Black Mustard

External. Deep-seated pain and inflammations; vomiting from gastric irritability; and repressed secretion. Internal. Emetic for poisoning by narcotics.

Therapy. External. The mustard plaster and the sinapism (mustard poultice) are popular with physicians and the laity as rubefacients and counterirritants to relieve deep-seated pain and inflammation, check vomiting, reestablish suppressed urine, excite and restore menstruation, to arouse from insensibility in narcotic poisoning, syncope and asphyxia, and as a derivative generally.

Therapy. A teaspoonful of mustard in a bowl of warm water will produce active and immediate emesis. This should be followed by another bowl of warm water alone, which will continue the evacuation and wash out any remaining mustard, as even then the burning sensation from the local effects of this substance with a few patients is hard to bear.

Action and Toxicology. Volatile oil of mustard is an extremely diffusible and penetrating irritant, quickly exciting heat and burning pain through its dilating action upon the peripheral vessels and irritation of the sensory nerve endings.

Physiological Action. Mustard is emetic, stimulant and actively revulsive with marked anodyne properties. Its application to the skin produces intense burning, violent inflammation, and if persisted in too long, sloughing or ulceration. Taken into the stomach in large quantities, if emesis be not produced, it causes a burning sensation and a mild form of gastritis.