Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Track Squilla maritima with reminders and record whether it helped, in the app.
Squilla maritima is a homeopathic single drug. It is made from the sea onion, a large bulb that grows on dry ground near the sea. Its Latin name is Drimia maritima, and it is also called squill.
Homeopaths reach for it most often for a wet, rattling cough. It is also used for a streaming nose with hard sneezing. Some use it when a cough brings a sharp stitch in the side.
The remedy is made by diluting the plant over and over, with shaking at each step. At 30C, no plant matter is left in the pill at all. Trials do not show that it works better than a dummy pill.
So this page reports two separate things. One is long use inside a tradition. The other is proof from trials, and long use is not proof that something works.
One warning matters more than the rest. The raw bulb is a poison, strong enough that farmers once used it to kill rats. Very low dilutions, such as the mother tincture, can still hold that poison.
There is no known body process that explains how this remedy could work.
Homeopathy rests on an idea called 'like cures like'. A big dose of raw squill makes people cough, vomit and pass more urine. So a tiny dose is given for coughs and wet chests.
Each round of mixing and shaking is said to leave a trace or 'imprint' of the plant in the water. No test has ever found such an imprint. Chemistry says the plant is simply gone.
At 30C the pills are milk sugar and water, and nothing else. Any relief you feel is most likely a placebo effect. That means a real, felt improvement that comes from the act of taking something you trust, not from the pill itself.
The raw plant is a different story. Its heart chemicals do act on the body, and they can act hard. That is a poison effect, not a healing one.
You will see it sold as small sugar pills, as liquid drops, and as a mother tincture. The mother tincture is the raw plant soaked in alcohol.
Common strengths are 6C, 12C, 30C and 200C. You may also see 3X or 6X, which are much weaker dilutions. Only the mother tincture and the lowest X strengths can hold plant chemicals.
Shop labels do not always make this clear. Check that the strength is printed on the box. If it is not, do not buy it.
Sugar pills are usually made from lactose, a milk sugar. Liquid drops usually hold alcohol.
Squill is one of the oldest plant drugs on record. Egyptian and Greek writers named it for chest trouble and for swelling of the legs. The same bulb was long used as rat poison.
Samuel Hahnemann tested it as a homeopathic remedy in the early 1800s. It has stayed in homeopathic books since then, mostly for coughs and colds.
It is a smaller remedy, not one of the famous ones. Its standing rests on one tradition and on a long record of plant use before that.
Some reactions to Squilla maritima need urgent care. Call your local emergency number or go to an emergency department straight away — do not wait to see whether it passes.
Call emergency services now if you have an uneven, racing or very slow heartbeat, chest pain, fainting, or you start seeing yellow or green halos around lights after taking a low-strength squill product. These are signs of heart poisoning.
Go to hospital straight away if a child swallows any part of the raw bulb or drinks the mother tincture.
See your doctor within a day if you are short of breath, coughing up blood, have a fever over 38C, or have chest pain when you breathe in.
Book a normal appointment if your cough lasts more than three weeks, keeps coming back, or wakes you every night.
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 Squilla maritima 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.
One email with the summary. We'll also send a short weekly evidence update — unsubscribe any time.
