A nasty cough, a very interesting plant and Darwin

May 2010
By Uschi Kraus-Harper

A nasty cough, a very interesting plant and Darwin

Let’s start with the cough. It is dry, wheezy and you sound as if you were an old, barking sea-lion.  I had one quite recently. It took me a week to get rid of it; quite quick compared to many others who still cough after three weeks and more. My quick recovery was, I have no doubt, thanks to that very interesting plant called Drosera (Sundew), and thanks to homeopathy.

Drosera is a carnivorous plant that traps and digests small insects and other invertebrates (animals without a backbone) with the sticky hairs or tentacles on their leaves.

Drosera has long been used in its herbal form (which is different from homeopathy). It relaxes the muscles of the respiratory tract, easing breathing and so is of great value in the treatment of various chest complaints. The flowering plant is antibacterial, antibiotic, antispasmodic, antitussive (relieving coughs) and expectorant. It is used in the treatment of whooping cough, chronic bronchitis and asthma.

The homeopathic remedy is made from the whole fresh plant, harvested when it is starting to flower. It is used mainly in the treatment of coughs, especially for whooping cough, but can also be useful in Glandular Fever.

Drosera coughs are dry, spasmodic, barking and come in bouts. The respiration is wheezy.  The cough is worse in the evening, especially after midnight and can produce intercostal (between the ribs) pain, or abdominal pain, which is relieved by pressure.
But what has Darwin got to do with all this, you might well ask.  Darwin, whose 200th birthday we celebrated last year; whose The Origin of Species had so much influence on how we see the world today. Well, from 1860 onwards, Darwin investigated the effects of dilutions of salts of ammonia on Drosera. When exposed to these salt solutions the tentacles of the Drosera plant would turn inwards, but more importantly Darwin discovered that the same results could be achieved with weaker and weaker dilutions.  Having achieved an effect from a dilution of 1/20,000,000th of a grain of salt, Darwin was both staggered and frightened by what he had observed. In a letter of 24 November 1860 to Charles Lyell, he writes “I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world. But I will not publish on Drosera until next year, for I am frightened and astounded by my results”. In fact Darwin was not happy to publish the work until 1875 (in Insectivorous Plants) and only after he had repeated the experiments countless times to rule out any source of error.

Homeopathic remedies are extremely diluted, which is why they are non-toxic and safe to use for children and pregnant women, for example. This dilution is what causes some people to doubt that homeopathy can work, even in view of very good research about its effectiveness. If you are one of those people,  remember Darwin!

Ursula Kraus-Harper MA PhD RSHom
Registered Homeopath