Drosera rotundifolia in Homeopathy: Uses, Picture and Limits

Key takeaways

• Drosera is the picture of the spasmodic, fit-like cough. One bout follows another so quickly that the person can hardly catch a breath between them.
• A tickle starts it. Classic texts describe a crawling, feathery tickle in the larynx that sets off each fit.
• It is worse after midnight and lying down. The cough is described as quiet by day and violent once the head touches the pillow, especially in the small hours.
• It comes from the sundew. A tiny insect-eating bog plant with glistening sticky leaves; it is not a poisonous source.
• Cough red flags come first. A whoop, fits that end in vomiting or turn the lips blue, pauses in breathing in a baby, difficulty breathing, coughing blood or a cough over three weeks needs medical care.

What is Drosera made from?

Homeopathic Drosera is prepared from the whole fresh plant of Drosera rotundifolia, the round-leaved sundew, gathered when it flowers in summer. It is a tiny plant, a flat rosette of round leaves no wider than a coin, growing in sphagnum bogs, wet heaths and moorland across Europe, northern Asia and North America. Each leaf is fringed with reddish hairs tipped with drops of sticky fluid that glisten like dew in the sun, which gives the plant its name. Small insects that land are held fast, and the hairs slowly curl inwards to digest them.

That curling, gripping action fascinated nineteenth-century naturalists; Charles Darwin devoted much of his book Insectivorous Plants (1875) to the sundews. Long before that, sundew was a familiar plant in European folk practice for coughs and chest complaints, which is part of why it appears in the older herbals.

Sundew is not a poisonous source in the way that many remedies are. It is, though, a slow-growing plant of fragile habitats and is protected in some countries, so it is not something to gather from the wild. Homeopathic manufacturers prepare a mother tincture of the fresh plant and then dilute and succuss it step by step to the labelled potency. At the common potencies the arithmetic says no molecule of the plant remains; our potencies guide explains what that means and why it is also the reason science is sceptical. Our guide to what is in a homeopathic remedy covers the rest of the process.

What is the Drosera picture?

The Drosera picture is a cough that seizes the person. Imagine a child who has gone to bed apparently settled, and an hour after midnight begins to cough: a deep, barking bout, then another before the first has finished, then another, so close together that there is no room to breathe in. The face reddens, the eyes water, the child clutches at the chest or the sides, and the fit ends in gagging or bringing up mucus. Then quiet, until the tickle in the throat starts again.

Classic texts build the picture from these features. Hahnemann's proving and Boericke's summary (1927) describe a spasmodic, dry, irritating cough with paroxysms following one another very rapidly, a tickle in the larynx as from a feather or crumbs, deep and hoarse barking, and retching or vomiting with the fits. The cough is described as worse after midnight and as soon as the head touches the pillow, worse from warmth, talking, singing, laughing and drinking. Pressing the hands against the chest or sides during a fit is a classic observation; the coughing hurts the chest and the person tries to hold it together.

Hoarseness runs through the picture too: a deep, rough voice that takes effort, with the sense that something in the larynx is catching. Some texts add nosebleeds with the cough and a chilliness through the body. The mental side of the picture is thin; the remedy's reputation rests on the shape of the cough.

What makes it better or worse?

The traditional modalities centre on lying down, the small hours and the use of the voice. Drosera is worse after midnight, on lying down and from talking, and better from pressure on the chest and from sitting up.

Our guide to modalities, better and worse explains why a homeopath asks about these before any remedy name.

What is Drosera traditionally discussed for?

In homeopathic literature, Drosera is traditionally discussed for spasmodic, tickling coughs that come in fits. Each of these appears on one of our acute pages, where the Drosera-like pattern sits beside its neighbours and the red flags come first.

Coughs

• Spasmodic, barking or tickling coughs that come in fits and may feel worse lying down: a dry, tickling cough.
• The same fit-like, tickling pattern after an irritant: a cough after dust exposure. A cough that starts suddenly while a child is eating or playing with small objects may mean something has been inhaled, and needs urgent assessment.

Our guide to seasonal acute patterns places these coughs in the wider run of autumn and winter cases.

What is Drosera not?

Drosera is not "the whooping cough remedy", and it is especially important not to read it that way. Classic texts did associate the Drosera picture with whooping cough, but whooping cough (pertussis) is a serious bacterial infection, dangerous for babies, and a medical diagnosis. A cough that comes in long fits ending in a whoop, gagging or vomiting, or that has gone on for more than two weeks in fits, needs a doctor, and young babies can stop breathing with it rather than whoop. Our guide to observing a sick child covers what to watch.

More generally, a cough that comes with difficulty breathing, a high-pitched noise on breathing in, lips or face turning blue or grey, coughing blood, chest pain, a high fever, or one that lasts over three weeks needs medical care, whatever a remedy picture might suggest. Our guide to red flags first sets these out.

Homeopaths separate Drosera from its neighbours like this:

Drosera and Bryonia are both described with the person holding the chest during a cough. The traditional distinction is the rhythm: Bryonia's cough is painful and made worse by any movement; Drosera's comes in fits that run together faster than breath can follow.

What potencies is Drosera sold in?

Homeopathic Drosera is sold as single-remedy pellets, usually in 6C and 30C, and the name also appears in some combination cough products. Potency describes the preparation process, not an amount of plant: 30C means thirty successive 1:100 dilutions with succussion between them. Our potencies guide explains the scale and what remains in the vial.

This page deliberately gives no frequency or instructions for taking Drosera. That depends on a whole case, not a remedy name. Read the product label, and talk to a qualified practitioner about an individual situation.

What remedy lists don't tell you

Two things the "remedies for a dry cough" lists leave out:

• The rhythm of the fit is the tell. Lists describe Drosera as a dry, tickling cough, which describes most coughs after a cold. What the classic authors found characteristic was the way the bouts run together without a breath between them, the barking depth, the retching at the end and the midnight timing. A tickly cough that comes as a single hack now and then reads as something else in the tradition.
• The fame comes from the frightening cases. Drosera's reputation was built on whooping cough in an age before vaccination and antibiotics. The same cough today is a reason for a doctor to listen to the chest and, in a baby, for urgent care. A homeopath reading a cough that comes in fits asks the red-flag questions first, and only then thinks about the picture.