Case 80: She Coughed For Days Till This Rare Remedy Rescued Her!

Dr VISHPALA PARTHASARATHY

Mrs MG, aged 48 yrs suffers from INTERSTITIAL LUNG DISEASE from the past 12 yrs.
Her symptoms are cough, breathlessness and monthly attacks of severe cold and chest congestion. Her cough is aggravated by fruits like grapes, curds and sour food.
It is also worse at night and on lying down.
The cough is mostly dry and is better with warm drinks.
When she has a severe bout of cough she gets marked relief by kneeling with her face turned towards the pillow.

She had been on steroids for quite some time, but is off steroids for the past one year. Symptomatically the patient claims to have no change with or without steroids but her X-rays show further progress of the disease over the past one year.

Considering her increased thirst for water and her anxiety levels, she was prescribed Ars-alb 200 but to no avail even after taking it 3 times a day for three days.

When the patient came back after 3 days we reviewed the case. We found that this peculiar ameliorating position should be given more weightage than we did at the first prescription.

We referred to Robin Murphy’s Repertory and found the following rubric:

·         Coughing, kneeling, with face toward pillow, amelioration.

This rubric had a single remedy → Eupatorium-perfoliatum.

We gave her a stat dose of this remedy in the 200^th potency and asked the patient to wait outside and see if there were any changes.

To our surprise and much to the patient’s relief within 10 minutes the cough began to gradually reduce in frequency and intensity.