Pains from inguinal hernia. This indication has its source in a proving symptom: ‘Pain in the groin, as if a hernia would protrude, and, on pressing upon it, pain as if a hernia were going inward… ’
A spasmodic pain in the region of the left ileum and groin and in the left side of the (female) pelvis was repeatedly cured with Colocynthis.
During the pains, the abdomen is often much distended, even tympanitic. Constant borborygmi, also a ‘rumbling and croaking in the abdomen as from frogs’. Incarcerated, retained flatus.
Some unusual symptoms: ‘A violent cutting, like an electric shock, darted through the whole abdomen to the anus, towards noon’. ‘Pulsation deep in the abdomen’. ‘A pressure from both sides of the hypogastrium towards the middle, as from flatus which won’t come out, with irritation to seminal emission ’.
Rectum and Stool
Colocynthis patients suffer from frequent and violent urging for stool, often with unsatisfactory evacuation.
They tend to have diarrhoea, and ‘chronic diarrhoea’ is one of Hahnemann’s indications. The patients may have a sensation as if anus and rectum were weakened and relaxed by long continued diarrhoea.
In diarrhoea, Colocynthis may be indicated:
• if the stools are watery, and attended with pain in the sides of the abdomen;
• if it only occurs in the morning;
• if the diarrhoea comes on as a consequence of severe pains or of anger, vexation and indignation;
• if abdomen and thighs are approximated as much as possible during the discharge of the stool;
• if fluid stools are discharged together with flatus immediately after eating;
• if the least food or drink renews the diarrhoea.
Loose stools often bring transient relief of the colic pains, but this is not always
the case.