Basic Information:
- Common Name: Vegetable Charcoal
- Source: Prepared from charcoal of beech wood
- Family: Compound remedy
- Abbreviation: Carb-v.
- Miasm: Psora (with sycotic elements)
- Thermal: Chilly patient, yet desires fanning
- Constitution: Weak, sluggish, cachectic persons; old people with poor reaction
- (Vegetable Charcoal – The “Corpse Reviver” of Homeopathy)
Keynote Symptoms:
Lack of vital heat, collapse state, coldness, air hunger
Flatulence and distension with excessive gas and offensive discharges
"Corpse-like" state: Pale, cold, sweaty, nearly lifeless — yet conscious
Desire to be fanned hard despite being chilly
Hemorrhages: passive, dark, and offensive
Clinical Indications:
Mind:
- Confused, forgetful
- Indifference, apathy to everything
- Irritable, depressed with slow comprehension
General Constitution:
- Coldness of body but wants fanning
- Collapse after acute disease or hemorrhage
- Weak, sluggish circulation with cold sweat
- Faintness from loss of fluids (diarrhea, bleeding, etc.)
Nose:
- Bleeding from nose with dark, offensive blood
- Coryza with loss of smell; frequent epistaxis in old people
Respiratory:
- Hoarseness, worse in evening
- Cough with burning in chest, worse talking or lying down
- Asthma with gastric disturbance
- Air hunger — wants to be fanned constantly
Gastrointestinal:
- Excessive gas, bloating, and eructations — amel. by belching
- Sour or rancid burps; indigestion after fats
- "The great anti-flatulent" – bloating with pain, especially upper abdomen
- Stools offensive, putrid, sometimes involuntary
Circulatory:
- Collapse with cold extremities, blue lips, weak pulse
- Passive bleeding with cold skin
- Varicose veins and hemorrhages
Rectum:
- Burning in rectum after stool
- Diarrhea: foul-smelling, painless, debilitating
- Hemorrhoids bluish, moist, bleeding
Female:
- Menses too early, profuse, dark, with offensive odor
- Leucorrhea yellowish-green, foul, debilitating
- Collapse after postpartum hemorrhage
Characteristic Features:
- Cold, yet craves air/fanning
- Excessive flatulence, distension, and putrid discharges
- No vital reaction – remedy for never well since shock, surgery, loss of fluids
- Cadaverous, pale, or cyanotic skin tone
Modalities:
|
Worse From |
Better From |
|
Rich food, milk, fats |
Belching, fanning, open air |
|
After surgery, loss of fluids |
Eructations |
|
Night, lying flat |
Sitting up slightly |
|
Cold, damp places |
Warmth (partially) |
Remedy Relationship:
|
Related Remedies |
Use/Compare When… |
|
Arsenic alb |
Collapse with restlessness |
|
Camphora |
Sudden collapse with icy coldness |
|
China officinalis |
Collapse from fluid loss, but more bloated & weak pulse |
|
Carbo animalis |
More glandular, chronic ulcerative states |
|
Lycopodium |
Flatulence but more right-sided, confident mentally |
Mnemonic – “CARBO
VEG: Cold AIR Revives BLOATED OLD patients Very Exhausted & Gassy”
- C – Cold, collapse, cyanosis
- A – Air hunger, anemia
- R – Rancid eructations, Rectal burning
- B – Bloating, blue lips
- O – Offensive stool, odor
- V – Varicose veins
- E – Exhaustion post hemorrhage
- G – Gas, gastric complaints
One-line Summary:
“Carbo vegetabilis is a great remedy for collapsed, cold, air-starved patients with putrid flatulence and no vital reaction.”
