Arsenicum (Arsenicum Album or Arsenic), the chemical element, is a very effective remedy for vomiting and/or diarrhea after eating bad food, i.e. when you have contracted food poisoning.

The typical situation is that you eat or drink something (especially in a country or region you have not been in before) and then some hours later, or the next day or so you feel nausea and start vomiting, often shortly followed by diarrhea.

This can have serious consequences if action is not taken promptly. You may wind up in hospital for some time – weeks even.  In a foreign country that can be costly – missed plane, no insurance, poor treatment, etc.

Here is where Arsenicum comes to the rescue.  You of course are prepared and have Arsenicum 200C in your homeopathic remedy kit that you always carry with you without fail. So you take a pill of Arsenicum 200C and soon your problems fade away.

If your vomiting and diarrhea should persist, you can repeat the dose after a couple of hours. Remember to drink sufficient liquids to replace your losses due to diarrhea.

In severe, intractable cases, you can make use of the plussing technique.  You dissolve one or two pills of Arsenicum in a plastic cup of clean water, preferably mineral water as contaminated local tap water can have been the causative agent of your illness.

Then you use a plastic spoon to stir five times before taking a sip of the remedy water. Stir each time before you take the remedy. This stirring increases the potency slightly (the reason it is called plussing), thus intensifying the effect of the remedy each time.

You can stir five times and take a sip as often as every five minutes, or every 15 minutes, or every half hour, etc., depending on the severity of your ailment. Do this until you feel better and then stop taking any more of the remedy.

The reason for using plastic is that you will be throwing the cup and the spoon away after use, since these utensils will be permeated with the vibration of Arsenicum forever and a day, thus giving anyone who uses them a tiny dose of Arsenicum, possibly leading to some minor short-term symptoms of Arsenicum, but only if the utensil is used by this person frequently.

If you don’t have Arsenicum 200C, you can use the potency 12C or 30C – not lower – possibly needing to repeat the remedy more often, but only repeat if you are not getting any better, or if you got better but it did not last. The plussing technique described above is a very efficient method whatever the potency you have available.

Many chemical elements such as arsenic have been made into effective and non-poisonous homeopathic remedies by means of the process of homeopathic dilution and dynamization developed by the brilliant German doctor Samuel Hahnemann, who originated homeopathy about two centuries ago – of which more later.