Know Your Remedies: Rumex Crispus (Rumx)

Common Names: Curly dock; yellow dock.

General Information

Rumex Crispus is predominantly a remedy for coughs. Those needing it are highly sensitive to cold air with both itchiness and cough triggered by it. Mucous membranes of the nose and throat feel dry, burning or raw while mucous discharges may be profuse.

Ear, Nose, and Throat

  • Dry sensation in posterior nose and throat.
  • Violent sneezing.
  • Thin mucus discharge that gradually toughens into thick, stringy mucus that is hard to expectorate.
  • Frequent throat clearing or hawking to remove tough mucus.

Cough

  • Caused by tickling in the airways.
  • From inhaling cold air.
  • From a change in temperature (uncovering or upon entering cold air from a warm room).
  • Triggered by touching the throat or larynx.
  • Worsens when talking or laughing.

Gastrointestinal Symptoms

  • Early morning diarrhea, with or without catarrh.

Skin

  • Itching on exposure to cold air after undressing.

Where do I find it?

Rumex Crispus (Rumx.) is available from our online store as a single remedy in liquids or pills, and as part of the following Complex (combination remedy): Cough (Dry).

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.

Rumex Crispus (Rumx)

Violent incessant dry cough; worse on inhaling the least cold air; covers the mouth to keep the cold air out, with relief.

Brownish diarrhea, < in morning.

Intense itching of the skin when undressing to go to bed.

* * * * *

There are three localities in which this remedy acts very markedly, viz.: Respiratory organs, bowels and skin.

“Violent, incessant cough, dry and fatiguing, with very little or no expectoration, aggravated by pressure, talking, and especially by inspiring cold air, and at night” (Dunham.)

There is perhaps no remedy under which the sensibility of the mucous membranes of the larynx and trachea become more exalted than this one. The patient must cover up the head in bed in order to protect these membranes from contact with the air, which immediately excites cough.

Several other remedies, like Phosphorus and Spongia, have cough aggravated by breathing cold air, but none so markedly as Rumex. Going from warm room into cool air and vice versa. Bryonia and Natrum carbonicum have the opposite.

The tickling that excites the cough may locate in the throat-pit, supra-sternal fossa, or down behind the sternum to stomach, where is often added a sensation of soreness or rawness. (Caust.). Again we have found it efficacious in cough, with stitching pain through left lung just below left nipple. (Natrum sulph.).

The diarrhea of Rumex is similar to that of Natrum sulph., Sulphur and Podophyllum, in that it occurs in the morning, but it is a brown diarrhea and is apt to be accompanied with, or an accompaniment of, the cough.

On the skin it cures an eruption which is characterized by intense itching when undressing to go to bed. This eruption may be vesicular, like army or prairie itch, or may look like simple urticaria.

Itching on undressing is also found under Natrum sulphuricum and Oleander, but with Natrum this itching is apt to be found in connection with jaundice or malarial symptoms.

If we should get intense itching over the body, which was aggravated by warmth, especially warmth of the bed, we would think of Mercurius solubilis or protoiodide.