Avena sativa
Alias: Aven.
Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica, William Boericke
Common Oat
Has a selective action on brain and nervous system, favorably influencing their nutritive function.
Nervous exhaustion, sexual debility, and the morphine habit call for this remedy in rather material dosage. Best tonic for debility after exhausting diseases. Nerve tremors of the aged; chorea, paralysis agitans, epilepsy. Post-diphtheritic paralysis. Rheumatism of heart. Colds. Acute coryza (20 drop doses in hot water hourly for a few doses). Alcoholism. Sleeplessness, especially of alcoholics. Bad effects of Morphine habit. Nervous states of many female troubles.
Mind.--Inability to keep mind on any one subject.
Head.--Nervous headache at menstrual period, with burning at top of head. Occipital headache, with phosphatic urine.
Female.--Amenorrhoea and dysmenorrhoea, with weak circulation.
Male.--Spermatorrhoea; impotency; after too much indulgence.
Extremities.--Numbness of limbs, as if paralyzed. Strength of hand diminished.
Relationship.--Compare: Alfalfa (General tonic similar to avena-also in scanty and suppressed urine).
Dose.--Tincture ten to twenty drop doses, preferably in hot water.
A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica, John Henry Clarke
Oat. N. O. Gramineae. Tincture of fresh plant in flower.
Clinical.─Alcoholism. Cholera. Debility. Influenza. Neurasthenia. Opium habit. Palpitation. Sexual excess. Sleeplessness. Tuberculosis.
Characteristics.─Avena has been used empirically in substantial doses (5 to 15 drops of the tincture, preferably in hot water) in a large number of cases of nerve weakness. The leading indications are: Irregularities of the male sexual system. Nervous exhaustion. General debility. Nervous palpitation. Insomnia. Inability to keep the mind fixed on any one subject, especially when due to masturbation or sexual irregularities. It is most valuable in enabling a patient to overcome the morphine habit. It appears to exert the same kind of soothing action, without creating a habit of its own. When not more than four grains of morphine have been taken daily it may be discontinued abruptly, 15 drops of Avena in a wineglass of hot water being given four times a day instead. The only symptom that has been observed to be caused by it is a pain at the base of the brain from 20-drop doses.
An alkaloid, Avenin (C56 H21 NO18), has been isolated from oats. It is easily soluble in alcohol. No clinical observations with this have been recorded.