Sticta pulmonaria — lungwort — is a lichen whose lobed, lung-like surface gave it its name and its folk reputation. Hale introduced it to homeopathy, Clarke records, after it had long been "a popular remedy of great repute in catarrhs and coughs" — and the provings sharpened that folk use into one of the most precise small remedies of the respiratory materia medica.
Boericke frames its range in a sentence: "coryza, bronchial catarrh and influenza, together with nervous and rheumatic disturbances." But the remedy lives in two keynotes: a dull, heavy pressure at the root of the nose, and a nose that must constantly be blown — and yields nothing.
This guide profiles Sticta for clinical study from Boericke, Nash's Leaders, Clarke's Dictionary and Boger's Synoptic Key. The originals can be read in full — Boericke's Sticta, Clarke's Sticta and Hering's Sticta — through Similia's free digital materia medica.
The Sticta State
Boger's one-line portrait: "Nervous, stiff and rheumatic; develops catarrhs. Painful, dry mucous membranes." The general feeling, Boericke writes, is "dullness and malaise, as when a cold is coming on."
The defining pathology is obstruction by dryness. Clarke: "The catarrh of Stic is for the most part obstructive; and if there is discharge it dries quickly, and forms crusts or scurf. Constant need to blow the nose, but no discharge comes on account of dryness." Nash describes secretions that "become so hard and dry as to form scabby concretions" — one door down, he notes, from the clinkers of Kali bichromicum.
The catarrh also has a sequence: the headache comes before the discharge. Boericke: "Catarrhal headache before discharge appears." Nash: "when the nose begins to discharge freely the pain ceases or becomes much less" — blocked is worse, flowing is better, a rhythm worth confirming in every sinus case.
And around the mucous membranes stands a nervous frame: restlessness, sleeplessness, the need to talk, and the famous floating sensation.
Mental and Emotional Picture
Must talk. Boericke: "Confusion of ideas; patient must talk." Clarke's prover "cannot keep her tongue still" and had a "great desire to talk about anything and everything, doesn't care whether any one listens."
Floating. The remedy's strange-rare-peculiar, printed by Boericke as its first mental symptom: "Feels as if floating in air." Nash's verified form: "legs felt as if floating in the air, or she felt light and airy as if not resting on the bed" — appearing in nervous and hysterical conditions, which he calls "very distressing." Clarke files Sticta under levitation and adds the related sensations: head as if floating off, as if body and limbs did not touch the bed.
Sleeplessness. Partly from the cough, but not only — Nash suspects "a nervous condition which also comes under the curative range of Sticta contributes to it," and Clarke lists sleeplessness from nervousness as a use in its own right.
Physical Affinities
Nose. The centre of the remedy. "Feeling of fullness at the root of the nose... Dryness of nasal membrane. Constant need to blow the nose, but no discharge. Dry scabs, especially in evening and night. Hay-fever; incessant sneezing" (Boericke). Clarke adds the prover's detail — "desire to put finger in nose to clear out gluish secretion" — and the clinical extension to ozæna and atrophic rhinitis (Boericke compares Calc fluor).
Head. "Dull headache, with dull heavy pressure in forehead and root of nose" (Boericke), increasing through the day; sick-headache with nausea; and Clarke's curiosity, a headache "as if the entire skull were being raised up and lowered again." The scalp "feels as if too small."
Eyes. Burning in the eyes and lids with soreness of the balls; catarrhal conjunctivitis (Boericke); worse turning the eyes (Clarke).
Throat and airways. Rawness with post-nasal dripping — "throat raw; dropping of mucus posteriorly" (Boericke); Clarke's "clergyman's sore throat, characterised by great dryness of mucous membranes," the soft palate "like dried leather."
Cough. The second pillar. "Dry, hacking cough during night; worse, inspiration" (Boericke); "can neither sleep nor lie down; must sit up" (Clarke, Nash); "incessant, dry, hacking cough; prevents sleep; worse coughing and inspiration; croupy; worse if tired; after measles" (Boger). Clarke preserves the self-feeding quality — "the more he coughs, the more he wants to" (which he cross-references to Ignatia) — and the remedy's special record in coughs left behind by measles, whooping-cough and influenza. Boericke notes the loose morning stage and the value in tracheitis, where it "facilitates expectoration."
Chest. "Pain through chest from sternum to spinal column" (Boericke) — Clarke's fuller form: "sudden pain from sternum to spine, constant, worse on movement," with oppression "as if a hard mass" in the chest, among his leading symptoms in deep chest cases.
Joints. The rheumatic half of the remedy. "Rheumatic pain in right shoulder joint, deltoid, and biceps. Swelling, heat, redness of joints. Spot of inflammation and redness over affected joint" (Boericke) — that circumscribed red spot being, in Clarke's account of Price's cases, so constant that he "began to regard it as a characteristic." Then the near-specific: "Housemaid's knee" (Boericke), with Clarke: "In housemaid's-knee Stic comes as near being a specific as a remedy ever can." Nash adds sudden inflammatory rheumatism of the knee, severe enough in one case to make a strong man "delirious with the pain" — cured within the week. Boericke's sequence note completes the picture: "rheumatic pains precede catarrhal symptoms."
Female. A small verified gem: "scanty flow of milk" (Boericke) — Clarke relates Rogers' nursing patient whose scanty milk "became ample" under Sticta, an effect he then verified repeatedly.
Key Modalities
Worse from:
- Night — the cough above all; lying down
- Sudden changes of temperature (Boericke)
- Motion — chest pains and joints (though the knee may demand moving about)
- As the day advances — headache, nose and eye symptoms build through the day (Clarke)
- Coughing — each cough provoking the next; when tired
Better from:
- Free discharges — the whole catarrh eases when flow is established
- Open air (Boger; Clarke: "influenza is better in open air")
- Pressure (headache); sitting up (cough)
Keynote Symptoms
- Dull, heavy pressure in forehead and root of the nose
- Constant need to blow the nose — without result; dryness, crusts, scabs
- Catarrhal headache before the discharge appears; better once flow starts
- Dry, hacking night cough — cannot lie down, must sit up
- The more he coughs, the more he wants to
- Cough after measles, whooping-cough, influenza
- Hay fever: plugged nose with incessant sneezing
- Red inflamed spot over the affected joint
- Housemaid's knee — the near-specific
- Rheumatic pains preceding catarrhal symptoms
- Feels as if floating in air; legs not resting on the bed
- Must talk; nervous sleeplessness
- Scanty milk becoming ample
Clinical Applications
Acute coryza and sinusitis. The first-rank use: a cold beginning with frontal and root-of-nose pressure, dry obstructed membranes, useless nose-blowing — Nash calls it "one of the best" in acute catarrh, and Hale thought it "indispensable in February, March, and April in the American climate."
Chronic and post-nasal catarrh. Crusting, scabby, dry catarrhs — Nash: "I have relieved many cases of chronic catarrh with Sticta; some of years' standing."
Night cough and post-infectious cough. The dry cough that owns the night and forbids lying — including the lingering coughs after measles (where Nash pairs it with Coffea for the sleepless child), whooping-cough (Clarke cites Majumdar's cures with the 6x, cough beginning after sunset and ending in vomiting) and influenza. Its place among the acute cough remedies is mapped in our cough differential guide.
Hay fever. "When the trouble centres in the head and frontal sinuses; the nose is completely plugged up, though there is continual sneezing" (Nash).
Rheumatism and bursitis. Sudden joint inflammations with the red spot; the right shoulder; and housemaid's knee (prepatellar bursitis), where the clinical record borders on specificity.
Nervous states. Sleeplessness, hysterical restlessness with the floating sensation, chorea-like movements — Clarke records hysterical chorea after hæmorrhage among its cures.
Differential Diagnosis
Sticta vs. Kali bichromicum. Nash's own comparison. Both have frontal/root-of-nose pain and crusting catarrh; Kali bich forms its famous plugs and clinkers with thick ropy discharge and tends toward septal ulceration, while Sticta stays dry — the blowing yields nothing at all. "All the other symptoms must be considered in choosing between them."
Sticta vs. Nux vomica. Boericke cross-references the stuffed root of the nose to Nux. Nux is the night-blocked, day-flowing snuffles of the chilly irritable patient; Sticta the dry, crusted obstruction with frontal pressure and no flow to alternate with.
Sticta vs. Drosera. Both night coughs. Drosera is paroxysmal and spasmodic — barking volleys ending in retching; Sticta is incessant and hacking, sustained rather than convulsive, with the nasal keynote attending. Nash lists Drosera among the acute-catarrh cough rivals with Rumex and Sambucus.
Sticta vs. Rumex. Both dry, tickling, incessant coughs. Rumex is set off by cold air and touching the throat-pit; Sticta by lying down at night, with the catarrhal frontal pressure Rumex lacks.
Sticta vs. Euphrasia. Opposites in the flow: Nash explicitly excludes Sticta from "the watery or fluent form of coryza, such as calls for Euphrasia, Mercurius, Arsenicum" — Euphrasia streams from the eyes; Sticta cannot produce a drop.
Sticta vs. Bryonia (joints and chest). The sternum-to-spine pain worse on movement and the hot swollen joints suggest Bryonia; Sticta declares itself by the red spot over the joint, the catarrhal prelude, and — in the knee — sometimes needing to move for relief where Bryonia demands stillness.
Repertorisation Tips
These rubrics carry Sticta in useful grade:
- Nose; OBSTRUCTION; must blow nose, without relief
- Nose; DRYNESS; inside and Nose; CRUSTS, scabs, inside
- Head; PAIN; forehead; root of nose
- Head; PAIN; catarrhal; discharge, before the
- Cough; NIGHT and Cough; LYING; agg.; must sit up
- Cough; DRY; night and Cough; HACKING
- Cough; MEASLES, after and Cough; WHOOPING-COUGH, after
- Nose; HAY FEVER; with plugged nose
- Extremities; INFLAMMATION; joints; red spot, with
- Extremities; KNEE; housemaid's knee
- Generalities; LIGHTNESS, sensation of; floating
- Mind; TALK, talking; desire to talk
The fastest confirmation is a particular (pressure at the root of the nose), a functional sign (blowing without result) and a modality (cough worse lying at night). If the discharge is fluent and watery, leave Sticta — that case belongs to Euphrasia or Arsenicum. Our beginner's guide to repertorisation sets out the method in more detail.
Deepening Your Study
- Boericke carries the whole remedy in miniature — both keynotes, the cough, the joints and the floating sensation
- Nash's Leaders are the finest clinical essay on it: the Kali-bich borderline, the excluded fluent-coryza cases, and the verified floating symptom
- Clarke's Dictionary holds the proving history, the housemaid's-knee record, the milk cases and the levitation group
- Boger's Synoptic Key compresses it: "nervous, stiff and rheumatic; develops catarrhs — pressure or stuffy fulness at root of nose; blows it without relief"
- Hering's Guiding Symptoms preserve the verified clinical symptoms that built its reputation after Hale's introduction
You can read all of these side by side through Similia's free digital materia medica. To place the Sticta cough among its rivals — Bryonia, Drosera, Spongia, Antimonium tart — see the acute cough differential guide.
