Crocus sativus
as William Boericke recorded it in Homoeopathic Materia Medica, 1927
Saffron
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Mind
Vacillating; pleasant mania; sings and laughs. Happy and affectionate; then angry. Sudden changes from hilarity to melancholy. Vivid recollection from music heard (Lyc).
General
Is a remedy often useful in hæmorrhages that are black and stringy. Tingling in various parts. Chorea and hysterical affections. Frequent and extreme changes in sensations and mental conditions. Anger with violence followed by repentance, Laughing mania. Drowsiness and lassitude; better by literary labor.
Modalities
Worse, lying down, hot weather, warm room, in morning, fasting,
before breakfast, looking fixedly at an object. Better, in open air.
Head
Throbs, pulsates, during climacteric; worse during menses.
Eyes
Appearance as of electric sparks. Must wipe eyes as if mucus or water were in them. Feeling in eyes as after violent weeping. Sensation as if she had been looking through too sharp spectacles. Eyes feel as if in smoke. Pupils enlarged and react slowly. Lids heavy. Ciliary neuralgia, pain from eyes to top of head. Sensation as if cold air was rushing through eye (Fluor ac; Syph). Asthenopia with extreme photophobia. Threatened glaucoma; embolism of arteria centralis retinal.
Nose
Epistaxis. Dark, stringy, clotted. Strings of dark blood hanging down the nose.
Abdomen
Obstinate constipation due to portal stagnation. Constipation in infants. Crawling and stitches in anus. Sensation of something alive in abdomen, stomach, etc., especially on left side (Calend). Abdomen swollen, feeling of something heavy.
Female
Threatened abortion, especially when hæmorrhage is dark and stringy. Urging of blood to genitals. Menses dark, viscid, too frequent and copious, black and slimy. Uterine hæmorrhage; clots with long strings; worse from least movement. Jerking pain in interior of left breast, as if drawn toward back by means of thread (Crot tig). A bounding feeling, as if something alive in right breast.
Respiratory
Wheezy cough, with frothy expectoration, containing threads like fine twine; worse, lying down. Breath has offensive, sickly smell. Feeling as if the uvula is elongated in hysterical patients.
Back
Sudden feeling of coldness in back as if cold water were thrown over him; icy-cold extremities.
Extremities
Spasmodic contractions and twitchings of single set of muscles. Chorea and hysteria, with great alterations of feeling. Whole upper extremity fall asleep. Cracking in hip-joint and knees. Weakness in knees and legs. Pain in ankles and soles.
Relationships
Antidote: Opium; Bell. Compare: Ipec; Trillium; Plat; China; Sabina.
Dose
Tincture, to thirtieth attenuation.
What the other books say about Crocus sativus
The same remedy read by a different author. They disagree, and the disagreements are where the remedy becomes recognisable.
- Crocus sativus in Allen's Keynotes — The few symptoms that, when genuinely present, point at one remedy and not its neighbours.
- Crocus sativus in Boger — A compressed key — the generals and the characteristic modalities, with very little narrative.
Search every book at once, take rubrics from Kent and Bönninghausen, and practise on a patient who answers back — free account.
Create a free accountCite this page. William Boericke. Homoeopathic Materia Medica. 9th edition (preface dated San Francisco, June 1927). Crocus sativus — Mind. HomeopathyWorld, https://homeopathyworld.in/materia-medica/books/boericke/crocus-sativus. Published 1927: public domain in the US (since 2023) and in India (author died 1929). Reproduced as the author wrote it; a historical reference for students and practitioners, not medical advice.