Hygrophila

Scanty, painful urination with generalized edema in a person of low vitality

Low libido or seminal weakness with underlying dampness and fatigue

Overview. Hygrophila is a spiny, marsh-loving annual of the Acanthaceae family, native to the wetlands of India, Sri Lanka, and other parts of tropical Asia. The seeds, root, and whole plant are used in Ayurvedic medicine under the names Kokilaksha and Talmakhana, chiefly as a diuretic and restorative tonic. Nineteenth century American Eclectic physicians took note of its reputation among Ceylonese practitioners as a powerful remedy for dropsy and adopted it, though on the whole cautiously and with limited firsthand experience.

Overview. Hygrophila auriculata, known in the older literature and in this store as Hygrophila spinosa and Asteracantha longifolia, is a spiny marsh herb of the acanthus family with whorls of long leaves, sharp yellow spines and purple flowers, growing in rice fields, ditches and the margins of ponds across India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Ayurveda calls it Kokilaksha, the cuckoo's eye, after the color of its seed, and uses the seed as a cooling aphrodisiac and reproductive tonic and the root and whole plant as a diuretic for stones, edema and jaundice. The leaf is a folk remedy for anemia in eastern India, eaten as a green.

Clinical Notes. This is a plant best reached for when a patient presents with fluid retention, whether generalized edema, ascites of hepatic origin, or scanty and uncomfortable urination, especially where there is an underlying picture of depleted vitality rather than acute inflammation alone.

Clinical Notes. Kokilaksha sits in the same working group as Gokshura and Shatavari: cooling, moistening, diuretic and strengthening to the reproductive tissue. The Ayurvedic physician chooses it for the pitta-vata man with sexual debility and urinary heat, giving the seed powder in warm milk with sugar or as part of a vrishya confection, and combines it with Gokshura, Shatavari, Kapikacchu and Vidari for potency, with Punarnava and Gokshura for edema and stones, with Guduchi and Manjishtha for vatarakta, and with Bhumyamalaki for jaundice.