Drosera rotundifolia — the round-leaved sundew — is the cough remedy of the materia medica. Boger's summary line deserves to be learned whole: "PROLONGED, PERIODICAL FITS OF RAPID, INCESSANT, DEEP BARKING OR CHOKING COUGH; as if from abdomen; taking away the breath; compel holding the sides and ending in retching, vomiting (first of ingesta, then of mucus), nosebleed or cold sweat."
Boericke gives the remedy its historical rank in his first sentence: it "affects markedly the respiratory organs and was pointed out by Hahnemann as the principal remedy for whooping-cough." Clarke's heading records the preparation — tincture of the active fresh plant — and he preserves the old natural-history observations that shadow the remedy's pathology: the sundew grows "in damp prairies, along the border of marshes," and "Barrich states that when eaten by sheep it gives them a cough which is fatal to them."
Its deeper territory is tubercular. Boericke transmits Dr Tyler's reasoning — "Drosera can break down resistance to tubercle and should therefore be capable of raising it" — and adds that "laryngeal phthisis is benefited by it." Kent opens his lecture with the necessary correction of routine: "The use of this medicine has been mostly limited to whooping cough, but it has a more extensive use."
This guide profiles Drosera 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 Drosera, Boericke's Drosera and Clarke's Drosera — through Similia's free digital materia medica.
The Drosera State
Drosera is an acute, spasmodic state, and the spasm is its unifying idea. Kent: "When we examine its spasmodic nature, its exhaustion, its cramps, which extend through a large number of complaints, we must realize that it is a more extensive remedy... Cramping constriction runs all through the remedy." The constriction seizes the larynx, the oesophagus ("preventing swallowing"), the chest, even the hands — "cramping of the hands upon undertaking to hold on to something. When grasping the broom handle" — and Boger extends it to "writers' cramp."
The patient between paroxysms looks unwell in a specific way. Kent describes the face as ordinarily pale and sunken, with cold extremities, "except when coughing, at which time the face becomes red, congested, and purple like Bell. and Cupr."
And the state is cold. Boericke's fever section: "Internal chilliness; shivering, with hot face, cold hands, no thirst. Is always too cold, even in bed." One curious lateral marker from his head section: "Coldness of left half of face, with stinging pains and dry heat of right half," with vertigo in the open air inclining the patient to fall to the left.
Mental and Emotional Picture
The mentals are darker than the remedy's cough reputation suggests, and they matter in the chronic, phthisical cases.
Imagined persecution and mistrust. Kent: he "imagines that he is constantly persecuted... suspicious of his most intimate friends." Clarke: "Mental dejection, caused by ideas of imaginary enmity... Great mistrust."
Anxiety in solitude, fear of ghosts. Clarke: "Anxiety, esp. (in the evening) in solitude, with fear of ghosts." Kent pairs it with "dread of the night" and "fear of being alone."
Weariness of life. Recorded soberly in two sources as symptomatology for professional assessment: Clarke's "Inclination to drown oneself," Boger's "Desire to drown himself" — standing beside "discouragement" and "inquietude respecting the future."
Irritable obstinacy. Boger: "Easily angered." Clarke: "Pertinacity in executing resolutions. The least thing puts the sufferer beside himself."
Physical Affinities
Larynx and Cough
The centre of the remedy. The trigger sensation first — Boericke: "Sensation as if crumbs were in the throat, of feather in larynx"; Clarke: "Crawling in larynx; feeling as if a soft substance were lodged in larynx, as a feather." From that tickle, Kent builds the paroxysm: "Violent tickling in the larynx brings on cough, rousing him from sleep, coming on every few hours with increasing intensity."
The cough itself is Boericke's "spasmodic, dry irritative cough, like whooping-cough, the paroxysms following each other very rapidly; can scarcely breathe; chokes. Cough very deep and hoarse; worse, after midnight; yellow expectoration, with bleeding from nose and mouth; retching." Clarke's clinical summary of the fit: "patient holds his side; vomits if he cannot get up phlegm; every effort to raise a little phlegm ends in retching and vomiting."
The timing is decisive. Boericke: "Harassing and titillating cough in children — not at all through the day, but commences as soon as the head touches the pillow at night." Kent: "Whooping cough coming in paroxysms of two or three hours, but violently worse after lying down at night and toward 3 o'clock in the morning."
Kent notes a triggering pattern of clinical value — scraping in the larynx with cough after eating: "In its proving it has cough after drinking. It has especially cough after eating and drinking cold things." Clarke adds the emotional triggers: "The cough is excited by laughter, weeping and mental emotions; after having had the measles."
Voice and Throat
Boericke: "Deep, hoarse voice; hoarseness; laryngitis... Clergyman's sore throat, with rough, scraping, dry sensation deep in the fauces; voice hoarse, deep, toneless, cracked, requires exertion to speak." Boger: "Hoarse, toneless voice." Speech itself aggravates: "Asthma when talking, with contraction of the throat at every word uttered" (Boericke); Clarke: "Oppressed breathing when talking; mostly while sitting."
Chest
Kent: "Must support the chest when coughing... He must press on the chest with the hand for relief." Clarke confirms the pains "in the hypochondria and in the chest, mitigated by pressing the hand upon them" — which is why Boger's short "better" list for this remedy is simply "Pressure." Boger adds "Constriction of chest" and "stitches below axillæ."
Haemorrhages
Clarke generalises what the cough section shows: "Hæmorrhages of bright red blood, from nose; mouth (bloody saliva); with vomit; with stool; expectoration." Kent: "Cough with expectoration of bright red or black clotted blood."
Bones, Joints and Limbs
The second, neglected half of the remedy. Lippe's keynotes: "Gnawing, stinging pain in the joints... Gnawing, stinging pains through all the long bones, worse during rest." Boericke: "Paralytic pains in the coxo-femoral joint and thighs. Stiffness in joints of feet. All limbs feel lame. Bed feels too hard." Lippe words the famous sensation: "The limbs on which he lies feels sore, as if the bed was too hard." Boger's regional list includes "Bones: Long," and his nutshell reads "Tuberculosis; of bones."
Stomach
Small but characteristic: "Nausea. Aversion to and bad effects from acids" (Boericke, echoed verbatim in Lippe), with Clarke recording "colic after taking acids" and Boger a sensitivity "to sour odors."
Key Modalities
Worse from:
- After midnight — Boger's first aggravation; Kent's "toward 3 o'clock in the morning"
- Lying down — cough "as soon as the head touches the pillow"
- Warmth; getting warm in bed
- Talking, singing, laughing — Boericke's modality line names all three
- Drinking; cold foods
- After measles
- Rest — the bone pains: "worse during rest" (Lippe); Clarke: "gnawing-stinging in the long bones; worse during rest"
Better from:
- Pressure — holding the chest and sides during the cough
- Motion, for the bone and joint pains — Clarke: "nocturnal pains in the bones of the arm, going off during motion in the day"
- Open air, for the head symptoms
The grand modality is the first: a cough that is trivial or absent by day and savage once the patient lies down at night, worsening after midnight, belongs to a very short list of remedies with Drosera at its head.
Keynote Symptoms
- Paroxysms of rapid, incessant barking cough following each other so fast the patient can scarcely breathe
- Cough ending in retching and vomiting — first of food, then of mucus
- Bleeding from nose and mouth with the cough — Lippe: "Whooping cough, with bleeding from nose and mouth with nightly aggravation"
- Worse after midnight; cough begins as soon as the head touches the pillow
- Tickling as of a feather or crumb in the larynx
- Must hold the chest and sides with the hands when coughing
- Hoarse, deep, toneless, cracked voice
- Asthma when talking; contraction of the throat at every word
- Cough after eating or drinking, especially cold things
- Spasmodic coughs during or after measles
- Gnawing, stinging pains in joints and long bones, worse during rest
- Bed feels too hard; all limbs feel lame
- Always too cold, even in bed; no thirst with the shivering
Clinical Applications
Whooping-cough. Hahnemann's own designation, per Boericke. The full picture: periodic violent paroxysms, choking, retching, vomiting of food and mucus, epistaxis, cold sweat, followed — in Boger's fine observation — "by loquacity."
Spasmodic and post-measles coughs. Kent: "These spasmodic coughs come often during measles or after an attack of measles. An irritation in the larynx remains. It is one of the most frequently indicated remedies for measles."
Laryngitis and clergyman's sore throat. The toneless, cracked voice with rough scraping deep in the fauces, where speaking costs effort and aggravates.
Laryngeal and pulmonary phthisis. Boericke: "Laryngeal phthisis, with rapid emaciation." Kent: "Violent spasmodic cough in young girls going into consumption," and "a great palliative for the spasmodic cough that occurs in consumption and all along the course of tuberculosis of the lungs." Clarke preserves Serrand's premonitory indications: "pallor, weakness, loss of appetite, dry cough, emaciation."
Chronic bronchitis with spasmodic cough. Kent names it directly; Clarke records Buchmann's self-cure of a recurring spring-and-autumn bronchial catarrh with its "violent tickling cough."
Gouty-rheumatic and bone pains. The gnawing, stinging pains of joints and long bones worse during rest, the hard-bed soreness, and Clarke's cured sciatica "< from pressure, from stooping, from lying on painful part, > after rising from bed."
Differential Diagnosis
Drosera vs. Spongia. The two great dry spasmodic coughs of the nursery. Spongia is the dry, saw-like croup cough with dryness of the whole air passage; Drosera is the paroxysmal, machine-gun whooping cough that ends in retching, vomiting and nosebleed. Spongia's anxiety centres on the heart and wakes the patient into alarm; Drosera's fit compels the patient to clutch chest and sides, and its aggravation sharpens after midnight and on lying down.
Drosera vs. Ipecacuanha. Both stand high in whooping-cough with vomiting and haemorrhage. In Ipecacuanha the nausea is the constant — persistent, with a clean tongue, unrelieved by the vomiting; in Drosera the retching and vomiting belong strictly to the end of the cough paroxysm, and between fits the stomach story is the aversion to acids rather than nausea.
Drosera vs. Cuprum. Kent himself points the way: in the fit the Drosera face "becomes red, congested, and purple like Bell. and Cupr." Cuprum's spasm generalises — cramps beginning in fingers and toes, clenched thumbs, convulsion — and its cough is characteristically better from a swallow of cold water; Drosera's spasm stays anchored in larynx and chest, and cold drinks are on its list of aggravations.
Drosera and its complements. The relationship texts differ instructively: Boger names Sulphur complementary, Clarke names Nux vomica, and Clarke lists Calcarea, Pulsatilla and Veratrum as compatible remedies that follow. In protracted whooping-cough cases the chronic remedy that completes the cure must be chosen on the totality, not by rote.
Repertorisation Tips
These rubrics carry Drosera in high grade:
- Cough; PAROXYSMAL; attacks follow one another rapidly
- Cough; WHOOPING
- Cough; MIDNIGHT; after, agg.
- Cough; LYING; agg.; head touches the pillow, as soon as
- Cough; VOMITING, with; retching, and
- Larynx and Trachea; TICKLING in the larynx; feather, as from a
- Nose; EPISTAXIS; coughing, from
- Chest; PAIN; cough, during; holding chest with hands amel.
- Voice; HOARSENESS; toneless
- Respiration; DIFFICULT; talking, while
- Cough; MEASLES; during, after
- Generalities; BED; hard, feels too
- Extremities; PAIN; gnawing; bones; rest, during, agg.
Anchor on the paroxysm itself — its rapid-fire character, its ending in retching or vomiting, its after-midnight and lying-down aggravation — and confirm with the feather sensation and the need to hold the chest. In chronic chest cases, let the bone pains and hard-bed soreness bring Drosera into repertorisations where a "cough remedy" would otherwise be missed. Our beginner's guide to repertorisation sets out the method in more detail.
Deepening Your Study
- Boericke carries Hahnemann's designation, Tyler's tubercle note and the tight clinical picture — the pillow keynote, the clergyman's sore throat, the asthma when talking
- Kent's Lectures widen the remedy beyond whooping-cough: the spasmodic constriction running through every region, the purple coughing face, and the phthisical territory
- Clarke's Dictionary holds the fullest schema, the mental picture of mistrust and imagined enmity, and the recorded cures — Buchmann's tickling cough, the sciatica, the repetition caution he shares with Hahnemann
- Boger's Synoptic Key and General Analysis give the unforgettable capitalised cough line, the pressure amelioration and the midnight-to-4-a.m. time stamp
- Lippe's Keynotes distil the two sides of the remedy into a handful of lines: the nightly whooping-cough with bleeding, and the gnawing bone pains worse during rest
You can read all of these side by side for any remedy through Similia's free digital materia medica. To place Drosera among its peers, see the guide to the essential polycrest remedies, or read how materia medica and repertory work together in case analysis.
