COLCHICUM AUTUMNALE

Meadow Saffron


  • Affects markedly the muscular tissues, periosteum, and synovial membranes of joints. 
  • Has specific power of relieving the gouty paroxysms. 
  • It seems to be more beneficial in chronic affections of these parts. 
  • The parts are red, hot, swollen. 
  • Tearing pains; worse, in the evening and at night and from touch; stubbing the toes hurts exceedingly. 
  • There is always great prostration, internal coldness, and tendency to collapse. 
  • Effects of night watching and hard study. 
  • Shocks as from electricity through one half of body. 
  • Bad effects from suppressed sweat. 
  • Dreams of mice.

Head

  • Headache chiefly frontal and temporal, but also occipital and in nape of neck, worse afternoon and evening.

Eyes

  • Pupils unequal; left pupil contracted. 
  • Variations in visual acuity. 
  • Lachrymation worse in open air; violent tearing pain in eyes. 
  • Dim vision after reading. 
  • Spots before eyes.

Ears

  • Itching in ears; sharp, shooting pains below right tragus.

Face

  • Pain in facial muscles, moving about. 
  • Tingling and edematous swelling; cheeks red, hot, sweaty. 
  • Very irritable with the pains (Cham). 
  • Pain behind angle of right lower jaw.

Stomach

  • Dry mouth, tongue burns, gums and teeth pain. 
  • Thirst; pain in stomach and flatulence. 
  • The smell of food causes nausea even to fainting, especially fish. 
  • Profuse salivary secretion. 
  • Vomiting of mucus, bile and food; worse, any motion; great coldness in stomach. 
  • Craving for various things, but is averse to then when smelling them, seized them with nausea. 
  • Gouty gastralgia. 
  • Burning or icy coldness in stomach and abdomen. 
  • Thirst for effervescent, alcoholic beverages. 
  • Pain in transverse colon.

Abdomen

  • Distention of abdomen, with gas, inability to stretch out legs. 
  • Borborygmi. 
  • Pain over liver. 
  • Caecum and ascending colon much distended. 
  • Fullness and continuous rumbling. 
  • Ascites.

Stool

  • Painful, scanty, transparent, jelly-like mucus; pain, as if anus were torn open, with prolapse. 
  • Autumnal dysentery; stools contain while shreddy particles in large quantities. 
  • Ineffectual pressing; feels feces in rectum, but cannot expel them.

Female

  • Pruritus of genitals. 
  • Cold feeling in thigh after period. 
  • Sensation of swelling in vulva and clitoris.

Urine

  • Dark, scanty or suppressed; bloody, brown, black, inky; contains clots of putrid decomposed blood, albumin, sugar.

Heart

  • Anxiety in region of heart. 
  • Impulse not felt. 
  • Pericarditis, with severe pain, oppression and dyspnea, pulse threadlike. 
  • Sound of heart become weaker, pulse of low tension.

Extremities

  • Sharp pain down left arm. 
  • Tearing in limbs during warm weather, stinging during cold. 
  • Pins and needles in hands and wrists, fingertips numb. 
  • Pain in front of thigh. 
  • Right plantar reflex abolished. 
  • Limbs, lame, weak, tingling. 
  • Pain worse in evening and warm weather. 
  • Joints stiff and feverish; shifting rheumatism; pains worse at night. 
  • Inflammation of great toe, gout in heel, cannot bear to have it touched or moved. 
  • Tingling in the finger nails. 
  • Knees strike together, can hardly walk. 
  • Edematous swelling and coldness of legs and feet.

Back

  • Aching in lumbar and lumbo-sacral region. 
  • Dull pain across loins. 
  • Backache, better, rest and pressure.

Skin

  • Blotchy papular rash on face. 
  • Pink spots on back, chest and abdomen. 
  • Urticaria.

Modalities

  • Worse, sundown to sunrise; motion, loss of sleep, smell of food in evening, mental exertion. 
  • Better, stooping.

Relationship

  • Antidotes: Thuja; Camph; Coccul; Nux; Puls.
  • Compare: 
    • Colchicine (intestinal catarrh with shreddy membranes; convulsive jerkings of right hand; rheumatic fever, gout, endo and pericarditis, pleurisy, arthritis, deformans in early stages; intense pain of rheumatism 3x trit). 
    • Also, Carbo; Arnica; Lilium; Arsen; Verat.

Dose

  • Third to thirtieth attenuation.