Pichi

Chronic cystitis with thick, ropy, mucoid urine and a dull dragging ache over the bladder

Sluggish liver with dull right-sided discomfort, constipation and a background uric acid diathesis

Overview. Fabiana imbricata is a resinous, heath-like shrub of the Solanaceae family, native to the arid slopes of Chile and neighboring Argentina, where its small scale-like leaves give it the outward appearance of a conifer or ericaceous plant. The dried leaves and young twigs are the part used, and the plant entered western herbal practice through eclectic physicians of the late nineteenth century, who valued it chiefly as a genito-urinary and hepatic remedy imported from South American folk use.

Clinical Notes. Pichi was reached for in the eclectic era mainly as a remedy for chronic irritable states of the urinary tract, particularly where the urine was thick, mucoid or turbid and the bladder felt heavy and sore rather than acutely inflamed.

Action and Therapy. A remedy for functional catarrhal diseases of the stomach, kidneys, and bladder. Like all the terebinthinates when given in small doses, it is of some value in vesical pain with frequent urination, cystic irritation, with dysuria and vesical tenesmus, and in nocturnal urinal incontinence. It is asserted useful in acute albuminuria, with blood in the urine, and due chiefly to renal hyperemia, but should be avoided in chronic nephritis. Pichi has no curative effects upon pathologic tissues, but is a remedy for functional defects alone.

Therapy. It relieves general distress or discomfort in all the urinary organs, and in the prostate gland. In vesical tenesmus and in dysuria from any cause it is almost specific. In lithemia or the uric acid diathesis, it stimulates the liver to more perfect action, greatly increases the action of the kidneys, reduces the specific gravity of the urine, and permanently reduces the excess of uric acid.