Quinine conk

Profuse night sweats with hectic fever and wasting, as seen in advanced pulmonary disease, calling for very small doses of the tincture.

Alternating chills and flushes of heat with aching in the back and drenching, colliquative perspiration.

Overview. This is a large, hard, woody bracket fungus that grows on old larch and other conifer trees across the northern temperate forests of Europe, Asia, and North America. The fruiting body was harvested, dried, and shaved or powdered for use in Western and eclectic medicine, where it was valued in two opposite ways depending on dose: as a strong purgative when given generously, and as an agent to check excessive sweating when given in very small amounts. It has largely disappeared from clinical use but survives in mycological and historical materia medica as one of the most storied fungi of old-growth conifer forests.

Clinical Notes. Eclectic physicians reached for this fungus almost exclusively in its minim doses, for the drenching night sweats and hectic fevers of consumptive patients, where the picture was one of chills alternating with flushes and profuse, weakening perspiration.

Action and Therapy. This fungus is remarkable for the high per cent (79) of resins it contains. It is a decided nerve stimulant and antiperiodic. Boletus is but little used, but occasionally will be needed in irregular intermittents, not reached by quinine medication and presenting alternate chills and flashes of heat, accompanied by a heavy bearing down pain in the back.

Therapy. The remedy is applicable to all conditions of malarial origin. It is especially useful in those localities where malaria and the results of malaria prevail. The symptoms are languor, dullness, and general malaise, long continued, with the usual results, such as disordered digestion, lack of appetite, heavily coated tongue, pale mucous membranes.