Avena Sativa (common name Oats)
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Oats have been noticed by many ancient cultures and presently cultivated in nearly all northern temperate latitudes. Today there are many forms of "rolled oats" and they are now a general article of commerce, forming excellent cereal foods.
Oatmeal (AVENAE FARINA) is odorless, or has but little odor, is not so white as wheat flour, and has a somewhat bitterish taste. Water removes its nourishing principles when boiled with it.
Action, Medical Uses, and Dosage
I. AVENAE FARINA. Oatmeal is nutritive and demulcent. Good in habitual constipation, but not in dyspepsia accompanied with acidity of the stomach. In the form of gruel, either salted or seasoned with sugar, honey, or the pulp of fruit, it is an agreeable nutritive during convalescence from acute diseases, in the puerperal state and in some chronic diseases. Oatmeal made into a cake with water, baked and browned like coffee, then pulverized and made into a coffee, or infusion, forms a drink which will allay nausea and check vomiting in a majority of cases when all other means fail, and used thus is very useful in diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera morbus, and irritable conditions of the stomach. One ounce of oatmeal in 2 quarts of water, boiled down to 1 quart and then strained, forms a very nutritive gruel. It may be rendered more palatable by the addition of vegetable acids, aromatics, sugar, prunes, raisins, etc.
II. AVENA SATIVA. This plant is a nerve-tonic, stimulant, and antispasmodic. It ranks among the most important restoratives for conditions depending upon nervous prostration, and for the nervous exhaustion consequent upon typhoid and other low fevers, and the accidental disorders arising from these complaints, as weak heart, spermatorrhoea, insomnia, etc. In enfeebled states of the heart muscle it acts as a good tonic to improve the energy of the organ, and is recommended by Prof Webster to prevent relapsing cardiac rheumatism. In this condition it is not thought to be specially antirheumatic, but rather to strengthen that debility upon which the rheumatic diathesis depends, so that the patient is less subject to atmospheric and other impressions. In spermatorrhoea it is adapted to those cases of debility following adynamic diseases, or in simple spermatorrhoea when not due to self-abuse. The atonic state gives rise to a nervous erethism or an enervated condition favorable to nocturnal losses. In cases depending wholly or partially upon prostatic irritation it is of less value, but aids staphisagria, sabal, salix nigra, and other indicated remedies Spasmodic conditions of the neck of the bladder are said to be relieved by it.
A few years ago it labeled as a remedy to assist in reducing morphine addiction, and to sustain the nervous system while undergoing withdrawal.
Specific Indications and Uses
Nerve tonic, stimulant, and antispasmodic. Spasmodic and nervous disorders, with exhaustion; cardiac weakness; nervous debility of convalescence; spermatorrhoea from the nervous erethism of debility; tensive articular swellings.