Capsicum annuum

Capsicum annuum

Chili pepper, sweet pepper, bell pepper. · Plant · Solanaceae

BoerickeKentClarkeAllenNashCowperthwaitePhatak

Capsicum is best suited to those who are “peppery,” discontented, and rather  pessimistic. Homesickness or nostalgia  often prevents them from fully engaging in their daily lives. 

The classic symptom picture  for this remedy is of low vitality, perhaps in the elderly or those debilitated by alcoholism or prostate conditions. Weakness is usually accompanied by slow healing processes, infections that tend to suppurate, and great sensitivity to drafts. Further typical symptoms include a raw, red, burning throat that smarts,  as if from eating the pepper itself.

Key symptoms

  • Burning pains in mucous membranes with general chilliness
  • Homesickness with sleeplessness and disposition to suicide
  • Inflammation and tenderness of mastoid and petrous bone
  • Sore throat of smokers and drinkers with constriction
  • Hot sensation in fauces extending to ears
  • Craving for stimulants; prostration in alcoholics
  • Fear of slightest draught; cold and plethoric constitution

Worse (aggravation)

For cold air; for the least draft; for uncovering the affected area; for drinking or bathing in cold water.

Better (amelioration)

For heat; for continued movement; for eating.
William Boericke
Homoeopathic Materia Medica · 1901

Cayenne Pepper (CAPSICUM)

Seems to suit especially persons of lax fiber, weak; diminished vital heat. A relaxed plethoric sluggish, cold remedy. Not much reactive force. Such persons are fat, indolent, opposed to physical exertion, averse to go outside of their routine, get homesick easily. General uncleanliness of body. Abstainers from accustomed alcoholics. It affects the mucous membranes, producing a sensation of constriction. Inflammation of petrous bone. Burning pains and general chilliness. Older people who have exhausted their vitality, especially by mental work, and poor living; blear-eyed appearance; who do not react. Fear of slightest draught. Marked tendency to suppuration in every inflammatory process. Prostration and feeble digestion of alcoholics. Myalgia, aching and jerking of muscles.

Mind

Excessive peevishness. Homesickness, with sleeplessness and disposition to suicide. Wants to be let alone. Peppery disposition. Delirium tremens.

Head

Bursting headache; worse, coughing. Hot face. Red cheeks. Face red, though cold (Asafaet).

Ears

Burning and stinging in ears. Swelling and pain behind ears. Inflammation of mastoid. Tenderness over the petrous bone; extremely sore and tender to touch (Onosmod). Otorrhœa and mastoid disease before suppuration.

Throat

Hot feeling in fauces. Subacute inflammation of Eustachian tube with great pain. Pain and dryness in throat extending to the ears. Sore throat of smokers and drinkers. Smarting in; constriction. Burning constriction worse between acts of deglutition. Inflamed uvula and palate; swollen and relaxed.

Mouth

Herpes labialis (Apply one drop of the mother tincture). Stomatitis. Disagreeable smell from mouth. Fetid odor from mouth.

Stomach

Burning in tip of tongue. Atonic dyspepsia. Much flatulence, especially in debilitated subjects. Intense craving for stimulants. Vomiting, sinking at pit of stomach. Much thirst; but drinking causes shuddering.

Stool

Bloody mucus, with burning and tenesmus; drawing pain in back after stool. Thirsty after stool, with shivering. Bleeding piles, with soreness of anus. Stinging pain during stool.

Urine

Strangury, frequent, almost ineffectual urging. Burning in orifice. Comes first in drops, then in spurts; neck of bladder spasmodically contracted. Ectropion of meatus.

Male

Coldness of scrotum, with impotency, atrophied testicles, loss of sensibility in testicles, with softening and dwindling. Gonorrhœa, with chordee, excessive burning, pain in prostate.

Female

Climacteric disturbances with burning of tip of tongue (Lathyrus). Uterine hæmorrhage near the menopause, with nausea. Sticking sensation in left ovarian region.

Respiratory

Constriction of chest; arrests breathing Hoarseness. Pain at apex of heart or in rib region, worse touch. Dry, hacking cough, expelling an offensive breath from lungs. Dyspnœa. Feels as if chest and head would fly to pieces. Explosive cough. Threatening gangrene of lung. Pain in distant parts on coughing-bladder, legs, ears, etc.

Extremities

Pain from hips to feet. Sciatica, worse bending backward; worse, coughing. Tensive pain in the knee.

Fever

Coldness, with ill-humor. Shivering after drinking. Chill begins in back; better, heat. Must have something hot to back. Thirst before chill.

Modalities

Better, while eating, from heat. Worse, open air, uncovering, draughts.

Relationship

Antidote: Cina; Calad.

Compare: Pulsat; Lycop; Bell; Centaurea (surging of blood; homesickness; intermittent fever).

Dose

Third to sixth attenuation. In delirium tremens, dram doses of tincture in milk or tincture or orange peel.

James Tyler Kent
Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica · 1905

Most of the substances that are used on the table as seasoning in foods will in the course of a generation or two be very useful medicines because people poison themselves with these substances, tea, coffee, pepper, and these poisonous effects in the parents cause in the children a predisposition to disease, which is similar to the disease produced by these substances.

In the fat, flabby, red-raced children of beer drinkers and pepper eaters, with poor reaction, a relaxed and flabby constitution, red face and varicose condition, those that have been over stimulated, children of over stimulated men, we find the sphere of Capsicum very often.

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John Henry Clarke
A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica · 1900

Capsicum annuum. Cayenne Pepper. (South America and West Indies.) N. O. Solanaceæ. Tincture of the dried pods.

Clinical

Amaurosis. Asthma. Brain, irritation of. Delirium tremens. Cough. Diarrhœa. Diphtheria. Dysentery. Ear affections. Glandular swellings. Hæmorrhoids. Headache. Heartburn. Hernia. Home-sickness. Intermittents. Lungs, affections of. Measles. Mouth, ulcers in. Neuralgia. Nose, affections of. Obesity. Œsophagus, stricture of. Paralysis. Pleuro-pneumonia. Pregnancy, disorders of. Rectum, diseases of. Rheumatic gout. Rheumatism. Sciatica. Scrofula. Seasickness. Stomatitis. Throat, sore. Tongue, paralysis of. Trachea, tickling in. Urine, disorders of. Whooping-cough. Yellow fever.

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Henry Clay Allen
Keynotes and Characteristics with Comparisons · 1898

Cayenne Pepper (Solanaccae)

Persons with light hair, blue eyes, nervous but stout and plethoric habit. Phlegmatic diathesis; lack of reactive force, especially with fat people, easily exhausted; indolent, dreads any kind of exercise; persons inclined to be jovial, yet angry at trifles. Children; dread open air; always chilly; refractory, clumsy, fat, dirty, and disinclined to work or think. Desires to be let alone; wants to lie down and sleep; Homesickness (of indolent, melancholic), with red cheeks and sleeplessness. Constriction: in fauces; throat; nares; chest; bladder; urethra; rectum. Burning and smarting sensation, as from cayenne pepper, in throat and other parts, not > heat. Tonsillitis: with burning, smarting pain; intense soreness; constriction of throat with burning; inflamed, dark red, swollen. The burning spasmodic constriction and other pains, worse between acts of deglutition (Ign.). Painful swelling behind ear (mastoid), extremely sore and sensitive to touch. Every stool is …

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Eugene Beauharnais Nash
Regional Leaders · 1901

Hearing and Ears

Painful swelling behind the ear; caries of mastoid.

Mouth and Throat

Burning and pains in throat as if from red pepper, < between the acts of swallowing.

Anus and Stool

Tenesmus of rectum and bladder at the same time.

Urinary Organs

Burning at the orifice of urethra, before, during and after micturation.Burning at the orifice of urethra, before, during and after micturation.

Urinary Organs

Discharge from the urethra purulent; bloody, cream-like.

Respiratory Organs

The cough expels an offensive breath from the lungs.

Respiratory Organs

with the cough pains in different parts of the body.

Respiratory Organs

Pain in head as if it would burst; cries out and grasps the head when coughing.

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John W. Hutchison
Seven Hundred Red Line Symptoms (Cowperthwaite) · 1903
  1. The burning pain in throat is worse between the acts of swallowing.

  2. Chills commence in back, with thirst worse after drinking.

  3. Most complaints aggravated after drinking.

  4. After every stool, thirst; after every drink, shivering.

  5. Cough expels an offensive breath from the lungs.

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S. R. Phatak
Materia Medica of Homoeopathic Medicines

Phatak's chapter on Capsicum annuum is available in the app.

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Classical texts are in the public domain. Educational reference only — not medical advice.

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