CYPRIPEDIUM PUBESCENS: UNDERSTANDING A

LESSER KNOWN REMEDY WITH CLINICAL CASE

STUDY
Dr. ANJU JETHANI

M.D. (HOM.)

Senior Medical Officer (Homoeopathy), Medical Center, High Court of Delhi,

Dept. of AYUSH, Govt. of NCT of Delhi.
Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Organon of Medicine, NHMC & Hospital,
Govt. of NCT of Delhi.
E-MAIL: dranjujethani@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: In my clinical experience; I have had occasionally an

opportunity of prescribing remedies that have been relegated to
the sphere of lesser known remedies. In this paper, I wish to share
my clinical experience with one such lesser known remedy
CYPRIPEDIUM PUBESCENS.
MAIN ARTICLE
All drugs of very special and unique action, are easily studied,
and well worth learning up. The polychrests, "the common drugs
of many uses" will serve us ordinarily; and when we have
mastered Sulphur, Sepia, Lycopodium, Calcarea, Nux, etc., etc.,
we are a long way on towards running, fairly easily and
successfully, an ordinary out-patient clinic. But the less
universally-useful drugs, of very peculiar and distinctive
features, are less frequently, yet amazingly helpful. Once
mastered, they romp in brilliantly every time, and make
prescribing an excitement and a delight. Generally they do not
"work out", unless for one who has mastered the secret, that the
best work is done with a few of the "strange, rare and peculiar
symptoms", fitting the case, rather than with a host of somewhat
indefinite general symptoms, which, if politely given precedence,
will often only suggest several remedies of the polychrest type,
and perhaps completely miss the one brilliant and indispensable.
These enlightening words of the great compiler Dr. M.L.
Tyler in her drug picture of Lac caninum very aptly underlie the

significance of perceiving the enormous therapeutic efficacy of

lesser known remedies of our Materia Medica. As the epic Greek
poet Homer encapsulated in his famous saying in The Odyssey:
Very often a small rock holds back a great wave.
In fact, my understanding of the so called lesser remedies is that
they are not any way lesser in the linguistic expression of the
word but are merely less often brought into play and most
importantly, when they are indicated; they do just as good
work as any polychrest can achieve.
In this context, I wish to draw attention to a lesser known remedy
Cypripedium pubescens and in doing so, let me begin with a
case that I saw in Medical center, High court of Delhi. This was a
case of a 4 year old female child who happened to suffer from
recurrent attacks of vesicular eruptions on face with intense
itching and which used to be worse in winters. The itching was
worse at night and scratching used to lead to thin discharge. The
case anamnesis revealed that during intra-uterine life of the
patient, mother had suffered from severe vomiting for entire nine
months of pregnancy. The further evolutionary history of child
revealed that she had suffered from chicken pox at the age of 2
years and her developmental milestones were normal. On the
basis of local lesions, Rhus tox 200 was prescribed in repeated
doses which did not help.
In subsequent case perceiving; a crucial aspect of the case was
emphasized upon by the parent -- the child, being full of life and
activity, manifested her mental excitability especially at about the
night time. She used to wake up from light sleep and demanded
to play or involve in some frolic activity or else would start crying.
On gleaning through Radar software, I found the following
symptom mentioned under the drug Cypripedium pubescens:

Child sleepless , Child cries out at night; is wakeful and

begins to laugh and play.

On basis of this symptom, I prescribed her Cypripedium 200/ 9

doses. The effect was wonderful and this concomitance of
Cypripedium led to complete healing of eruptions within a span of
1 month.
Gleaning through the pages of ancient pharmacology; I found that
the drug Cypripedium was considered a nervine by the eclectics
i.e. it was used as nerve tonic, a medicine that acts
therapeutically upon the nerves, particularly in the sense of a
sedative that serves to calm ruffled nerves. It was reported that
this plant was superior to opium for inducing sleep and was once
commonly used to treat various nervous disorders.

Further, John H. Clarke in his A Dictionary of Practical Materia

Medica has stated that: It is indicated in the brain
hyperaethesia of children who wake in the night lively and
full of play.

But in order to more appropriately realize the scope of therapeutic

utility of the drug Cypripedium; let us refer to Dr. N.M. Choudhary
in his scholarly work A Study on Materia Medica. He lucidly
states that:

..often such functional irritability and cerebral hyperaesthesia

end in convulsions. A few doses of Cypripedium will avert the
impending danger.

A more thorough understanding of the drug Cypripedium

pubescens further widened the horizon of prescribing. The study
of Boerickes Homoeopathic Materia Medica led to appreciation

of the ability of this drug to produce Rhus like skin symptoms. He

writes under Cypripedium:

The skin symptoms correspond to those of poisoning by Rhus, for

which it has been found an efficient antidote.

This convinced me of the clinical efficacy of Cypripedium in cases

of skin affections with the concomitance of reflex nervous
excitement manifested through sleeplessness; peculiarity being
unnaturally playful at night.

This case re-iterates the significance of homoeopathic system of

medicine in aborting in the disease in its nascent stage before it
has taken its full pathogenic potential. In fact, the immense
capability of this small drug in treating cerebral hyperactivity at
the functional stage should open a new vista for exploration of
entire therapeutic efficacy of such not well proven drugs.