Teucrium marum verum — cat-thyme, one of the germanders that stocked the old herbal pharmacies — was proved by Stapf and has earned, in Clarke's phrase, "a firm foundation" in homeopathy on two humble but stubborn complaints: threadworms and nasal polypi. No remedy, Clarke writes, "meets more cases of threadworms than Teucr."
Boericke adds the register note that lifts it beyond those two: "Suitable after too much medicine has been taken. Oversensitiveness." — the remedy of the over-drugged, over-reactive case where good prescriptions have stopped working.
This guide profiles Teucrium for clinical study from Boericke, Nash's Leaders, Clarke's Dictionary, all three Lippe works and Boger's Synoptic Key. The originals can be read in full — Boericke's Teucrium, Clarke's Teucrium and Hering's Teucrium — through Similia's free digital materia medica.
The Teucrium State
Boger's portrait: "Over-sensitive and excitable. Delicate and sensitive. Internal tremor; worse excitement... Sleepless, after excitement." Lippe's materia medica adds the temper — great sensitiveness and excitability, irritability increased after eating — and one gleaming oddity: "irresistible desire to sing."
Two bodily generals thread the picture: a desire to stretch (Boericke prints it in italics) and a nervous trembling irritation "in the whole body" (Lippe's Keynotes). The patient is restless at night — from itching, from worms, from excitement — and craves open air, "which does not fatigue him but improves the condition."
And there is the pharmacological register already quoted: when "too much medicine has produced an over-sensitive condition and remedies fail to act" (Clarke), Teucrium can clear the case — a rubric it shares with few remedies.
Physical Affinities
Nose. The first pillar. "A remedy of first importance in chronic nasal catarrh with atrophy; large, offensive crusts and clinkers. Ozæna. Loss of sense of smell" (Boericke). Catarrh of both anterior and posterior nostrils; "solid lumps from posterior nares" (Boger); crawling in the nostrils with lachrymation and sneezing; tingling without coryza (Lippe). Then the growths: "mucous polypus," with Guernsey's guiding detail preserved by Clarke — stoppage of the nose on the side lain on — and Nash's flat clinical verdict: one of the best remedies for nasal polypus, curing "never to return."
Rectum. The second pillar. "Itching of anus, and constant irritation in the evening in bed. Ascarides, with nightly restlessness" (Boericke); creeping and violent stinging at the anus at night; crawling in the rectum after stool (Lippe). Nash: "I have found this remedy one of the best for ascarides. Have cured many cases who had 'tried everything.'" Boger's compression: "Itching anus; prevents sleep. Pinworms."
The nose–anus axis. Nash's clinical observation binds the two pillars into one prescription: children with threadworms rub and pick their tingling noses. Where a child presents both ends of that axis, Teucrium is nearly specific.
Throat and chest. The mouldy taste "in throat when hawking up mucus" (Boericke) — the keynote that carried Boger's phthisical cough case; dry cough with tickling in the trachea, profuse expectoration, "cough, worse coughing" (Boger — the self-feeding cough it shares with Sticta and Ignatia); follicular pharyngitis; smarting "as from pepper" at the root of the tongue (Lippe). Clarke used both Teucriums in phthisical cases, and his tubercular reading of "worms and polypi" — as marks of that taint — explains the remedy's reach into new growths generally: he records removal of a fibrous eyelid tumour, urethral granulations and uterine fibroids.
Stomach. Unnatural, craving hunger — "feeling of hunger which prevents sleep" (Lippe); vomiting of large quantities of dark-green masses; and the specific hiccough: "constant hiccough, attended with pain in back... hiccough on eating, after nursing" (Boericke) — in infants at the breast, a small signature (Clarke separates it from Ignatia's emotional hiccough).
Limbs and nails. "Affection of finger-tips and joints of toes. Tearing pains in arms and legs. Pain in toe-nails, as if they had grown into flesh" (Boericke) — with "suppurating grooves in the nails" (Lippe). Ingrown toenails and deformed, suppurating nail-beds are practical, verified uses. Limbs "go to sleep" with tingling when sitting.
Eyes and ears. Smarting canthi with red puffy lids; a tarsal tumour (Boericke compares Staphysagria); hissing in the ear when passing the hand over it or drawing air through the nose (Lippe's odd, precise otalgia).
Key Modalities
Worse from:
- Warmth of bed; evening and night — itching, worms, restlessness
- Touch; sitting; stooping
- On the side lain on (the polypus-stoppage modality)
- Damp, changing weather; cold (Boger)
Better from:
- Open air — desired, and it does not fatigue
- Motion
- Sweat (Boger)
Keynote Symptoms
- Threadworms with itching anus, worse evening in bed; nightly restlessness
- Crawling, tingling nose the child constantly rubs and picks
- Mucous nasal polypi; nose stopped on the side lain on
- Atrophic catarrh: large offensive crusts and clinkers; loss of smell
- Mouldy taste in the throat on hawking or coughing
- Oversensitive after too much medicine; remedies fail to act
- Desire to stretch; internal trembling; excitement prevents sleep
- Hiccough after nursing, in infants
- Ingrown toenails; suppurating grooves in the nails
- Craving hunger that prevents sleep
- Cough worse coughing — the more he coughs, the more he must
Clinical Applications
Threadworms (pinworms, ascarides). The classical first choice, on the nightly anal itching with restlessness, especially where the nose-rubbing accompanies. Cina is its constant rival — see below.
Nasal polypi. The strongest single clinical claim: Nash's "never to return," Guernsey's side-lain-on keynote, and the traditional dry-powder snuff as an adjunct.
Chronic atrophic rhinitis and ozæna. Crusts, clinkers, foul breath, anosmia — one step beyond the Kali bich stage of catarrh.
Post-infectious and phthisical coughs. On the mouldy-taste keynote with profuse expectoration and weight loss — Boger's cured case being the template.
Nail affections. Ingrown toenails and suppurating nail grooves — a small, dependable niche it shares with Magnetis polus australis and Nitric acid (Clarke's comparisons).
The over-drugged case. When a muddled, over-medicated, oversensitive patient reacts to everything and responds to nothing, Teucrium (with Camphora as its antidotal cousin in that role) can reset the case.
Differential Diagnosis
Teucrium vs. Cina. The two great worm remedies, and Boger makes them directly related. Cina is the picture of the worm-child entire: ravenous or capricious appetite, nose-boring, teeth-grinding, ugly temper, convulsive tendencies. Teucrium is narrower and more local — the anal itching in the evening in bed and the tingling nose — in a nervous, excitable but not violent child. Where Cina's temper-storm is absent and the itching leads, Teucrium; many chronic cases need Teucrium after Cina has palliated.
Teucrium vs. Kali bichromicum (nasal crusts). Both form clinkers. Kali bich's catarrh is wet at bottom — thick, ropy, stringy discharge with pressure at the root of the nose, tending to septal ulceration. Teucrium's is the atrophic stage: dryness, anosmia, crusts without the ropy flow — and the polypus record is Teucrium's own.
Teucrium vs. Sticta (dry catarrh and cough). Sticta's dryness sits at the frontal sinuses with the useless need to blow; Teucrium's lives in crawling and crusts with polypi. Both coughs feed on themselves; Sticta's forbids lying down at night, Teucrium's carries the mouldy taste.
Teucrium vs. Silicea. Boericke and Boger both list it. Silicea shares the polypi, the suppurating nail-beds and the delicate oversensitivity — inside its full chilly, sweaty-headed, unassertive constitution. Teucrium is the acuter, narrower prescription; Silicea often follows as the constitutional.
Teucrium vs. Ignatia (hiccough). Clarke's separation: Ignatia's hiccough is worse from eating, smoking and emotion; Teucrium's follows nursing in infants.
Repertorisation Tips
These rubrics carry Teucrium in high grade:
- Rectum; WORMS; ascarides and Rectum; ITCHING; night, in bed
- Nose; TINGLING, crawling and Nose; PICKING at nose
- Nose; POLYPUS and Nose; OBSTRUCTION; side lain on
- Nose; CRUSTS, clinkers and Nose; SMELL; wanting
- Throat; TASTE; mouldy, on hawking
- Generalities; MEDICINE; abuse of; oversensitive from
- Stomach; HICCOUGH; nursing, after
- Extremities; NAILS; ingrowing and Extremities; NAILS; suppurating grooves
- Generalities; STRETCHING; desire to
- Sleep; SLEEPLESSNESS; itching, from; excitement, from
The fastest confirmation is either axis-end plus its partner: anal itching with the rubbed, tingling nose — or the polypus with side-lain-on stoppage. If the discharge is thick and ropy rather than crusted-dry, re-check Kali bich first. Our beginner's guide to repertorisation sets out the method in more detail.
Deepening Your Study
- Boericke carries both pillars, the mouldy taste, the over-medication rubric and the nail symptoms in one tight page
- Nash's Leaders contribute the worm-and-nose observation and the polypus verdict from long clinical use
- Clarke's Dictionary holds Stapf's proving history, Guernsey's keynote, the phthisical cases and the new-growth record
- Lippe's three works preserve the nervous generals — the trembling, the stretching, the singing — and the infant hiccough
- Boger's Synoptic Key compresses the remedy into its axes: crawling nose, itching anus, polypi, mouldy taste
You can read all of these side by side through Similia's free digital materia medica. For the neighbouring pictures, see the guides to Cina, Kali bichromicum and Sticta pulmonaria.
