VALERIANA OFFICINALIS

Description:--

A decidous, perennial herb, with a tuberous, short, upright root-stock, having numerous, slender, fleshy, tapering, pale-brown rootlets, 3 to 4 inches long and sending out runners, at the end of which young plants are formed. The solitary, erect stem, 3 to 4 feet high, is hollow, furrowed, branched only at the top and hirsute at the base. The few leaves are opposite, pinnate, coarsely-serrate, clasping ; the radical on long petioles, the cauline much smaller and passing into bracts above ; the opposite, or alternate, leafliets are sessile, lanceolate, dentate, ¾ to 2 ½ inches long. The numerous, small, white or flesh colored flowers appear in June and July in crowded sessile bunches of three at the extremities of the final divisions of the trichotomous, compound, spreading cymes, terminating the stem and branches, the whole forming a large, more or less flattopped cyme. The root have a camphoraceous, bitter, unpleasant taste, and a strong turpentine-like odour, acquired in drying. The best grow in dry situations.

Found in :- Great Britain and Europe generally, also Asia, Kashmir, Japan and Iceland ; found in dry pastures as well as in wet plasces.

Introduced into homoeopathic practice:--

By Dr. Hahnemann, Frag. d. Vir. 251 in 1805. ( Allen’s Encyc. Mat, Med. X. 59.)

Part Used:--

The root, recently dried.

Preparation:--

(a)Tincture Q: =	Drug Strength 1/10
Valeriana, in moderately coarse powder	100 gm
Distilled water, a sufficient quantity in this proportion.	500 Cc.
Strong alcohol, a sufficient quantity in this proportion.	537 Cc.
To make one thousand cubic centimeters of tincture.

(b) Dilutions: 2x 2x to contain one part of tincture, four parts distilled water, five parts alcohol ; 3x and higher with dispensing alcohol.

(c) Triturations: 1x and higher.