Guernsey's observation, preserved by Clarke, remains the best single sentence on this remedy: "There is in Chamomilla a little thread of symptoms, and nearly always found running through it. This is a spiteful, sudden, or uncivil irritability."
The remedy is Matricaria chamomilla, German chamomile, prepared as a tincture of the whole fresh plant. Boericke states where its power lies: "The chief guiding symptoms belong to the mental and emotion group, which lead to this remedy in many forms of disease" — and condenses the whole state into five words: "Chamomilla is sensitive, irritable, thirsty, hot, and numb."
It is one of the great paediatric and obstetric remedies of the materia medica, and also one of the most clearly fenced. Clarke preserves Hahnemann's own rule: it "ought not to be given to those who bear pain patiently and with resignation. I mention this rule here, for it is of very great importance." Boericke agrees from the other side: "Mental calmness contraindicates Chamom."
This guide profiles Chamomilla for clinical study from Boericke's Materia Medica, Kent's Lectures, Clarke's Dictionary, Boger's Synoptic Key and Lippe's Keynotes. The originals can be read in full — Kent's Chamomilla, Boericke's Chamomilla and Clarke's Chamomilla — through Similia's free digital materia medica.
The Chamomilla State
Kent defines the ground: "The general constitutional state of Chamomilla is great sensitiveness; sensitive to every impression; sensitive to surroundings; sensitive to persons; and, above all, sensitive to pain." A little pain produces manifestations "as if the patient were in very great suffering" — Boger's "magnifies her pains."
Two causations feed the state. The first is anger: "complaints from anger and vexation" (Boericke), and Kent adds that convulsions themselves "come on from anger." The second is abuse of stimulants and palliatives: "oversensitiveness from abuse of coffee and narcotics" (Boericke); Lippe's "bad effects from wrath, from coffee and narcotic palliatives." Kent even traces infant convulsions to the domestic camomile tea given for colic.
The pains carry a signature accompaniment: "Pains unendurable, associated with numbness" (Boericke). Boger: "Numb, on awaking; after pain; hands, when grasping objects." Clarke relates Nash's cure of a stubborn shoulder rheumatism on precisely that indication — "numbness with the pains." And with the pains come heat and thirst: Lippe's "pains accompanied by thirst and heat"; Boger's "hot and thirsty or hot sweat, with the pains."
Mental and Emotional Picture
Frantic irritability. Boger's capitals carry the register: "UGLY, CROSS, AND UNCIVIL. QUARRELSOME; vexed at every trifle." He adds "Mad during pain" and "unappeasable crossness." Boericke: "Impatient, intolerant of being spoken to or interrupted; extremely sensitive to every pain; always complaining. Spiteful, snappish."
Cannot bear it. Clarke: "The pains are unbearable and drive to despair; the patient insists that the doctor shall cure them at once." Nash's differential, preserved by Clarke, separates this restlessness from Aconite's and Arsenicum's by the absence of fear of death — the Chamomilla patient "would rather die than suffer so."
Capriciousness. "Child wants many things which he refuses again. Piteous moaning because he cannot have what he wants" (Boericke). Kent's portrait: the child "wants something new every minute," and when the asked-for toy arrives it "throws them away; slings them clear across the room" — even "strikes the nurse in the face." Boger compresses it: "WANTS TO BE CARRIED or what is refused when offered."
Quiet only in motion. Lippe: "The child wants to be carried, and is then more quiet." Boericke: the child "can only be quieted when carried about and petted constantly." Kent extends it through the whole paediatric sphere — colic, earache, evening fevers — and notes the restless changing from nurse to mother to father, "never satisfied."
Civility lost. Kent's labour-room scene: a patient who under other circumstances passes as a lady is driven to frenzy by the pains and greets the doctor with "Doctor, I don't want you, get out." Clarke: "Cannot bear to be looked at. Cannot be civil to doctor."
Whining restlessness. Boericke's phrase for the whole mental ground of the child; Lippe hears it as "unceasing crying and yelling," with "anxious restlessness in mind and body with tossing about."
Physical Affinities
Face and head
The classic objective sign: "One cheek red and hot; the other pale and cold" (Boericke). With it go the hot, clammy sweat on forehead and scalp, Lippe's "perspiration of the head, especially the borders of the hair," and Clarke's "face sweats after eating or drinking." Boger notes "swelling, or REDNESS OF ONE CHEEK" and coldness of one part with heat of another.
Teeth and mouth
"Teeth ache worse after warm drink; worse, coffee, at night. Drives to distraction" (Boericke). Clarke: the toothache "comes on when entering a warm room or from drinking anything warm," and is relieved "by dipping finger in cold water and applying it to affected part." This is the one region that inverts the remedy's general heat relief — Kent is emphatic that the pains worse from heat "are about the teeth and jaws," a particular, while "the patient himself is better by heat."
Ears
"Earache, with soreness; swelling and heat driving patient frantic" (Boericke); stitching pains ameliorated by warmth (Boger: "sticking, earache; > warmth"). Kent singles out the wind sensitivity: nervous, sensitive women who cannot ride in the wind without covering the ears — "Chamomilla singles out the ears."
Digestion
"Flatulent colic, after anger, with red cheeks and hot perspiration" (Boericke); Boger: "colic going upward; < anger (Colo.)" and "cutting or wind colic; < night." The stools are diagnostic: "hot, green, watery, fetid, slimy, with colic. Chopped white and yellow mucus like chopped eggs and spinach... Diarrhœa during dentition" (Boericke). Boger's version: "STOOLS, hot, ACID, GRASS-GREEN, SLIMY, HACKED... smelling like bad eggs." Eructations foul; bitter taste; nausea after coffee.
Female sphere
"Profuse discharge of clotted, dark blood, with labor-like pains" (Boericke); spasmodic labour pains that "press upward," with the patient "intolerant of pain." Clarke adds the temper marker — menorrhagia with the temper "always < before and during flow" — and notes that with Nux the patient is conscious of the temper, with Chamomilla she is not.
Limbs and sleep
"Violent rheumatic pains drive him out of bed at night; compelled to walk about" (Boericke). "Burning of soles at night" — Clarke: "puts feet out of bed; soles burn." Sleep is as disturbed as the days: "drowsiness with moaning, weeping and wailing during sleep; anxious, frightened dreams, with half-open eyes" (Boericke); Lippe's "drowsiness with moaning and staring."
Key Modalities
Worse from:
- Anger; vexation, contradiction, chagrin
- Night — Lippe adds "on getting warm in bed"; Kent gives 9 o'clock, evening or morning, as a recurring hour
- Heat — for the teeth and jaws specifically
- Dentition
- Coffee and narcotics
- Open air, wind — Lippe: oversensitiveness "of the organs of sense to fresh air and wind"
- Suppressed perspiration (Lippe); Boger adds suppressed discharges generally
Better from:
- Being carried — the great paediatric modality
- Warm, wet weather (Boericke); mild weather (Boger)
- Heat, in the general state — Kent's clarification above
- Sweating (Boger)
- Cold applications — for the toothache
The apparent contradiction between "worse heat" and "better heat" dissolves once Kent's distinction is applied: hold the teeth apart from the rest of the case, and the modalities read cleanly.
Keynote Symptoms
- Sensitive, irritable, thirsty, hot, and numb — Boericke's pentad
- Pains unendurable, out of proportion, with numbness
- Spiteful, sudden, uncivil irritability (Guernsey's thread)
- One cheek red and hot, the other pale and cold
- Child quiet only when carried; wants things then refuses them
- Whining restlessness; piteous moaning
- Toothache worse warm drinks and coffee, better cold
- Earache driving the patient frantic; ears intolerant of wind
- Flatulent colic after anger, with red cheeks and hot sweat
- Hot, grass-green, slimy stools like chopped eggs and spinach, during dentition
- Dark clotted menstrual flow with labour-like pains and intolerance of pain
- Rheumatic pains driving out of bed at night, compelled to walk
- Hot sweat on the head and scalp; face sweats after eating
- Mental calmness contraindicates
Clinical Applications
Dentition disorders. Diarrhoea, earache, sleeplessness, fever and convulsions of teething children with the temper picture. Kent's caveat belongs in every student's notes: "teething ought to be a perfectly healthy process," and the remedy is prescribed on the individualising state, not "for teething" as a routine.
Earache. The screaming child with one red cheek, hand to the ear, pain better warmth — one of the most confirmed acute indications.
Infantile colic. Wind colic after anger, abdomen distended, child carried constantly; the effects of camomile tea itself, which Kent describes producing convulsions in infants.
Convulsions of children during dentition or after anger or punishment — Lippe: "twitchings and convulsions of children during dentition."
Toothache with the warm-drink aggravation and cold relief, including during pregnancy.
Dysmenorrhoea and labour. Intolerable spasmodic pains with frenzy and incivility; after-pains; Clarke records threatened abortion caused by anger.
Cough and croup. "Irritable, dry, tickling cough"; whooping cough where the spasmodic paroxysm follows a fit of temper (Kent); Clarke's croup case cured on the impatient temper and midnight paroxysms.
Sleeplessness from coffee and narcotic palliatives — Boger: "sleepless from abuse of narcotics"; Clarke notes its use in the nerve storm when morphia is discontinued.
Differential Diagnosis
Chamomilla vs. Coffea. The classical pairing of nervous oversensitivity. Kent: "Excessive sensibility of the nerves, so excessive that only a few remedies equal it, such as Coffea, Nux vom. and Opium." Clarke records the mutual antidotal relation — Chamomilla antidotes coffee, Coffea antidotes Chamomilla. The temper decides: Chamomilla's sensitivity is angry and uncivil; Coffea's guide describes the sleepless over-excitement without the spite.
Chamomilla vs. Colocynthis. Both have colic from anger, and Boger's Chamomilla text points across directly: "colic going upward; < anger (Colo.)." Clarke groups them under "indignation and its effects, Coloc., Staph., Nux, Bry." Chamomilla's colic comes with the red cheek, hot sweat, green stools and the frantic temper; Colocynthis's guide details the doubling-up and hard-pressure relief that lead away from Chamomilla.
Chamomilla vs. Belladonna. Complementary remedies in children — Boericke: Chamomilla "follows Belladonna in diseases of children," and Clarke gives the division of labour: "Cham. acts more on nerves of abdomen, Bell. more on cranial nerves." Both are hot, red and furious in fever; the carried-amelioration, capriciousness and green stools belong to Chamomilla.
Chamomilla vs. Cina. The two ugly, cross children of the materia medica. Chamomilla's child demands carrying and petting, refuses what it asked for, and shows the one red cheek and dentition stools; Cina's guide describes the cross child who repels caresses, with the boring at the nose and worm symptomatology that define its separate territory.
Repertorisation Tips
These rubrics carry Chamomilla in high grade:
- Mind; IRRITABILITY; pain, during
- Mind; AILMENTS FROM; anger, vexation
- Mind; CAPRICIOUSNESS; rejects the things for which he has been asking
- Mind; CARRIED; desires to be; amel.
- Mind; SENSITIVE; pain, to
- Face; DISCOLORATION; red; one-sided; one cheek red, the other pale
- Teeth; PAIN; warm; drinks agg.
- Rectum; DIARRHOEA; dentition, during
- Stool; GREEN; grass-green
- Generalities; NIGHT; agg.
- Extremities; PAIN; night; driving out of bed, walk about, must
- Sleep; MOANING; sleep, during
Anchor on the mental state — the angry, uncivil oversensitivity to pain — and the causation (anger, dentition, coffee or narcotics), then confirm with the objective signs: one red cheek, hot head-sweat, green slimy stools, the carried-amelioration. If the patient bears pain calmly, Hahnemann's rule excludes the remedy however well the particulars match. Our beginner's guide to repertorisation sets out the method in more detail.
Deepening Your Study
- Kent's Lectures give the living portraits — the toy-slinging child, the labour room, the camomile-tea convulsions — and the crucial heat-modality clarification
- Boericke supplies the guiding-symptom summary, the contraindications, and the tightest organ-by-organ particulars
- Clarke's Dictionary preserves Guernsey's thread, Hahnemann's rule on who must not receive it, Nash's numbness indication and the recorded cases
- Boger's Synoptic Key compresses the temper and the stool picture into capitals — "ugly, cross, and uncivil"
- Boger's General Analysis flags the working generals: anger, dentition, paroxysms repeated, night aggravation
- Lippe's Keynotes state the child's picture in a dozen lines, from the unceasing crying to the drowsiness with moaning
You can read all of these side by side for any remedy through Similia's free digital materia medica. To place Chamomilla among its peers, see the guide to the essential polycrest remedies, or read how materia medica and repertory work together in case analysis.
