Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Elaterium is a homeopathic remedy made from the squirting cucumber (Latin name Ecballium elaterium). This small vine grows around the Mediterranean, and its ripe fruit bursts and shoots out its juice. Homeopaths give it mainly for sudden, gushing, watery diarrhoea with griping cramps.
The remedy is made by diluting. The plant is diluted and shaken, over and over, step after step. At the usual 30C strength, so little is left that the pellet or drop you take holds almost no plant at all.
Trials do not show a difference between homeopathic remedies and placebo (a dummy treatment). So the honest verdict is simple. There is no reliable human trial evidence for Elaterium, and its standing rests on homeopathic tradition alone.
A long record of past use is not proof that something works. That applies to everything on this page.
One warning matters more than any claim here. The raw plant and its juice are very poisonous. People have died after swallowing crude squirting cucumber, or after putting the juice in the nose.
Homeopaths pick Elaterium by matching a symptom picture. They do not pick it for any drug action that can be measured in the body.
The guiding idea is "like cures like". In large doses, this plant causes violent watery diarrhoea. So it is given in tiny, much diluted form to a person who already has that same pattern of symptoms.
There is no accepted biological reason why this would work. At 30C, no plant molecules are left. So any effect cannot come from a plant chemical acting on your gut.
Chemists and biologists have looked for a mechanism (a way it could work). They have not found one.
A simpler explanation fits the reports. People often feel better over time anyway. Attention, expectation and the natural course of a short illness all play a part.
Elaterium is sold as a homeopathic preparation, not as a herbal extract. The usual forms are sugar pellets, liquid drops in alcohol and water, and sometimes tablets.
You will see potencies such as 6C, 12C, 30C and 200C. The higher the number, the more dilution steps were used. And the less of the original plant is left.
Low potencies such as 1X and 3X, and the mother tincture, may still hold real amounts of the plant's irritant chemicals. These are not a consumer product. Never self-prescribe them.
Squirting cucumber has a long record in Greek and Roman medicine. Healers used the dried juice as a drastic purgative (a drug that forces the bowels to empty).
It was also used to try to bring on abortion. It caused many poisonings.
Homeopathy took it up in the nineteenth century. It was a small remedy for sudden watery diarrhoea, including during cholera outbreaks. In homeopathy it is still a minor remedy rather than a main one.
Some reactions to Elaterium need urgent care. Call your local emergency number or go to an emergency department straight away — do not wait to see whether it passes.
Get medical help the same day if diarrhoea lasts more than two days, if there is blood in the stool, or if you have a fever above 38.5C (101.3F).
Get help urgently if you cannot keep fluids down, feel dizzy on standing, pass very little urine, or your mouth and eyes feel dry. These are signs of dehydration, which means too little fluid in the body.
Call emergency services or a poisons centre straight away if anyone has swallowed the raw plant, its juice or the mother tincture, or has put it in the nose. Warning signs include severe vomiting, uncontrollable diarrhoea, swelling of the mouth or throat, trouble breathing, confusion or collapse.
Always seek urgent care for diarrhoea in a baby, a frail older person, or anyone with a weakened immune system.
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 Elaterium 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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