Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
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Bacillus mutabilis is a homeopathic remedy. It is made from a gut germ of the coliform group, so it is called a bowel nosode. It is sold as a single homeopathic drug, not as a blend.
The starting material is watered down again and again, with shaking at each step. At the common 30C strength, none of the source material is left in the pill. Trials do not show any effect beyond a dummy pill.
Homeopaths have used it since the 1920s, mostly for long-running skin and bowel complaints. That is a record of custom, not of proof. Traditional use does not show that a remedy works.
No one has shown how it could work in the body, because nothing of the germ is left to act.
Homeopaths say that the water and shaking leave an imprint of the starting material. Chemistry and physics give no support for that idea. It is a belief inside the tradition, not a tested fact.
Any relief people report is best explained by time, by care and attention, and by the placebo effect (feeling better after a dummy treatment).
It comes in a few simple forms.
Small round sugar pills, usually made of lactose (milk sugar) or sucrose, are the most common. Liquid drops in a water and alcohol mix are also sold. Some brands make a soft tablet that melts on the tongue.
Strengths are written as 30C, 200C or 1M. A higher number means more dilution steps, not a stronger dose.
The bowel nosodes came out of British homeopathy in the 1920s and 1930s.
Edward Bach, and later John Paterson and Elizabeth Paterson, grew gut germs from stool samples. They matched groups of germs to homeopathic remedies and made diluted preparations from them.
Bacillus mutabilis was one of the smaller members of that set. It has stayed a niche remedy used by some homeopaths, and it has no standing outside homeopathy.
See a doctor if your skin, bowel or chest problem is getting worse, or if it has not settled after a few weeks. Get help the same day for a high fever, blood in your stool, weight loss you did not plan, or a rash that spreads fast. Call emergency services if you or your child struggles to breathe, has a stiff neck with a fever, or has a rash that does not fade when you press a glass on it.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Bacillus mutabilis is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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