
may be excessive
b. Passive haemorrhages- continuous oozing of watery
blood
c. Brownish offensive leucorrhoea
d. Threatened miscarriage about the third month
e. Severe after-pains
f. Craves acids
g. Violent cramps
h. Icy coldness of limbs
i. Skin feels cold to touch
j. Great aversion to heat, formication under skin
k. Insomnia of drug and liquor habits
l. Internal burning with icy coldness, externally, yet averse
to being covered
m. Dry gangrene
n. worse from warmth will be leading indication in many eye cases requiring secale.
o. Tongue dry, cracked, blood like ink exudes
p. Tingling of tip of tongue of , which is stiff.

SINGLE RUBRICS FOR SECALE COR
MIND
a. Delirium abandon her frelatives
b. Delirium- absurd things, does
c. Mocking his relatives
VERTIGO
a. Rocking, ameliorates
HEAD
a. Pain, outwards
b. Disgust for food, especially for meat and fat things
c. Vomiting passes contents of stomach , then mucus, then only mucus mixed with
round worms or decomposed matter
d. Desire for water with fever in diabetes.




13) USTILAGO
COMMON NAME: Corn smut / Ustilago maydis
PROVING: Burt
PARTS USED: Trituration
CHARACTERISTIC SYMPTOMS
a. Flabby condition of uterus, hemorrhage
b. Uterine fibroids, bleeding
c. Cervix spongy