Violent incessant dry cough; worse on inhaling the least cold air; covers the mouth to keep the cold air out, with relief.
Brownish diarrhoea, < in morning.
Intense itching of the skin when undressing to go to bed.
There are three localities in which this remedy acts very markedly, viz.: Respiratory organs, bowels and skin. "Violent, incessant cough, dry and fatiguing, with very little or no expectoration, aggravated by pressure, talking, and especially by INSPIRING COLD AIR, and at night." (Dunham.) There is perhaps no remedy under which the sensibility of the mucous membranes of the larynx and trachea become more exalted than this one. The patient must cover up the head in bed in order to protect these membranes from contact with the air, which immediately excites cough. Several other remedies, like PHOSPHORUS and SPONGIA, have cough aggravated by breathing cold air, but none so markedly as RUMEX. Going from warm room into cool air and vice versa. BRYONIA and NATRUM CARBONICUM have the opposite. The tickling that excites the cough may locate in the throat-pit, supra-sternal fossa, or down behind the sternum to stomach, where is often added a sensation of soreness or rawness. (CAUST.) Again we have found it efficacious in cough, with stitching pain THROUGH LEFT LUNG JUST BELOW LEFT NIPPLE. (NATRUM SULPH.)
The diarrhoea of RUMEX is similar to that of NATRUM SULPH., SULPHUR and PODOPHYLLUM, in that it occurs in the morning, but it is a BROWN diarrhoea and is apt to be accompanied with, or an accompaniment of, the cough. On the skin it cures an eruption which is characterized by intense itching WHEN UNDRESSING TO GO TO BED. This eruption may be vesicular, like army or prairie itch, or may look like simple urticaria. Itching on undressing is also found under NATRUM SULPHURICUM and OLEANDER, but with NATRUM this itching is apt to be found in connection with jaundice or malarial symptoms. If we should get intense itching over the body, which was aggravated by warmth, especially WARMTH OF THE BED, we would think of MERCURIUS SOLUBILIS or PROTOIODIDE.