Petroleum in Homeopathy: Uses, Picture and Limits

Key takeaways

• Petroleum is the picture of skin that cracks rather than dries. Classic texts describe deep, raw, sometimes bleeding fissures in rough, thickened skin, worst on the fingertips, the backs of the hands and the heels.
• Winter is the defining modality. The cracks open as the weather turns cold and dry and close again in the warm, humid months, year after year.
• It has a second, travel-sick side. Homeopaths also describe nausea and giddiness from riding in cars, carriages or boats, with an odd hunger that comes back as soon as the nausea settles.
• It is made from crude rock oil. The raw oil is harmful; potentised preparations are diluted far past the point where the oil is a concern.
• Some cracks are a medical question first. Pus, spreading redness, red streaks, fever, or any non-mending crack on the foot of someone with diabetes or poor circulation needs a clinician before anything else.

What is Petroleum made from?

Homeopathic Petroleum is prepared from crude rock oil: the dark, thick, unrefined oil that seeps naturally from the ground in some places and is drawn up from wells in others. The Latin name is literal, petra (rock) and oleum (oil), and our guide to reading Latin remedy names explains why so many remedy labels still carry these old, plain descriptions. Pharmacopoeias describe purifying the oil before the potency steps begin, and the potencies are then built by repeated dilution and succussion in the usual way.

The source deserves plain words. Crude oil is a mixture of hydrocarbons and other compounds that is harmful to swallow, to breathe in as vapour, and to keep on the skin; workers with long exposure to oils and solvents were among the people nineteenth-century physicians saw with cracked, irritated hands. It is never something to apply, prepare or use at home. At the common potencies the arithmetic says no molecule of the original oil remains in the vial; our potencies guide sets out what that means, and why it is also the reason mainstream science is sceptical.

Petroleum sits in the mineral group on this site alongside salts and metals, because it comes out of the ground rather than from a living plant or animal, even though it formed long ago from organic matter.

What is the Petroleum picture?

The Petroleum picture is the person whose hands give them away every winter. Imagine a gardener or a mechanic in January: the fingertips have split at the corners of the nails, the cracks are deep enough to bleed when a jar lid is turned, the skin around them is rough, thick and greyish, and nothing seems to close the fissures until spring. The heels have gone the same way. In summer the same hands are nearly unremarkable.

Classic texts describe this skin as dry, rough, cracked and leathery, with deep fissures that may bleed, and often with a dirty, unwashed look however often it is washed. Boericke (1927) singles out the fingertips as rough, cracked and fissured every winter, and describes skin complaints worse in winter generally. Itching is part of it, often worse at night and with heat in bed, and chilblains that itch and burn appear in the same season. Washing makes things worse rather than better.

The second strand is motion. The materia medica describes nausea and giddiness from riding in carriages or on ships, with a heavy, aching back of the head, and a peculiar hunger: the stomach feels empty even while the person feels sick, and food may settle it for a time. Diarrhoea that comes only in the daytime belongs to the old picture too.

Temperamentally, the classic texts record an irritable, easily offended person who can feel confused in familiar places, losing their way in streets they know. Some of the older descriptions are frankly strange, including the sensation that someone else is lying in the bed. None of it is a checklist; it is a description of how one winter-and-travel state tends to hang together.

What makes it better or worse?

The traditional modalities centre on season and motion. Petroleum is worse in winter, in cold dry weather and from riding in vehicles, and better in warm, humid air and dry, settled conditions in summer.

The seasonal rhythm is the modality that matters most; our guide to modalities, better and worse explains why a pattern that returns on the calendar can outweigh the name of the complaint, and our guide to seasonal acute patterns follows the same idea through the year.

What is Petroleum traditionally discussed for?

In homeopathic literature, Petroleum is traditionally discussed for deep, painful, winter-worse cracking of the skin. Each of these appears on one of our acute pages, where the Petroleum-like pattern sits beside its neighbours and the red flags come first.

Hands and fingertips

• Split fingertips in dry weather, the traditional literature's signature for this remedy.
• Itchy dry skin in winter, where the dryness goes on to crack.

Lips and face

• Painfully chapped lips that split rather than merely peel, often in the same season as split fingertips.

Feet and cold exposure

• Painful, itchy toes after cold exposure, where chilblains arrive alongside cracked toes and heels.

The motion-sickness strand is older and appears in the classic texts rather than on our acute pages; its neighbours are discussed on motion sickness on a trip and in our guide to travel and acute patterns.

What is Petroleum not?

Petroleum is not "the cracked-skin remedy", and the label is not a moisturiser. Plenty of winter cracking fits other traditional pictures, and plenty is simply dry skin that wants gloves and a plain emollient. It is also not a reason to sit out a crack that is infected or slow to close. Pus, spreading redness, red streaks running up a finger or leg, fever, or a fissure that will not close on the foot of someone with diabetes or poor circulation is a medical question first. So is a rash that weeps and spreads, or eczema that is flaring badly in a baby. Persistent cracking at the corners of the mouth or on the hands can also have causes worth a clinician's look.

Homeopaths separate it from its neighbours like this:

What potencies is Petroleum sold in?

Petroleum is sold most often as 6C or 30C pellets from homeopathic pharmacies and manufacturers; it is less often on general shop shelves than the common kit remedies. Potency describes the preparation process, not an amount of oil: 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 Petroleum. 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 cracked skin" lists leave out:

• The calendar is part of the case. A crack that opens every November and closes every May is a different description from one that comes and goes with work or stress. Homeopaths ask when it started in the year, and whether it did the same last year, before they ask what it looks like. Lists sorted by body part never ask.
• The two halves of the picture rarely arrive together. Someone reading about split fingertips does not expect a remedy that is also described for car sickness, and the classic texts did not invent the pairing for neatness. It comes from what provers and patients reported, which is why a remedy picture reads more like a person than a product category, and why our guide to what is in a homeopathic remedy starts with the source rather than the symptom.