Clarke opens his study of this remedy with an unusually complete rule: "The leading indication for the homœopathic use of Dulcamara is found in its modality, '< from cold and damp.' Any condition which has this feature may find its remedy in Dulc."
The remedy is Solanum dulcamara — woody nightshade, bitter-sweet — prepared, Clarke specifies, from a tincture of the "fresh green stems and leaves, gathered just before flowering," and "not to be confounded with 'Deadly Nightshade,' Belladonna." Boericke gives the meteorological signature that generations of prescribers have confirmed: "Hot days and cold nights towards the close of summer are especially favorable to the action of Dulcamara."
Kent calls it "markedly an autumnal remedy," and explains the physiology through Boericke's mechanism: the "mucous membranes secreting more profusely while the skin is inactive" — a sweat suddenly suppressed by chill, and the catarrhal flood that follows.
This guide profiles Dulcamara 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 Dulcamara, Boericke's Dulcamara and Clarke's Dulcamara — through Similia's free digital materia medica.
The Dulcamara State
Kent states the constitutional fact plainly: "The Dulcamara patient is disturbed by every change in the weather, from warm to cold, from dry to moist, and from suddenly cooling the body while perspiring." Clarke describes the soil: "Phlegmatic, torpid, scrofulous patients, who are restless and irritable and who take cold on damp changes."
The causations are concrete and worth asking for by name. Boericke: "results from sitting on cold, damp ground," and "patients living or working in damp, cold basements (Nat sulph)." Clarke's causation list runs: "Damp with cold. Wading. Washing. Injuries. Checked eruptions. Checked perspiration." Boger's aggravation heading captures the sharpest form: "BEING CHILLED: WHILE HOT. Sudden change of temperature... COLD WET; feet, ground, cellars, beds."
Kent supplies two living pictures. The first is the late-summer mountain resort: sun beating down all day, then "a draft of cold air comes down that will chill you to the bone" towards sunset — and the overheated baby taken out in the evening carriage returns home with the diarrhoea "that cannot be cured in the mountains." The second is occupational: the ice handlers and cold-storage men who pass all day between summer heat and icy rooms, "subject at times to bowel troubles, and other catarrhal affections."
The result, in Boger's summary, is a "catarrhal-rheumatic-herpetic tendency" with "excessive secretion of mucus" — "stiff, numb, achy and sore from every exposure to damp cold."
Mental and Emotional Picture
Dulcamara's mind section is small but characteristic, and its symptoms are useful confirmations rather than the centre of the case.
Scolding without anger. Clarke's curious pair: "Inclination to scold, without being angry. Combative disposition, without anger." Boger notes "Scolding" among the leading mentals.
Rejects what was asked for. Boericke: "Rejects things asked for." Clarke: "Impatient desire for different things, which are rejected as soon as they are obtained" — with "great impatience and restlessness" and "mental agitation."
Confusion in fevers. Kent describes the chilled, feverish patient who "cannot remember, forgets what he was about to speak of, forgets the word that would naturally express his idea, and he enters into a dazed state, a state of confusion." Boger: "Confusion. Depression... Difficult speech. Easily becomes delirious." Clarke adds "nocturnal delirium, with aggravation of pains."
Headache relieved by conversation. Boericke's odd modality, confirmed in Clarke's particulars — the boring congestive headache "better when talking" and worse "when lying quiet."
Physical Affinities
The catarrhal pattern
Boger's line organises the whole remedy: "Every cold settles in eyes, throat or affects bladder (Pul.), bowels or respiration (Sul.)." The patient's own words, as Kent hears them: "Why is it, doctor, that every time I take cold it settles in my eyes?"
Eyes. "Every time he takes cold it settles in eyes. Thick, yellow discharge; granular lids. Hay-fever; profuse, watery discharge, worse in open air" (Boericke).
Nose. "Stuffs up when there is a cold rain... Wants nose kept warm, least cold air stops the nose" (Boericke); thick yellow mucus and bloody crusts. Kent adds the two-stage form: a dry catarrh whose suppression brings the congestive headache with neuralgic pains and dry nose — "as soon as the flow starts up his headache is relieved."
Face and nerves
"Tearing in cheek extending to ear, orbit, and jaw, preceded by coldness of parts, and attended by canine hunger" (Boericke); "facial neuralgia; worse, slightest exposure to cold." Clarke records McLaren's cure of a left facial paralysis following a wetting — the eye unclosed for eight months — with a single dose, and the aphonia cured after "sleeping over a damp cellar."
Digestion and stool
"Colic from cold... Cutting pain about navel" (Boericke), then the diagnostic stool: "green, watery, slimy, bloody, mucus, especially in summer, when the weather suddenly becomes cold; from damp, cold weather and repelled eruptions." Lippe: "Mucous diarrhoea in the summer during the cool days." Kent extends it to "chronic recurrent dysentery from cold," and observes that a dose "fortifies them against the continual taking of cold" in patients who must stay in the offending climate.
Bladder
"Must urinate when getting chilled. Strangury, painful micturition. Catarrh of bladder from taking cold... Ischuria from wading with bare feet in cold water" (Boericke). Boger: "cloudy, slimy or foul urine. Cystitis." Clarke's prison-warder case — four years of frequent, dribbling micturition, worse in damp cold, cured with six doses of the 200th — shows the chronic form.
Rheumatism and paralysis
"The rheumatic troubles induced by damp cold are aggravated by every cold change and somewhat relieved by moving about" (Boericke), with two sequences to memorise: "Rheumatism alternates with diarrhœa" and "rheumatic symptoms after acute skin eruptions." The paralytic thread is graver: "One-sided spasms with speechlessness. Paralysis of single parts" (Boericke); Lippe repeats both; Clarke generalises — "Paralysed part feels icy cold... Convulsions beginning in face" — and records "effects of lying on damp ground (e.g., paralysis)."
Skin
"A wonderfully eruptive medicine" (Kent): "scaldhead, thick brown crusts, bleeding when scratched" (Boericke), crusta lactea, eczema of infants, and the ringworms of the scalp Kent says it "will nearly always cure." Then the two signatures: "red spots, urticaria, brought on by exposure, or sour stomach," and "warts, large, smooth, on face and palmar surface of hands" — Boger's "large, smooth, fleshy, flat warts." Glands respond too: "swelling and indurated glands from cold"; adenitis with "pruritus, always worse in cold, wet weather."
Female sphere
"Suppression of menses from cold or dampness. Before appearance of menses, a rash appears on skin" (Boericke); Lippe: "Eruptions before and during the catamenia." Clarke records the cure of a monthly pre-menstrual rash "like mosquito-stings" with the 30th, and Boger the vicarious "nosebleed; replaces menses."
Key Modalities
Worse from:
- Cold, damp, rainy weather; getting wet; cold wet feet
- Being chilled while hot; sudden change of temperature; uncovering
- Autumn — the hot-days-cold-nights pattern
- Suppressed discharges, sweat or eruptions
- Night and evening; rest
- Cold drinks and ice-creams (Clarke)
- Sitting (Boger's General Analysis); lying on the back (Clarke)
Better from:
- Moving about — Lippe: "amelioration when moving the affected part, when walking"
- External warmth; warmth in general
- Dry weather (Lippe)
Two exceptions keep the picture honest: Clarke notes that "warmth > most symptoms, but < cough and nettle-rash," and Boger that the chilliness starting from the back is "not > warmth."
Keynote Symptoms
- Ailments from damp cold — wet weather, cold ground, damp cellars and beds
- Being chilled while hot; sudden autumn temperature drops
- Every cold settles in the eyes, throat, bladder, bowels or chest
- Summer diarrhoea when the weather suddenly turns cold; green, slimy, changeable stools
- Must urinate when getting chilled; cystitis from cold or wading
- Nose stuffs up in a cold rain; wants the nose kept warm
- Facial neuralgia from the slightest cold exposure, preceded by coldness of the part with canine hunger
- Rheumatism alternating with diarrhoea; rheumatism after suppressed eruptions or sweat
- Paralysis of single parts; the paralysed part icy cold
- One-sided spasms with speechlessness
- Urticaria from exposure or sour stomach
- Large, smooth, fleshy warts on face and hands
- Thick brown crusts on scalp and face, bleeding when scratched
- Better from motion and external warmth; worse from rest and night
Clinical Applications
Autumn diarrhoeas of infants and children. Kent's mountain babies — the changeable, slimy, undigested stools returning "every time the child takes cold," resistant to seemingly indicated remedies until the weather causation is recognised.
Acute cystitis from chill. After wet feet, wading, sitting on damp ground; the recorded chronic dribbling forms as well.
Catarrhal conjunctivitis and recurring colds that settle in the eyes with thick yellow discharge; hay-fever with profuse watery flow.
Damp-cold rheumatism. Inflamed, swollen joints "due to suppressed perspiration" (Kent), worse at rest and at night, relieved by motion and warmth.
Facial neuralgia and paralytic effects from cold and wet — including the recorded aphonia and facial-paralysis cures above.
Eruptive conditions. Crusta lactea and impetigo-like crusted eruptions of infants, ringworm of the scalp, nettle-rash from exposure, warts of face and palms.
Damp-dwelling patients. The basement worker and cold-storage man — a constitutional occupational picture the sources link to Natrum sulphuricum as the nearest neighbour.
Differential Diagnosis
Dulcamara vs. Rhus toxicodendron. Boger's one "related" remedy, and Clarke's grouping: "Effects of exposure to wet, and > by motion, Rhus." Both are wet-weather remedies relieved by movement; Dulcamara's distinguishing ground is the mucous flood — the cold that settles in eyes, bladder and bowels — with urticaria, crusts and warts, while the Rhus guide sets out the sprain-and-overexertion causation and the aching restlessness that lead to it.
Dulcamara vs. Calcarea carbonica. Clarke lists Calcarea among the remedies Dulcamara "follows well" and among the comparisons for "effects of cold, moist winds." Both are chilly, scrofulous, cold-taking constitutions; Dulcamara meets the acute weather-triggered episode, Calcarea the deeper constitutional ground — a sequence, as much as a differential, in damp-sensitive children.
Dulcamara vs. Belladonna. Botanical cousins: Clarke notes that "sensitiveness to cold and damp runs through the Solanaceæ, and is marked in Bell. and Caps., but it is supreme in Dulc." The practical caution is relational: both Boericke and Clarke record Belladonna (with Lachesis) as incompatible with Dulcamara — the two should not follow each other in a case.
Complementary relationships. Boericke names Baryta carbonica as Dulcamara's complement — Clarke specifies the shared territory, aggravation "from cold weather, especially in scrofulous children" — and Boger adds Natrum sulphuricum, the other great damp-constitution remedy.
Repertorisation Tips
These rubrics carry Dulcamara in high grade:
- Generalities; WET weather; agg.
- Generalities; CHANGE of weather; agg.; warm to cold
- Generalities; AUTUMN; agg.
- Generalities; HEATED, becoming; chilled, and then
- Eye; INFLAMMATION; cold, from taking; every cold settles in eyes
- Bladder; INFLAMMATION; cold, from taking
- Bladder; URGING to urinate; cold, becoming, on
- Rectum; DIARRHOEA; summer; cold nights, from
- Face; PAIN; neuralgic; cold, from exposure to
- Skin; ERUPTIONS; urticaria; exposure, after
- Skin; WARTS; large; smooth
- Generalities; MOTION; amel.
Anchor on the causation before anything else — damp cold, the sudden autumn drop, chilled while hot, suppressed sweat or eruption — then track where the cold settled: eyes, bladder, bowels or chest. Confirm with the eruptive history (urticaria, crusts, warts) and the motion-and-warmth amelioration. When the causation is unclear, Kent's advice applies: it may take two or three recurrences before the weather pattern shows itself. Our beginner's guide to repertorisation sets out the method in more detail.
Deepening Your Study
- Kent's Lectures supply the aetiological pictures — the mountain autumn, the ice handlers, the two-stage catarrh with its headache — that make the remedy recognisable in life
- Boericke gives the weather signature, the organ-by-organ catarrhal map and the relationship cautions
- Clarke's Dictionary holds the modality rule, the causation list, the paralytic case records and the sensation curiosities
- Boger's Synoptic Key condenses the whole remedy into the "every cold settles in..." formula and the chilled-while-hot aggravation
- Boger's General Analysis flags the working generals: dampness, change of temperature, sitting aggravation, motion amelioration
- Lippe's Keynotes catalogue the paralytic and eruptive essentials, from one-sided spasms to the summer mucous diarrhoea
You can read all of these side by side for any remedy through Similia's free digital materia medica. To place Dulcamara among its peers, see the guide to the essential polycrest remedies, or read how materia medica and repertory work together in case analysis.
