Know Your Remedies: Stramonium (Stram.)

Common Names: Jimson weed; devil’s snare; thornapple; moon flower; devil’s trumpet.

General Information

Stramonium is a remedy needed equally by children and adults for neurological injury or symptoms arising from fright and suppressed anger. (Causes of neurological injuries that respond to Stramonium include fever, poison, alcohol, infection, trauma, and vaccines.) The person may suspect or be fearful of violence and so will initiate or react violently, themselves. They are also frightened by darkness. Recurring spasmodic complaints such as chorea, twitches, jerks, and even convulsions fall within its symptom profile. Stramonium’s complaints and fears are worsened by darkness, running or glistening water, when alone, and by suppression of discharges or secretions (menses, perspiration, diarrhoea, etc). The person may stammer violently, dislike water, crave sweets, or have an intense thirst for sour drinks. Painful complaints (falls, injuries, etc) are often experienced as painless. Light and company improves symptoms.

 Mental-Emotional Symptoms

• Fear at night and in the dark, especially in children. Wake with terror or with night terrors.
• Fear of animals, especially those that could attack.
• Fear of death, especially a violent death.
• Fear of running water, reflective surfaces, and narrow enclosed places.
• Sudden, destructive, wild, and threatening behaviour. Rage and violence.
• Mental conditions include: mania; psychoses; increased strength; talking in a foreign language – with dilated pupils and red face.

Head and Face

• Red during symptoms, sometimes quickly changing to pale.
• Pulsating headache.
• Spasmodic Jerking of the head.

Eye

• Twitching and blinking.
• Strabismus (eye turned in or out).
• Extreme sensitivity to light.

Cough

• Deep, loud, barking cough.

Limbs

• Convulsions, spasms, chorea, jerks, twitches.
• Spasmodic effects from fright.

Sleep

• Night terrors and nightmares.

Fever

• Febrile convulsions.
• Violent delirium.

Where do I find it?

Stramonium (Stram.) is available from our online store as a single remedy in either pills or liquids.

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.

Stramonium (Stram.)

Wildly delirious, with red face and great loquacity. Loquacity.

Pupils widely dilated; wants light and company; fears to be alone; wants hand held.

One side paralyzed, the other convulsed.

Awakens with a shrinking look; frightened; afraid of the first object seen.

Painlessness with most complaints (Opium.) Jerks the head suddenly from pillow in spasms.

* * * * *

The last of the trio is pre-eminently the high-grade delirium remedy, differs from the other two chiefly in the degree of intensity.

The raving is something awful singing, laughing, grinning; whistling, screaming, praying piteously or swearing hideously, and above all remedies loquacious. Again the patient throws himself into all shapes corresponding to his changeable delirium, crosswise, length-wise, rolled up like a ball, or stiffened out by turns, or, especially, repeatedly jerks up suddenly his head from the pillow. Things look crooked or oblique to him.

The whole inner mouth as if raw; the tongue after a while may become stiff or paralyzed. Stools loose blackish, smelling like carrion, or no stool or urine. Later there may be complete loss of sight, hearing, and speech with dilated, immovable pupils and drenching sweat which brings no relief, and death must soon close the scene unless Stramonium helps them out.

By way of still further comparison Stramonium is the most widely loquacious.

Hyoscyamus is the most insensibly stupid.

Belladonna in this respect stands half way between.

Stramonium, throws himself about, jerking head from pillow.

Hyoscyamus, twitches, picks and reaches, otherwise lying pretty still.

Belladonna, starts or jumps when falling into or awaking from sleep.

All have times of wanting to escape.

The same state of mind and sensorium is found in chronic and acute manias. I have cured several such cases. One was a lady about thirty years of age, who was overheated in the sun, on an excursion. She was a member in good standing in the Presbyterian church, but imagined herself lost and called me in six mornings in succession to see her die. Lost, lost, lost, eternally lost, was her theme, begging minister, doctor and everybody to pray for, and with her. Talked night and day about it. I had to shut her up in her room alone for she would not sleep a wink or let anyone else.

She imagined her head was as big as a bushel and had me examine her legs, which she insisted were as large as a church. After treating her several weeks with Glonoine, Lach., Natrum carb. and other remedies on the cause as the basis of the prescription, without the least amelioration of her condition, I gave her Stramonium, which covered her symptoms, and in twenty-four hours every vestige of that mania was gone.

But for the encouragement I gave the husband that I could cure her she would have been sent to the Utica Asylum, where her friends had been advised to send her by the allopaths. I gave her the sixth dilution or potency.

I cured a case just as bad since then with the C M. potency. I could relate other experience, just as remarkable, cured with this remedy, but why do so? Aside from the uses of the remedy, which are the main ones, I will mention now a few symptoms that have been found very reliable guides:

Staggers in the dark with eyes closed.

Eyes wide open; prominent, brilliant pupils widely dilated.

Desires light and company.

Face hot and red, cheeks circumscribed.

Convulsions, aggravated in bright light.

Mouth and throat dry. (Bell.)

Fear of water and aversion to all fluids.

Metrorrhagia, with characteristic mind symptoms.

Great pain in hip disease, or abscesses.

One side paralyzed, the other convulsed. (Bell.)

Entire absence of pain. (Opium)