Tabacum: Complete Materia Medica, Keynotes & Clinical Uses (Boericke + Allen)

Common Name: Tobacco
Family: Solanaceae
Source: Vegetable – prepared from the dried leaves of Nicotiana tabacum
Keynote: Sudden, violent nausea, vomiting, and sinking faintness with icy coldness

Sphere of Action

• Profound action on the nervous system, circulatory system, and gastrointestinal tract
• Marked vasomotor paralysis, nausea, collapse, and coldness

Key Clinical Indications

• Motion sickness (with vomiting, cold sweat, fainting)
• Cholera and choleric diarrhea with collapse
• Angina pectoris, especially with nausea and cold sweat
• Meniere's disease (vertigo, nausea)
• Vomiting of pregnancy
• Fainting spells with coldness
• Low blood pressure with giddiness and cold sweat

Mind

• Restlessness with fear of death
• Depression and anxiety with great nervous agitation
• Desires open air, feels better in open air
• Fear of motion – makes nausea worse
• Cannot bear to move eyes without nausea

Characteristic Symptoms

Head

• Vertigo on opening eyes
• Vertigo with nausea and deathly faintness
• Sick headache with death-like pallor and nausea

Face

• Pale, blue, sunken face with cold sweat
• Hippocratic expression
• Deadly paleness during attack

Gastrointestinal

• Nausea and vomiting with profound prostration
• Vomiting with cold sweat and icy coldness
• Craves air; better in open air
• Severe vomiting in pregnancy
• Cholera with cramps and collapse
• Tongue clean, pointed

Heart

• Weak, slow, or irregular pulse
• Cold, sweaty skin; sinking sensation in heart
• Angina pectoris with cold sweat and faintness

Skin

• Cold, clammy sweat, especially on face
• Skin cold and cyanosed in collapse states

Modalities

Worse From	Better From
Least motion (↑ nausea)	Open air
Closing eyes	Uncovering abdomen
Warmth	Vomiting
Odors or sight of food	Cold applications

Keynotes

• Sudden and violent nausea with death-like prostration
• Cold sweat, icy cold limbs, desires uncovering abdomen
• Better by vomiting and in open air
• Faintness with desire to lie still
• Cholera-like symptoms with collapse
• Vomiting of pregnancy with deathly nausea

Clinical Use

• Acute vomiting (motion sickness, pregnancy, vertigo)
• Angina pectoris with faintness
• Low blood pressure, shock, and collapse states
• Complementary in chronic tobacco poisoning
• Meniere’s disease, labyrinthine vertigo

Potency & Dosage

• Best used in low potencies (3C, 6C, 30C) in acute cases
• In nausea/vomiting: 30C every 15–30 minutes
• In motion sickness: given before and during travel
• Use cautiously in sensitive patients due to intensity of action

Relationship with Other Remedies

Compare With	Complementary Remedies
Veratrum Album – similar cholera collapse	Arsenicum Album – collapse with restlessness
Nux Vomica – nausea with irritability	Phosphorus – vomiting as soon as water is taken
Petroleum – motion sickness with vertigo	Cocculus – motion sickness with sleepiness

Clinical Conditions

• Motion sickness
• Pregnancy vomiting
• Cholera and cholera morbus
• Cardiac collapse
• Meniere’s disease
• Vertigo with cold sweat
• Angina with faintness

One-Line Summary

Tabacum is a rapid-acting acute remedy for nausea, vomiting, cold sweat, and collapse, especially useful in seasickness, pregnancy, and angina with faintness.