PHYTOLACCA

Phytolacca, commonly known as Poke-root, is a powerful homoeopathic medicine derived from the Phytolacca plant, also referred to as the Red Ink Plant or Garget Weed, belonging to the Phytolaccaceae family. It is prepared from the fresh root (dug in winter), ripe berries, and fresh leaves, and may also be used in the form of a resinous extract called Phytolaccin. This medicine is especially valuable in glandular affections, muscular and fibrous tissue disorders, and various inflammatory and rheumatic conditions. It has a broad range of action affecting the throat, mammary glands, bones, skin, and nervous system.

Common Names:

English: Poke-root, Red Ink Plant

SBL’s Phytolacca can be helpful in the following conditions:

• Glandular Disorders
  • Acts strongly on glands with heat, swelling, and inflammation.
  • Useful in swollen tonsils with dark red color, parotid glands, and mumps.
  • Venereal buboes and scrofulous gland enlargements.
• Throat Affections
  • Phytolacca is indicated in sore throat, quinsy, follicular pharyngitis, and diphtheria.
  • Throat appears rough narrow, dark red or bluish, with swollen tonsils (especially right side) with swollen fauces.
  • Helps in pain at root of tongue extending to ears; difficulty swallowing, even water.
  • Thick, yellowish, tenacious mucus difficult to expel; pseudo-membranous exudation.
  • Supports in treating enlarged, dropsical uvula. Burning pain and rough, narrow feeling in the throat.
• Female Health
  • Helps in mastitis with hard, sensitive breasts; painful purple discoloration.
  • Mammary abscesses, cracks, and ulcers around nipples.
  • Pain radiating from nipple throughout the body when nursing.
  • Beneficial in breast tumors, including cancer with axillary gland enlargement.
  • Galactorrhoea and menstrual irregularities (profuse and frequent menses).
  • Treats ovarian neuralgia, especially right-sided.
• Male Health
  • Indicated in painful testicular induration.
  • Shooting pain from perineum to penis.
• Musculoskeletal & Nervous System
  • Rheumatic pains in joints and muscles; worse in morning and damp weather.
  • Pains described as electric shocks, shooting, shifting, or lancinating.
  • Syphilitic bone pains and chronic rheumatism.
  • Useful in rheumatism of abdominal muscles and lower intercostals.
  • Stiffness of back and shoulder with inability to raise an arm; weakness & dull pain in kidney region.
  • Aids in sciatica, neuralgia in toes, aching in heels, puffed feet, painful ankles.
  • Pains in lumbar region; pains streaking up and down spine into sacrum.
• Mental & Emotional Health
  • Treats apathy, indifference to life, loss of personal delicacy, and social disconnection.
• Head & Scalp
  • Relieves vertigo on rising, soreness of brain, pressure in temples and over eyes.
  • Rheumatic scalp pain worsened by rainy weather.
  • Treats scaly eruptions on the scalp.
• Eyes & Nose
  • Supports in relieving smarting eyes, sensation of sand, hot tarsal margins.
  • Fistula lachrymalis and abundant hot lachrymation.
  • Coryza with mucus from one nostril and postnasal drip.
• Mouth & Tongue
  • Especially helpful in teething children—desire to bite teeth together, jaw clenched, lips everted.
  • Tongue red at tip, scalded sensation, mapped and indented with yellow stripe.
  • Excessive stringy saliva, mouth bleeds, blistered tongue sides.
• Abdominal & Digestive Complaints
  • Soreness in right hypochondrium, colic at the navel, bruised epigastrium.
  • Helps in constipation in the elderly and those with weak hearts.
  • Phytolacca manages rectal bleeding, burning and gripping abdominal pain.
• Urinary System
  • Treats scanty, painful urination with suppressed flow.
  • Nephritis with kidney region pain.
• Respiratory Issues
  • Especially in hoarseness, aphonia, dry, tickling, hacking cough (worse at night).
  • Aching in mid-sternum; difficult breathing.
  • Useful in chest oppression with rheumatic intercostal pain.
• Cardiac Symptoms
  • Aids in sudden shock-like cardiac pain, alternating with pain in right arm.
  • Sensation as if heart leaps into throat.
• Back and Extremities
  • Manages stiff back on rising; pain radiating up and down the spine.
  • Pain in legs, thighs, ankles, and feet.
  • Patient fears rising due to leg pain.
• Fever & General Weakness
  • High fever alternating with chills and extreme prostration.
• Skin Conditions
  • Helps in dry, pale, shrunken skin, itchy papular and pustular eruptions.
  • Disposition to boils, especially those that tend to slough.
  • Phytolacca treats squamous and syphilitic eruptions.
  • Warts, moles, and scarlatina-like rashes and early stages of skin diseases.