Chamomilla
Matricaria chamomilla (syn. Matricaria recutita) · German chamomile, corn feverfew, wild chamomile · Plant · Asteraceae
Chamomilla works best for those exhibiting an extremely low pain threshold, as well as anger, marked irritability, and hostility. Often hypersensitive, they are bad-tempered, easily offended, and impossible to please. They flush easily when angry, and hate being touched. Bad temper, anger, or stress exacerbate physical symptoms.
Chamomilla is often given to children who are snappy, wail when ill, and are pacified only if being carried and cuddled by someone walking around.
Typical Chamomilla symptoms are great irritability and pain that seems unbearable. The remedy is given for teething pain, fever, stomach pain with diarrhea, menstrual or labor pains, and sore, inflamed nipples during breast-feeding.
Key symptoms
- irritability
- hypersensitivity to pain
- children want to be carried
- teething problems
- one cheek red and the
- other pale
- greenish diarrhea
Worse (aggravation)
- Heat; warmth
- Anger and vexation
- Open air
- Wind; night
- Coffee; narcotics
- Touch; being spoken to
Better (amelioration)
- Being carried; motion
- Warm, wet weather
- Fasting
German Chamomile
The chief guiding symptoms belong to the mental and emotion group, which lead to this remedy in many forms of disease. Especially of frequent employment in diseases of children, where peevishness, restlessness, and colic give the needful indications. A disposition that is mild, calm and gentle; sluggish and constipated bowels contra-indicate chamomilla.
Chamomilla is sensitive, irritable, thirsty, hot, and numb. Oversensitiveness from abuse of coffee and narcotics. Pains unendurable, associated with numbness. Night-sweats.
Mind
Whining restlessness. Child wants many things which he refuses again. Piteous moaning because he cannot have what he wants. Child can only be quieted when carried about and petted constantly. Impatient, intolerant of being spoken to or interrupted; extremely sensitive to every pain; always complaining. Spiteful, snappish. Complaints from anger and vexation. Mental calmness contraindicates Chamom.
Head
Throbbing headache in one-half of the brain. Inclined to bend head backward. Hot, clammy sweat on forehead and scalp.
Ears
Ringing in ears. Earache, with soreness; swelling and heat driving patient frantic. Stitching pain. Ears feel stopped.
Eyes
Lids smart. Yellow sclerotic. Spasmodic closing of lids.
Nose
Sensitive to all smells. Coryza, with inability to sleep.
Face
One cheek red and hot; the other pale and cold. Stitches in jaw extending to inner ear and teeth. Teeth ache worse after warm drink; worse, coffee, at night. Drives to distraction. Jerking of tongue and facial muscles. Distress of teething children (Calc phos; Terebinth).
Throat
Parotid and submaxillary glands swollen. Constriction and pain as from a plug.
Mouth
Toothache, if anything warm is taken, from coffee, during pregnancy. Nightly salivation.
Stomach
Eructations, foul. Nausea after coffee. Sweats after eating or drinking. Aversion to warm drinks. Tongue yellow; taste bitter. Bilious vomiting. Acid rising; regurgitation of food. Bitter, bilious vomiting. Pressive gastralgia, as from a stone (Bry; Abies n).
Abdomen
Distended. Griping in region of navel, and pain in small of back. Flatulent colic, after anger, with red cheeks and hot perspiration. Hepatic colic. Acute duodenitis (Kali bich (chronic)).
Stool
Hot, green, watery, fetid, slimy, with colic. Chopped white and yellow mucus like chopped eggs and spinach. Soreness of anus. Diarrhœa during dentition. Hæmorrhoids, with painful fissures.
Female
Uterine hæmorrhages. Profuse discharge of clotted, dark blood, with labor-like pains. Labor pains spasmodic; press upward (Gels). Patient intolerant of pain (Caul; Caust; Gels; Hyos; Puls). Nipples inflamed; tender to touch. Infant's breasts tender. Yellow, acrid leucorrhœa (Ars; Sep; Sulph).
Respiratory
Hoarseness, hawking, rawness of larynx. Irritable, dry, tickling cough; suffocative tightness of chest, with bitter expectoration in daytime. Rattling of mucus in child's chest.
Back
Insupportable pain in loins and hips. Lumbago. Stiffness of neck muscles.
Extremities
Violent rheumatic pains drive him out of bed at night; compelled to walk about. Burning of soles at night (Sulph). Ankles give way in the afternoon. Nightly paralytic loss of power in the feet, unable to step on them.
Sleep
Drowsiness with moaning, weeping and wailing during sleep; anxious, frightened dreams, with half-open eyes.
Modalities
Worse, by heat, anger, open air, wind, night. Better, from being carried, warm wet weather.
Relationship
Compare: Cypriped; Anthemis; Aconite; Puls; Coffea; Bellad; Staphis; Ignat. Follows Belladonna in diseases of children and abuse of opium. Rubus villosus-Blackberry--(diarrhœa of infancy; stools watery and clay colored).
Antidotes: Camph; Nux; Puls.
Complementary: Bell; Mag c.
Dose
Third to thirtieth attenuation.
The general constitutional state of Chamomilla is great sensitiveness; sensitive to every impression; sensitive to surroundings; sensitive to persons; and, above all, sensitive to pain.
The constitutional irritability is so great that a little pain brings forth manifestations as if the patient were in very, great suffering. It naturally belongs to the woman's nervous system, when she is wrought up and extremely sensitive and in pain.
Mind
The mental state goes along with this. Sensitiveness of the mind. Great irritability. These two run through Chamomilla so closely that they are inseparable. Sensitiveness to pain. Easily affected by mortification, by chagrin, so that the nerves become extremely sensitive from these causes, and pains, convulsions, colic, headaches and other kinds of nervous symptoms set in.
Matricaria chamomilla. N. O. Compositæ. Tincture of whole fresh plant.
Clinical
Acidity. Anger. Asthma (from anger). Blepharospasm. Catarrh. Coffee, effects of. Colic. Convulsions. Cough. Cramp. Croup. Dentition. Diarrhœa. Dysmenorrhœa. Dyspepsia. Earache. Eyes: blepharitis; ophthalmia. Eructations. Erysipelas. Excitement. Excoriation. Fainting fits. Fevers. Flatulence. Flatulent colic. Gout. Gum-rash. Headache. Hernia. Hysterical joint. Influenza. Jaundice. Lienteria. Labour: disorders of; after-pains. Mastitis. Menstruation, disordered. Miliary eruption. Milk-fever. Miscarriage. Mumps. Neuralgia. Parotitis. Perichondritis. Peritonitis. Pregnancy, disorders of. Red-gum. Rheumatism. Salivation (nocturnal). Sciatica. Screaming. Sensitiveness. Spasms. Speech, affections of. Toothache. Ulcers. Uterus, diseases of. Waking, screaming on. Whooping cough.
Matricaria Chambilla. (Compositae)
Persons, especially children, with light brown hair, nervous, excitable temperament; oversensitive from use or abuse of coffee or narcotics. Children, new-born and during period of dentition. Peevish, irritable, oversensitive to pain, driven to despair (Coff.); snappish, cannot return a civil answer. Child exceedingly irritable, fretful; quiet only when carried; impatient, wants this or that and becomes angry when refused, or when offered, petulantly rejects it (Bry., Cina, Kreos.); "too ugly to live;" cross, spiteful. Piteous moaning of child because he cannot have what he wants; whining restlessness. Patient cannot endure any one near him; is cross, cannot bear to be spoken to (Sil.); averse to talking, answers peevishly. Complaints from anger, especially chill and fever. Pain: seems unendurable, drives to despair; < by heat; < evening before midnight; with heat, thirst and fainting; with numbness of affected part; eructations <. One cheek red and hot, the other …
Mind
Exceedingly cross and irritable, can hardly answer civilly, snappish, short-spoken.
Mind
Great sensitiveness to pains; they are intolerable; thinks she cannot bear them.
Mind
Whining, restlessness; child will be quiet only when carried, which seems to relieve it.
Mind
Child wants different things, and repels them when getting them.
Head
Warm sweat on the head wetting the hair.
General Face
One check red and hot, the other pale and cold.
General Face
Face sweats after eating or drinking.
Stomach
Constructive gastralgia in coffee drinkers.
Abdomen
Abdomen distended like a drum; flatulence in the hypochondria; cutting sticking colic.
Anus and Stool
Green, watery, corroding, with colic, thirst, bitter taste, or bitter eructations.
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Child wants to be carried and gets relief.
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Whining restlessness; child wants different things' refuses or repels them when given.
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One cheek red and hot; the other pale and cold.
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Green, watery, corroding stools with colic; thirst, bitter taste, and bitter eructations.
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Neither lying down, nor sleeping, nor sweating lessens the pain. but relieved after the sweat or on rising.
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Complaints increase during the sweat.
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Burning in the soles of the feet; puts them out of bed.
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Fever, diarrhoea or convulsions, from local irritation during dentition; from Indigestible substances in the stomach or Intestines; from worms etc.
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Especially useful to calm worry, excitement in very nervous women and children.
Phatak's chapter on Chamomilla is available in the app.
Read Phatak in the appClassical texts are in the public domain. Educational reference only — not medical advice.
