Homeopathy has proven its worth in a wide variety of illnesses, among them the prescription for acute coughs.
As with all prescriptions, successful treatment depends on how ‘similar’ the chosen homeopathic remedy is to the symptoms exhibited by the patient. To illustrate this, 12 homeopathic remedies with their modalities and keynotes are presented to show the symptoms which uniquely belong to each and are appropriate to a particular acute cough.
Aconite Napellus [Dry Cough]
Best results when given immediately at the first signs of a cough. The illness is acute and sudden, the cough is hoarse, dry and croupy and worse at night and after midnight. Breathing can be oppressed and there can be shortness of breath. Cough is better lying on the back. An excellent croup remedy.
Antimonium Tartaricum [Wet Cough]
Great rattling cough with a lot of mucous that you can hear, but is very difficult to expectorate. Patient must sit up and there is a suffocative shortness of breath.
Arsenicum Album [Dry, or Wet Cough]
An exhausting cough. Spells may be preceded by great anxiety and restlessness. Cough may alternate between loose and dry. There may be shortness of breath and asthma. The cough is worse after midnight. There is thirst for small quantities of water at a time.
Bryonia Alba [Dry Cough]
Mucous membranes are all dry. It is a hard, painful cough with great thirst for gulps. This cough is characteristically aggravated by motion and movement of all kinds. The patient is exceedingly irritable. Coming into a warm room excites the cough. Cough, worse after eating, or drinking.
Carbo Vegetabilis [Wet Cough]
Extremely low vitality, almost lifeless patient who must be fanned and have all the windows open. Cough with greenish, yellow expectoration, sticky and profuse. Spasmodic cough.
Drosera Rotundifolia [Dry Cough]
Spasmodic, irritating cough like whooping cough. The coughing fits follow each other rapidly. Deep-sounding, hoarse and barking. Cough mostly absence during the day, commences rapidly at night. Can scarcely breath; chokes. Expectation yellow, with bleeding from nose.
Ferrum Phosphoricum [Dry Cough]
Short, tickling, hacking cough. Spasmodic from tickling in the trachea and croupy. Hard, dry cough with sore chest. Must sit up to raise sputa. Hoarseness. Cough, better at night.
Kali Bichromicum [Wet Cough]
Wheezing with retching and expectoration of tough mucous which can be drawn out in strings. Worse in the morning, on waking, from eating, from cold, from damp air, from 2:00am-3:00am. Cough provoked from tickling in the larynx.
Lycopodium Clavatum [Dry Cough]
Chronic, persistent mucous in the air passages. Dry, teasing cough, day and night. Difficult breathing due to accumulated mucous. Cough worse 4:00pm-8:00pm, returning every day at the same time. Neglected, or unresolved pneumonia. Salty phlegm.
