Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
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Gossypium herbaceum is a homeopathic remedy. It is made from the root bark of the cotton plant. Its common name is Cotton plant root bark.
Homeopaths give it for period pain, late periods, and sickness in early pregnancy. The remedy starts as bark soaked in alcohol. That liquid is then watered down again and again, step by step.
At 30C, a common strength, nothing of the plant is left in the pill. Trials do not show that it works better than a placebo (a dummy pill). Long use in a tradition is not proof of effect, so this page reports both axes: what people have used it for, and what studies show.
The honest answer is that no one has shown how it could work. Homeopathy teaches that a watered-down substance can ease the same signs it would cause in large amounts.
Raw cotton root bark can make the womb tighten and bleed. So homeopaths use the watered-down form for period trouble.
But the watering-down goes far past the point where any plant is left. There is no known way for a pill with none of the plant in it to act on your body. Any change people notice is best explained as placebo (a dummy effect), or as the problem easing on its own.
Most people meet this remedy as small sugar pellets, usually 30C or 6C. Liquid drops in alcohol and water are also sold. A few shops sell 1X to 6X, which are far less watered down.
The raw herb is a different product. Cotton root bark tea, powder and tincture are sold as herbal goods, not as homeopathy. Those hold real plant chemicals and carry real risk.
Check the label before you buy. If it does not say C or X, treat it as a raw herb.
Cotton comes from Africa and Asia and is now grown worldwide. In the 1800s American South, enslaved women chewed the root bark to bring on a period or end a pregnancy.
Doctors of that era wrote it up as a womb herb. Homeopaths added it to their materia medica (their book of remedies) in the same century.
It stays a minor remedy today. The record is real, but it is small.
Some reactions to Gossypium herbaceum need urgent care. Call your local emergency number or go to an emergency department straight away — do not wait to see whether it passes.
See a doctor within a few days if your period is very late, very painful, or much heavier than normal. Get help the same day if you took raw cotton root bark and feel sick, weak, dizzy or shaky. Call emergency services or go to hospital now if you have chest pain, a racing or odd heartbeat, fainting, heavy bleeding, or vomiting you cannot stop. Always get urgent care for sharp one-sided belly pain in early pregnancy.
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 Gossypium herbaceum 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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