Let us start with a basic concept – cough is a reflex and not a disease. It is due to an underlying disease (nosological) or dis-ease (alteration at a dynamic level). It is one of the most common symptoms which clinicians encounter all over the world, irrespective of region, weather, and environmental factors. While an ample research and clinical understanding of cough has been taken care since decades, there exists a grey area in its understanding and treatment. The challenge has and shall remain forever! This is the reason there are multiple remedies, combinations, repetitions, and patents in every system of medicines for a simple yet challenging symptom- cough.
In majority of the systems of medicines, the first line of treatment of cough is the “suppression”, whereas in homeopathy in addition to “suppression”, “palliation” we try to go to the root cause for its long-term relief for or cure of the underlying cause.
One more interesting thing about cough is that it can respond to even a single dose sometime whereas it may remain non-responsive for months!
In addition to basic medical understanding of cough let us understand the cough from homeopathic point of view. This shall help us in understanding and arriving at a group of remedies easily.
The first step towards dealing a cough patient is to know its CHARACTER, e.g dry, wet, paroxysmal, rattling, deep, violent etc. This is the first thing a patient usually tells a physician, and demands the quickest results possible. If we have gone deeper towards knowing the character of cough, we can choose the appropriate rubric and symptom hunting is easy. The homeopathic materia medica is loaded with remedies with detailed and descriptive knowledge about character of cough – such as Bryonia for dry cough, Antim tart for rattling cough, Drosera for whooping cough, Spongia for croupy cough, and so on.
The next important aspect is the PRESENTATION. The cough appended with modalities and circumstances is important from homeopathic prescription point of view e.g. aggravated by cold, sweets, at night, morning etc. This presentation is what makes cough and person’s cough and a person suffering with cough. It gives an individualistic approach to deal cough.
Next point is knowing the CHRONICITY. It is important to know since how long, after what the cough developed The patient might narrate the whole story citing – never been well since. It gives us the relation of today’s cough with the history of its appearance and progression. It helps us to understand the remedy repetition, choosing group of remedies based on the chronicity, choosing the well known intercurrents etc.
A thorough understanding of the existing disease(s) is important. Try to find out the TRIGGERS. Is there any history or presence of infections such as upper respiratory tract infection, inflammation as in inflammatory diseases, obstruction as in obstructive diseases (e.g. COPD), specific diseases etc.
DYNAMIC CAUSE: The science and art of homeopathy is to understand an individual in a disease. The underlying cause helps us in drawing the relation of cough in terms of tendencies, miasmatic cause etc. It is important to know that targeting the dynamic cause is the preferred method to tackle the disease for long term and to tree them from root level.
Would love to receive your valuable insight and inputs.
Dr. Saurav Arora is an internationally acclaimed medical homeopath, consultant, and independent researcher having 17+ years of experience as a clinician, researcher, and a teacher.
Plz. Discuss about medicine with their specific cough symptoms.
Sure Dr Hasan, the therapeutics of cough shall be discussed in the next post very soon. Stay tuned.