Colchicum autumnale
as H.C. Allen recorded it in Keynotes and Characteristics with Comparisons of Some of the Leading Remedies of the Materia Medica, 1899
This is one author on one remedy. The few symptoms that, when genuinely present, point at one remedy and not its neighbours. Read Colchicum autumnale in every book at once →
Keynotes
Colchicum autumnale
Meadow Saffron. Liliaceae.
Adapted to the rheumatic, gouty diathesis ; persons of robust vigorous constitution; diseases of old people.
External impressions, light, noise, strong odors, contact, bad manners, make him almost beside himself (Nux) ; his sufferings seem intolerable.
Ailments : from grief or misdeeds of others (Staph.).
Pains are drawing, tearing, pressing; light or superficial during warm weather ; affect the bones and deeper tissues, when air is cold ; pains go from left to right (Each.).
Smell painfully acute ; nausea and faintness from the odor of cooking food, especially fish, eggs or fat meat (Ars., Sep.); bad effects from night watching (Coc.).
Aversion to food; loathing even the sight or still more the smell of it.
The abdomen is immensely distended with gas, feeling as if it would burst.
Bimiing, or icy coldness in stomach and abdomen.
Autumnal dysentery, discharges from bowels contain white shreddy particles in large quantities; white mucus; “scrapings of intestines” (Canth., Carb. ac.).
Urine ; dark, scanty or suppressed ; in drops, with white sediment; bloody, brown, black, inky; contains clots of putrid decomposed blood, albumin, sugar.
Affected parts very sensitive to contact and motion.
Arthritic pains in joints; patient screams with pain on touching a joint or stubbing a toe.
serous effusions ; in rheumatism in warm weather.
Often cures in dropsy after Apis and Arsen, fail.
— Mental emotion or exhaustion; effects of hard study; odor of cooking food.
Motion: if the patient lies perfectly still, the disposition to vomit is less urgent. Every motion renews it (Bry.).
What the other books say about Colchicum autumnale
The same remedy read by a different author. They disagree, and the disagreements are where the remedy becomes recognisable.
- Colchicum autumnale in Boericke — The concise clinical Materia Medica that most Indian colleges teach from, in full.
- Colchicum autumnale in Farrington — Lectures that teach remedies in families, by comparing them with each other.
- Colchicum autumnale in Kent — Kent teaching a class, one remedy at a time — fewer remedies, far more on each.
- Colchicum autumnale in Boger — A compressed key — the generals and the characteristic modalities, with very little narrative.
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Cite this page. H.C. Allen. Keynotes and Characteristics with Comparisons of Some of the Leading Remedies of the Materia Medica. 3rd edition (1910). Philadelphia: Boericke & Tafel. Colchicum autumnale — Keynotes, pp. 102–103. HomeopathyWorld, https://homeopathyworld.in/materia-medica/books/allen/colchicum-autumnale. Published 1910: public domain in the US (before 1931) and in India (author died 1909). Replaces B. Jain's 2005 "rearranged and classified" edition (© the publisher), per the owner's decision of 13 Sep 2026. Reproduced as the author wrote it; a historical reference for students and practitioners, not medical advice.