The Latin name of Colocynth is Citrullus Colocynthis. The name Citrullus Colocynthis is derived from the Latin word Citrus, which means orange, as the colour of the fruit is yellow after cutting. These are perennial herbs usually trailing. It is found wild in the sandy lands of North West, the Punjab, Sind and Central, and southern India and coromandel coast. It is also found indigenous in Arabia, West Asia, and Tropical Africa, and in the Mediterranean region. It was known as early as the 11th century to the Greek, Roman, and Arabian physicians.
Colocynth is native to Turkey, but can now be found growing in many hot, dry, sandy regions throughout the world. Its dried fruit resembles a small pumpkin the size of an orange.
Colocynth is also known as Chitrapala or Bitter apple. Its root, bark, and leaves are used as medicine. As per the Ayurveda and Siddha system of medicine, it is Tikta-rasam, ushna-veeryam, and katu vipakam and used as purgative, diuretic, Lagu, kapharam, and abortifacient. Its fruits are bitter, pungent, and used as purgative, anthelmintic, antipyretic, carminative. It is very useful in the cure of tumors, leucoderma, ulcers, asthma. The root is useful in jaundice, ascites, urinary disease, and rheumatism.
In ancient times Greek physicians used the Colocynth for dropsy, weakness, and mania. It was also used for inducing abortion. In the old Testament, it is related that the prophet Elisha turned this bitter, toxic gourd into an edible fruit during the famine. Ingestion of the pulp causes inflammation of the bowels and severe cramps.
It contains a substance called colocynthin. This causes severe cramps and gastrointestinal inflammation if taken raw.
Prover– Hahnemann in 1821.
Preparation of Homeopathic drug: The dried, deseeded fruit is powdered and macerated in alcohol, before being diluted and succussed.
Common Names
- English: Colocynth, bitter: apple, bitter: cucumber, colocynth, vine: of Sodom, wild gourd, bitter gourd. Colocynth, Bitter Apple, Bitter cucumber
- French: Coloquinte, bitter: melone, koloquinte
- German: Koloquinten.
- Hindi: Mahendravaruni.
- Bengali: Makhal
- Gujarati: Indrayan
- Marathi: Kadu –indravani
- Telugu: Eti-puchcha
- Tamil: Paedikari Attutummatti
- Malayalam: Paikummatti
- Punjabi: Ghurunba
- Sanskrit: Indravaruni
- Hindi: Indrayan
- Arabic: handhal,
- Portuguese: colocíntida
- Spanish: alhandal, coloquíntida
- Botanical name-Citrullus Colocynthis (Linn). , Cucumis Colocynthis
- Synonyms -colocynthis Vulgaris. ., Cucumis colocynthis L. (basionym), Citrullus pseudocolocynthis. and Colocynthis officinalis
- Family-Cucurbitaceae
- Source-Vegetable kingdom
About the Colocynth Plant
Citrullus colocynthis is an annual deciduous climber with large woody branched roots. Its stem slender, roughly angular, pale green above, ashy beneath, deltoid 3-7 lobed, tough leaf alternate, petiolate muttified variable in size. Its flowers are yellow, large, solitary, and pedunculated.
Citrullus colocynthis, when dried, the fruit resembles a small, orange pumpkin. It belongs to southern and western Asia and Southern Africa. It grows in a hot warm and dry climate. It is cultivated in Spain, Japan and Greece, India, Sri Lanka, and Saudi Arabia. Its tendrils are simple, mainly 2-3 feet, slender and hairy.
Leaves are very variable in size. The wild leaf is 3.8 to 6.3 cm in length and 2.5 cm in width while cultivated are large in size. Leaf show deltoid margin, the pale green color above and ashy color beneath, scabrid on both surface, 5-7 lobed.
- This plant shows the presence of male and female flowers.
- Its fruits are globular, slightly depressed, 5-7.5 cm in diameter, green in color, and get white glabrous when ripe.
- Its fruit filled with a dry spongy very bitter pulp.
- Its seeds are 4-6mm long and pale brown.
Parts used– Pulp of the fruit after taking out of seed is used in the preparation of the mother tincture.
The active principle of remedy
The colocynth fruit contains a glucoside called colocynthin (the bitter principle up to 14 %), which produces profuse watery stool with much pain and frequent tenesmus. colocynth in (resin).
- Citrullol
- Pectin
- Albuminoids
- The seed contains a fixed oil (17 %) and albuminoids (6 %).
Homeopathic Remedy Colocynth
- It is helpful in decreasing blood glucose levels in diabetics. It is a traditional remedy for diabetes, as it has the ability to stimulate insulin secretion from the pancreas.
- It has the ability to decrease HbA1c.
- It helps in the reduction of total cholesterol in the high patient with high cholesterol.
- Its fruits are bitter and pungent. It has a cooling effect.
- It is helpful in the treatment of ulcers, asthma, bronchitis, urinary discharges, jaundice. It is a very good remedy for curing enlargement of the spleen, difficult digestion, constipation, anemia, elephantiasis, joints pain, and throat diseases.
- Its root is very useful in the treatment of jaundice, ascites, urinary diseases, rheumatism. It is very useful in cough and asthmatic attacks of children. A poultice of root useful in inflammation of the breast.
- Its fruit or fruit is rubbed into a paste with water and applied to boils and pimples.
- Its paste of the root is applied to the enlargement of the abdomen of children.
Cause of symptoms are
- Anger
- Catching cold
- Chagrin
- Drinking white overheated
- Eating indigestible things
- Eating potatoes
- Grief
- High living
- Indignation
- Suppressed sweat
The patient gets worse–
- After eating and drinking
- Anger
- At 4p m
- By motion
- Cheese
- Cold and damp weather
- Cold and humid weather
- Evening and night
- Indignation
- Rest
- Upright position
The patient feels better by–
- Doubling up
- From warmth
- taking coffee, a warm drink, and from drinking tea
- From violent exertion.
- From movement.
It is suited to a person–
- It is given to a patient who is irritable and their mind is out of balance. They are pale and anemic with sunken eyes. Their face is puffed with head and redness of one cheek and their eyes feel hard and tired.
- The patient generally takes cold easily.
- It is suited to people who are irritable and easily angered and they have bad effects from anger. It can be given to women with copious menses and has sedentary habits.
- It is given to people who don’t want to talk, to see friends. They are impatient. They suffer from colic due to anger. It is given to patients who have sweat at night and have smelled like urine.
- A patient has a loss of appetite without thirst. But the patient wants to drink. He suffers vomiting and diarrhea from the least food.
- It is given when a patient has a violent burning thirst. Everything tastes bitter. He feels thirsty, but can only take a spoonful of liquid at a time.
Indication of Homeopathic Remedy Colocynth
- For Stiffness in joints.
- When a patient has the feeling of shortening of tendons.
- When a patient has swelling of parts with the difficulty of breathing.
- When a patient has scaling off of skin.
- When a patient has itching and burning ulcers.
- In terrible colic. It is very useful in curing the pains of Glaucoma and Iritis.
- It is very useful in Hip diseases, especially on the right side.
- It is useful in the treatment of digestive upsets.
- It is useful in the treatment of gout, sciatica, rheumatism in the neck.
- It is a very good remedy for vertigo when the patient quickly lifts the head to the left. The patient’s roots of the hair are painful. It is given for headaches which get worse from stooping, lying on the back, and on moving eyelids.
- It is given when a patient has a headache with nausea and vomiting.
- It is a very good remedy for glaucoma when a patient suffers from violent pain before eyes become stony hard. It also cures pain and twitching in eyelids.
- It is a remedy for pain in the face with eye symptoms. Along with pain, the face is distorted. Cheeks are cold to touch. The patient gets relief from hard pressure.
- It cures a bitter taste in the mouth. The teeth feel too long.
- It cures Gastritis where the patient has so severe pain that he vomits. Vomiting of bitter water. It cures pain in the stomach, with pain in teeth and head.
- The patient is allergic to potatoes and starchy food. He cannot drink coffee as it increases pain in the abdomen.
- It cures violent, cutting, griping pain which often radiates to other parts. Pain comes in waves. This pain is seen generally after anger.
- It cures stools that are frothy, watery, shreddy, yellow, and gelatinous with pain and gas in the abdomen.
During pain, the infant lies on the abdomen and screams when he is slightly moved.
The patient has a sensation as if stones are present in the abdomen. this pain is so severe it compels the patient to bend double with restlessness. The pain is better from hard pressure.
The pain is often present with cutting and boring pain in the head.
It is very important to remedy dysentery which is like diarrhea, which is renewed after least food or drink. Along with this patient feel pain in the small spot below the navel before during and after the stool.
It is very useful in the treatment of urinary complaints which include burning along the urethra during passing stools. Pain is felt in the whole abdomen during urination. It is given when the patient feels itching at the external orifice during urination.
It is given for short cough when smoking tobacco. It also treats difficulty in breathing during menses.
It is given when a patient has the suppression of menses from anger. It is given for painful nodes in the breasts. It cures ovarian cysts.
It is important to remedy left-sided sciatica. It cures pain in the hip. The pain is shooting type like lightning shocks, it extends down the whole limb, to the left hip, left thigh, left knee.
Dosage of Colocynth
30, 4 pellets, 2 times a day for 10days.