Know Your Remedies: Baptisia Tinctoria (Bapt.)

Common Name: Wild indigo; rattleweed; horsefly weed.

General Information

Traditionally, Baptisia has been a remedy for serious infections or sepsis. It has also been used for types of diphtheria, flu, and typhoid fever. The person needing it is drowsy and falls asleep while responding to questions but also restless from body aches and pains. Delirium and confusion may also be present. The mouth or discharges (stool, perspiration, urine) have a putrid odour and the face confused and dusky in colour. Baptisia may be used with conventional medicines, without interactive or toxic side-effects.

Mental-emotional

  • Drowsiness to the point of coma.
  • As if drunk, intoxicated, sleepy.
  • May respond to questions but falls asleep mid-sentence or immediately on answering.
  • Confused sensations and delusions about body – as if it is broken or double, separated or scattered, enlarged or twice its normal size, or limbs “talking” to each other.

Face

  • Dull, confused, stupid expression.
  • Dark red congestion.

Mouth and Throat

  • Putrid odour from mouth.
  • Ragged ulceration of tongue and throat.
  • Painlessness of ulcerated, inflamed throat.
  • Throat spasms – gagging on solid food but able to swallow liquids.

Flu

  • Bruised and sore pains with muscles and joints.
  • Unable to get comfortable in any position – bed feels too hard (c.f. Arn; Rhus-t; Pyrog.).

Where do I find it?

Baptisia Tinctorial (Bapt.) is available from our online store as a single remedy in either liquids or pills.

Home Treatment Guidelines

Acute, Self-Limiting Conditions

Conditions like colds or minor injuries, which are short-term and typically improve on their own, can be managed at home with homeopathy. However, in emergencies or if symptoms worsen, contact your healthcare provider.

Chronic Conditions

These home treatment instructions do not apply for ongoing issues, whether mentioned above or not, like persistent allergies or chronic pain. You should consult a qualified homeopath for a personalized treatment plan to achieve the best results with homeopathy for chronic conditions.

How to Take the Remedy for Acute Conditions

  • Take one pill or five drops of the remedy. The frequency depends on symptom severity. As examples:
    • For life-threatening symptoms, take every 1 minute and seek emergency help immediately.
    • For mild symptoms, take every 4 hours.
  • Stop taking the remedy once you feel better. Resume if symptoms return.
  • If no improvement after four doses, choose a different remedy or consult a professional homeopath.
  • For more details on dosing, refer to: How Often to Dose with a 30C Homeopathic remedy.
  • For information on the different potencies, read: Guidelines on which potency to use

Additional Notes From Past Masters

Homeopathy is a 200-year-old system of medicine.

Early homeopaths recorded detailed notes on how remedies worked, including initial tests, remedy relationships, and their experiences. These writings were shared to improve homeopathic practice and now offer fascinating insights into past uses of homeopathy.

Here’s an example, edited and modernised for clarity, from Leaders In Homoeopathic Therapeutics (1898) by E. B. NASH M.D.:

Leaders In Homoeopathic Therapeutics by E. B. NASH M.D.

Baptisia Tinctoria (Bapt.)

Mind confused; as if drunk; cannot collect himself; feels scattered about, cannot get pieces together.

Face dark, dusky; eyes bleared, besotted expression.

Mouth ulcerated, with foul smell; or, dry, tongue dry in a streak down the centre.

Abdomen sensitive in right iliac region, with rumbling.

Stool loose, and urine with all other discharges; very offensive.

Awakes with oppressed feeling, must have more air.

Great prostration with aching and soreness all over. Great typhoid remedy.

Can swallow liquids only; least solid food gags.

In whatever position the patient lies the parts rested upon feel sore and bruised. (Lach., Pyr.).

* * * * *

Baptisia tinctoria will quite naturally come in here, as it is often indicated after the Gelsemium stage is over in fevers.

Typhoid fever can be aborted under proper homeopathic treatment, no matter what the old school says to the contrary. I have had but one case of typhoid fever run its full course in seven years, and that was a case of a young lady whose mother tried to treat her, until the disease was fully established.

The symptoms indicating Baptisia are, in the first stage, great nervousness, chilliness, aching pains all over, but especially in head, back and limbs, and a sensation of soreness all over; feels as if bruised. Then the patient grows weak, prostrated, drowsy, becomes confused, the face and eyes suffused so as to give it a “besotted appearance”; the sensorium is so blunted that the patient falls asleep even before he can answer a question, or while he is in the middle of an answer.

Then the tongue becomes streaked down the middle, at first white, even becomes brown in a well-defined streak down the middle, and as he comes more fully under the typhoid influence he mutters and reaches about the bed, tossing to and fro, and if he says anything he says he feels “scattered around the bed and is trying to get the pieces together.”

Now the bowels begin to rumble, especially in the iliocaecal region, which is also sensitive to touch; later still the bowels begin to discharge, and all the discharges (stool, urine and sweat) are extremely offensive.

This is a true picture of a Baptisia typhoid, and I have aborted in the first stage many cases and even checked their progress (in other cases) and cured them when they had been running eight to twelve days. I have used both the low and high preparations with equal success, but now use the 30th potency.