Clinical Cases

A Brief Cough Case and Comments on Repertorizing

pd article treatcough
Written by Neha Rajput

Dr. Neha Rajput presents a case of cough in a child of 4.

A 4 year old male child was taken to my clinic on 11-4-17 with c.c. of cold and cough since 2-3 months. Cough is severe without any relief, with running nose. Coughs come one after another and have increased the last 7 days with high grade fever (102). His mother reported that when he coughs a lot, he vomits but that it doesn’t give him relief. She was worried and consulted a physician who started giving IV antibiotics, Augmentine and a nebuliser (Asthalin and Budecort) but without significant relief in the cough or fever.  I observed that the cough was dry, barking and the child dull and looking very tired.

Repertorizing these symptoms led me to Drosera.  I gave Drosera 200 in water and instructed that it be repeated every four hours and to let me know after 24 hours.

Drosera 200 helped the patient, as his cough settled down in a 24 hour period and he had no fever. He got sound sleep that night and no nebuliser was needed. Appetite improved and his mother told me he is now 70 % better and she is happy that her child is at ease.  The Drosera was followed by rubrum twice a day.

Follow up on 24-4-17

He is free from symptoms, no single episode of cough after that. Mild Weakness is still there, but he is playful. Appetite improved. Now he is on Rubrum taking it twice a day.

Repertorial Sheet:

DISCUSSION:

As it is written in aphorism 90

When the physician has finished writing down these particulars, he then makes a note of what he himself observes in the patient and ascertains how much of that was peculiar to the patient in his healthy state.

For example, here in our case, barking cough is one observation and another is that when the child coughs, he holds his chest. This is a very peculiar symptom and helped me to find the remedy.

Coughs coming one after another was also taken into consideration.

After observing all this, our task remains to find the exact rubrics from our observations and find the Simillimum.

With the above mentioned rubrics we come to the cough medicine DROSERA, but we should also confirm it with the materia medica and should also do a comparison of similar remedies.

Of Drosera, Phatak has written:

Another useful symptom is given in Phatak as “Fever with Whooping Cough”

This exactness is required to choose the remedy, and we should be aware of other possible remedies. Phosphorus almost covers all the rubrics but the incessant coughing was not there in Phosphorus and this symptom was so marked that we can’t ignore it.

Sulphur can be ruled out because holding his chest while coughing is not covered by Sulphur . Now if the child had some skin disease in his past, I would have considered Sulphur, but it was not there.  If the child came to me at an earlier stage of this problem, I would have used Aconite, but that stage had passed. We have to differentiate the remedies one by one, and choose the simillimum.

In a follow up after two months the child still had not had any episodes of cold and cough on Rubrum and was doing well, enjoying ice cream and cold drinks and chocolates without any complaints. Even in the rainy season he is doing quite well.

About the author

Neha Rajput

Dr Neha Rajput received her BHMS from Dr. V. H. Dave Homoeopathic College, Anand in 2011. She is pursuing her MD (Hom) in materia medica, from Hemchandra Charya Univ., Ahmedabad. Dr. Rajput did a research project on the role of homoeopathy in diabetes during her internee period. She also did a dissertation on the role of homoeopathy in palliative management of alcoholic cirrhosis during her pg. She has had experience in Cardiac and general ICU. She also trained at the other song Academy in the basic course. Dr. Rajput has been practicing for five years now. Visit her at her blog: drneharajput.wordpress.com

2 Comments

  • May I know the contact details like cell no. or e-mail of Dr. Neha Rajput to get in touch with her with my problems. I am a retired man aged 72 yrs. from Mumbai. I wish to consult her for my resiprotary problem.

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