Virgin's bower

Persistent, low-grade nerve pain or neuralgia that responds to a local counter-irritant rubefacient application

Chronic, obstinate skin disease of a torpid, unresolving character where an alterative was historically indicated

Overview. Clematis virginiana, virgin's bower, is a native North American climbing vine of the buttercup family found across woodland edges and thickets of the eastern and central United States and Canada. The fresh leaf and flowering vine were used by nineteenth century Eclectic physicians, most notably in Scudder's Specific Medication system, as an alterative and topical rubefacient. It never achieved wide or well-documented clinical use and Scudder himself noted it as an agent deserving further study rather than one with an established record.

Clinical Notes. This is a thinly documented remedy even within its own tradition. Scudder's note that virgin's bower 'has not been studied, though it deserves investigation' remains essentially true today: there is no meaningful modern clinical literature on internal use, and practitioners who still reach for it do so almost entirely as a topical rubefacient for localized neuralgic or rheumatic pain, applying the fresh bruised leaf or a dilute tincture externally and watching carefully for blistering, since the plant shares the acrid, vesicant protoanemonin principle common to fresh Ranunculaceae.

Specific indications and reasoning. (VIRGIN's BOWEB.) This agent has not been studied, though it deserves investigation. Prepare a tincture from the recent leaves, in the proportion of 5viij. to Alcohol 76° Oj., using pressure. Dose, gtts.