Know Your Remedies: Kreosotum (Kreos.)

Common Names: Beechwood; wood-tar creosote.

General Information

Kreosotum (Kreos.) is an important remedy for menstrual and hormonal disturbances, and excoriating, acrid, offensive discharges that cause swelling and inflammation of the affected area. Many problems occur during teething in infants or in menstrual period when there may be abnormal bleeding. The person needing Kreosotum often feels chilly.

Mental-Emotional Symptoms

• Sensitive and restless, especially before menses (menstrual period).
• Fear of sex.
• Dreams of rape.
• Dissatisfied, irritable infants and children.
• Premenstrual syndrome – irritability, headache, nausea.

Head

• Headache worse before or during menses.

Eye

• Hot, salty, excoriating lachrymation.

Nose

• Excoriating nasal discharges.

Mouth and Teeth

• Difficult dentition (teething) – irritability and crying.
• Dentition with acrid diarrhea.
• Rapid or easy or rapid decay of deciduous (infant) teeth.
• Gums spongy, inflamed and painful – bleed or ulcerate easily.
• Offensive odour with decayed teeth or inflamed gums.
• Black spots on teeth.

Cough

• Cough provokes yawning.

Urogenital

• Night-time bed-wetting, especially in the first part of the night.
• Offensive and scalding urine.

Female

• Vaginal, cervical and uterine excoriation, inflammation or haemorrhage.
• Putrid, excoriating vaginal discharge with intense itching and swelling of the vulva.
• Menses excoriating and offensive.
• Heavy menses worsened by sexual intercourse.

Where do I find it?

Kreosotum (Kreos.) is available from our online store as a single remedy in either pills or liquid, and as part of the following Complex (combination remedy): Bed-wetting (Enuresis).

Important

While above self-limiting or acute complaints are suitable for home treatment also contact your healthcare provider during emergency situations or if symptoms worsen or fail to improve. Chronic or persistent complaints, which may or may not be mentioned above, require a different treatment and dosage protocol so are best managed by a qualified homeopath for good results.

Dosage Instructions (suitable for babies to adults)

For the home treatment of acute and self-limiting complaints take one pill or five drops of the remedy every 1 minute to 4 hours (1 minute for intense or emergency symptoms (plus seek emergency help), 4 hours for milder ones). Once an improvement is noticed, stop dosing and repeat the remedy only if symptoms return. If there is no improvement at all by three doses, choose a different remedy or seek professional guidance.

Note: Chronic symptoms or complaints require a course of professional treatment by a qualified homeopath to manage the changes in potencies and remedies may be required.

More Information

Guidelines on which potency to use

From Past Masters

Homeopathy is a 200-year system of medicine. Early medical homeopaths recorded initial provings, remedy relationships, and their early experiences with each remedy in great detail.

These writings were then shared with others to advance homeopathic knowledge and practice.

Today, these same writings give a fascinating insight into the symptoms and clinical conditions for which each remedy was used.

The following extract, with minor editing, is one example.

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

Kreosotum

Cholera infantum; profuse vomiting; cadaverous smelling stools.

Hemorrhagic diathesis; small wound bleeds profusely (Phos.).

Acrid, fetid, decomposed, mucous secretions; sometimes ulcerating, bleeding, malignant.

Gums painful, dark red or blue; teeth decay as soon as they come.

Sudden urging to urinate or during first sleep, which is very profound.

* * * * *

This curious substance seems to act chiefly upon the mucous membranes, producing profuse and offensive secretions and ulcerations, with greatly depressed vitality.

This is especially true of the genital organs of the female. Leucorrhea is putrid, acrid, corrosive, staining the linen yellow. The parts with which the discharge comes in contact itch and burn, while scratching does not relieve but inflames the parts.

This remedy has a tendency to hemorrhages, which are often very obstinate. The hemorrhages occur with leucorrheal trouble; they are intermittent, will almost stop, then freshen up again and again. This is often the case with the lochia after confinement, when the choice may lie between these three remedies, Kreosote, Rhus tox. and Sulphur. The other symptoms must decide between them.

This ulceration may be found in cancer of the uterus, and then Kreosote will often be of great value. I have no doubt that many cases which degenerate into cancer might be prevented by its timely use. In some cases there is awful burning in the pelvis, as of red-hot coals, with discharge of clots in foul smelling blood.

I see that Guernsey recommends it in cancer of the mammae, saying it is hard, bluish-red and covered with scurvy protuberances. I have never so used it, but in corrosive leucorrheas and ulcerations I have with great satisfaction. I generally used it in the 200th, with simply tepid water injections for cleanliness.

There is perhaps no remedy that has a more decided action upon the gums (not even Mercury) than this one. It is not used often enough in painful dentition. The gums are very painful, swell, look dark-red or blue, and the teeth decay almost as soon as they are born. A child that has a mouth full of decayed teeth, with spongy, painful gums, will find its best friend in Kreosote.

Cholera infantum in such children is of common occurrence, and is of a very severe type, for the vomiting is incessant and the stools cadaverous smelling. Never forget Kreosote in cholera infantum, which seems to arise from painful dentition. or in connection with it, for I have seen some of the finest effects ever witnessed from any remedy from this one. I have used it here also in the 200th.

Kreosote is also one of our best remedies in other kinds of vomiting; in the vomiting of pregnancy and in that other intractable disease of the stomach, known as gastromalacia. I do not know any characteristic indication for it here; but should I find the troubles before mentioned, in part or whole such as corrosive leucorrhea, or the hemorrhages, or a general hemorrhagic tendency, small wounds inclined to bleed profusely (like Lachesis and Phosphorus), I would feel confident of Kreosote.

Kreosote has strong characteristics in regard to urination.

First, it has copious pale urine.

Second, they can’t go quick enough, the urging is so great or sudden. (Petroselinum.)

Third, the child wets the bed during first sleep, which is very profound, can hardly wake it. (Sepia).

Can only urinate when lying. (Zinc. met., only when sitting bent back).

To recapitulate. Bad teeth and gums “from way back,” fetid corrosive discharges; great debility and hemorrhagic tendency, should always call to mind this remedy.