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 Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 3:00 pm Post subject: Garlic As Medicine |
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Garlic--The Pungent Panacea
Christopher Hobbs L.Ac., A.H.G.
It is hard to imagine a food that is in more common use throughout the
world than garlic. But if garlic is widely accepted and used as a
condiment and food, it is not less so, at least today, as a drug.
Thus, garlic is one of the best examples of which one can conceive, of
that category of food-drugs which Hippocrates explained to us over
2300 years ago, saying "let your food be your medicine," and vice
versa. What he was talking about was prevention--something that may be
of value in today>s world, where our health is under assault from many
unseen forces. To optimize our ability to fight infections and adapt
to rapidly-changing environmental conditions, such as the
proliferation of potentially toxic compounds in our air, food, and
water, and the weakening of the ozone layer, certain foods that can
help our body adapt to non-specific stress may be the medicines of the
future. These special foods have been defined by the famous Russian
doctor and researcher, I.I. Brekhman and his teacher Lazarov, as
"adaptogens," of which garlic is a prime example.
Although known to the Ancients and probably cultivated and used as
food and medicine by them, it is likely that the uses of garlic are
far more ancient yet.
Today, there is rapidly increasing world-wide interest in garlic, and
the number of scientific studies performed every year is increasing
exponentially. These studies have supported the idea that the regular
consumption of garlic can reduce blood pressure, blood cholesterol
levels, act as an inhibitor to the overgrowth of pathogenic organisms
in the body, such as Candida albicans, be useful as a worm medicine,
and have a number of other beneficial effects.
Today, a history of safe use for any herb is considered essential for
its acceptance by government regulatory agencies (such as the Food and
Drug Administration) as a food or "traditional medicine" recognized as
safe for trade. The evidence on garlic is abundant--and it is worth
noting that Dioscorides was ahead of his time when he said of garlic
so many centuries ago in his Materia Medica that "it doth clear the
arteries" (by way of a Renaissance English translation, of course).
Pharmaceutical preparations of garlic are manufactured throughout
Europe, some of them standardized to allicin, one of its proven active
constituents. In the U.S., garlic products are extremely popular and
are widely sold in natural food stores, supermarkets, and pharmacies.
Sales are reported as being brisk, with no end in sight, especially
given that heart disease and stroke are still the number one and two
killers.
In this article, we will explore the origins, as well as some of the
ancient beliefs and uses of this "pungent panacea," known in English
as garlic, and for countless centuries in Latin as Allium.
In reviewing the literature on this single popular herb, it is
interesting to note the changes that were taking place in the
discrimination of the usefulness of its medical qualities. The
Egyptians, Greeks and Romans were much more likely to idealize its
effects, paying little attention to where it was appropriate and where
it was not, based on individual constitutions. This changed over the
centuries, through the 18th century, where its medical uses, at least,
were much more circumscribed.
Botany
Garlic is a member of the lily family, Liliaceae. It is a relative of
the onion and leek, and other related species containing the aromatic
sulfur-based compounds which contribute to the characteristic odor and
taste, as well as garlic>s beneficial healing effects. Although the
traditional garlic, Allium sativum L., is from the old world, the new
world has its share of aromatic, sharp-tasting wild onions and garlic-
like plants. I remember many times, while camping in the high Sierra,
harvesting the bulbs of various species of these two plants and adding
them to trail stews and soups.
The Names
Linneaus described Allium sativum in the first edition of Species
Plantarum (1753). He carried on the name from Bauhin, who published it
in his Theatri botanici, 1623. The name can be seen further back, in
Dodoens, whose first English edition of his Herbal, translated by
Lyte, dates from 1578, and in Turner, who wrote the second English
herbal in 1551 (after Bankes, 1525), calling garlic Allium sylvestre.
But the name Allium is by far more ancient than this. The Greeks
called it scorodon or skorothon and the Romans, notably Plautus,
Varro, Horace, Homer, Herodotus, Aristophanes, Theophrastus and
Dioscorides, allioum or Allium.
Origins
DeCandolle in his Origin of Cultivated Plants concluded that garlic
was indigenous to Europe and Western Asia and that people "cultivated
such form of the species just as they found it from Tartary to Spain,
giving it names more or less different." He bases this partly on the
fact that it does not occur in herbariums or floras of Sicily, Italy,
Greece, France, Spain, Algeria, Egypt, China, or Japan as a wild
plant. Examining the philology, one notices that the names are diverse
and often a derivative connection cannot be seen from one region to
another. One exception is the English name garlick, which may have
come from the Welsh garlleg. Though another explanation for the name
is that it derives from gar-leek, signifying its similarity to its
relative, the ancient leek, or from the Anglo-Saxon gar-leac, meaning
"spear-plant," a reference to its sharp, lance-shaped leaves and spear-
like unopened flowering head.
According to DeCandole, the only land where garlic was shown with any
certainty to be actually observed in its wild state is in the desert
of the Kirghis of Sungari (Manchuria).
Pickering, whose monumental work, Chronological History of Plants,
documents our historical connection with plants through the ages,
agrees with De Candolle, saying that garlic is "of the plains of
Western Tartary."
History of Use
Because garlic has so many name variations in such diverse cultures,
it is certain that the plant has been under cultivation for a long
time.
Garlic is also one of the few herbs that was and still is used in all
3 great healing systems of the world--Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese
Medicine, and Traditional European Medicine. If one reviews the many
uses ascribed to garlic in all of these healing systems, as well as
the popular uses by the people of their respective cultures, one sees
remarkable similarities. For instance, it was considered a protective
plant against evil influences among the Hindus, Scandinavians, Greeks
and Germans, among others. To this day it is bought on the eve of
Saint John>s day in some European countries as a guarantee of
financial success during the rest of the year.
Traditional European Medicine
In Traditional European Medicine, garlic was an important food and
medicine of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, and Egyptians.
It was popular with the ancient Egyptians, according to Herodotus, and
has been found in Egyptian burial sites, even in the tomb of
Tutankhamen. It has even been said that the Egyptians considered it a
"God" (Soyer).
Though archeological evidence of garlic>s use is scant, it is known
that the plant was considered "unclean" by the priests and so may not
have been used commonly in burial rituals. Then, as today, garlic may
not have been as accepted as an "official" drug but was widely used by
the common people.
In Coptic medicine garlic macerated in oil was prescribed for skin
diseases and to be taken after birth, as it was thought to stimulate
milk production.
The Assyrians mentioned garlic as a food and medicine many times. They
used it as an antibiotic, to fill rotten teeth,
The Greeks gave garlic a mixed review. Soyer said that they "held it
in horror," but that it was generally eaten by warriors to excite
their courage and lust for the battle, and by sailors, who would
always have a good store of it on hand for sea voyages. However, much
of the surviving writings of the Greeks and Romans suggest that garlic
was used in pharmaceutical preparations more than almost any other
herb or food. Pliny was particularly effusive in singing its praises.
In the Hippocratic school, garlic was recommended to be used as a
fumigant for aiding in the release of the placenta. For running sores,
they applied a mixture of the ashes of garlic and oil. For asthma, the
cooked form was used more often than the raw.
Theophrastus has little to say about the healing properties of garlic
but does mention that it was eaten and followed with a "draught of
neat wine" by root diggers when they were gathering hellebore, because
otherwise the poisonous properties of the hellebore would soon makes
the "head heavy."
Pliny, that perennial optimist, or uncritical quoter of quacks,
depending on how one wants to view him, has much that is good to say
about garlic. In fact, his accounts of it would be much more readable
were he to say what garlic was not good for. "Garlic has powerful
properties," he emphasizes, writing of how it was esteemed by some,
stating that people swear by it as one would to the deities when
taking an oath. He reminds us again that it is with the country people
that garlic finds its most frequent use, saying, "Garlic is believed
to be serviceable for making a number of medicaments, especially those
used in the country," perhaps not the least of which was, because of
its pungent smell, for warding off scorpions, serpents and perhaps (as
some said) "every kind of beast."
Pliny also gives us detailed information about the cultivation,
storage, and uses of garlic. Even in those days, a main objection to
the use of the plant was the lingering smell one had after its use.
The chewing of parsley was not mentioned as an antidote as is
recommended today, but he does recommend planting garlic "when the
moon is below the horizon" and gathering it "when it is in
conjunction," which would "prevent them from having an objectionable
smell." Others thought that the best time for planting was between the
Feast of the Crossways and the Feast of Saturn (May 2 to December
17).
Table 1 Pliny>s Uses of Garlic
Keeps off serpents, but after they have bitten, the cloves and leaves
are roasted and added to oil to be applied as a liniment
Repels scorpions and other beasts
Good for shrew bites and dog bites (as an ointment with honey)
Effective for healing hemorrhoids "when taken with wine and brought up
by vomiting"
Neutralizes the poisonous qualities of aconite and henbane
Excellent for bruises, even after they have swollen into blisters
Useful taken with vinegar for relieving tooth-ache
Garlic mixed with goose-grease is placed into the ears
Relieves hoarseness, checks phthiriasis and scurf if taken boiled with
milk or beaten up with soft cheese
Cooked in oxymel (vinegar and honey) it removes tape-worms and other
parasites in the intestines
Mixed with fat, it cures suspected tumors
Epilepsy may be cured when garlic is taken in food
Garlic brings sleep
It improves circulation, making the body of a "ruddier color."
Garlic acts as an aphrodisiac when taken in wine with coriander
Pliny also quotes the uses of garlic by other physicians. He says that
Diocles recommended putting a clove of garlic in a split fig, to be
taken as a purge, or well-boiled for phrenitis (a form of madness);
Praxagoras blended garlic with wine for jaundice, and with oil and
pottage for "iliac passion (severe colic) or scrofula.
In the Materia Medica of Dioscorides (1st century A.D.), so widely
quoted by future herbalists and physicians alike, Allium sativum is
referred to as Skorodon, but several other wild species are also
mentioned as being more active. All of the uses of garlic quoted seem
to refer to the wild species. Dioscorides warns that they (the various
species of garlic) expel flatulence, but disturb the belly and dry the
stomach, causing thirst, puffing up, and producing boils on the skin,
and dulling the eyesight. The healing qualities of garlic are also
clearly enumerated. As previously mentioned, Dioscorides foreshadowed
the popular, scientifically-supported use of garlic for cardiovascular
ailments by saying that it "clears the arteries and open[s] the mouths
of the veins. Also mentioned is garlic>s long-standing use as an
anthelmintic, as a protectant from bites of venomous beasts (dogs and
vipers), for the removal of sputum and relief of coughs, for healing
running ulcers, leprosy, tooth pains, and as a stimulant to the
menstrual flow.
Galen said that garlic was referred to as Theriaca Rusticorum, or the
husbandman>s treacle, which showed its popularity as a medicine for
poisonous bites. He also mentions that boiling the bulbs causes it to
lose its sharpness and "retaineth no longer his evill juyce."
The ambivalent attitude about the benefits of garlic continued through
the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In 1368, for instance, King Alphonso
of Castile had an extreme repugnance to garlic and made it a statute
of knighthood that if a knight were to eat it, he would not be allowed
to appear before the sovereign for at least a month.
When considering how the popularity of garlic as a medicine rose or
fell over the centuries after Galen, the Persian literature of the
middle ages stands out as a rich source of information on pharmacy and
medicine, but it is often misleading, for much of what has been
translated into English or other European languages draws heavily from
Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen, among others. For instance, in both the
Materia Medica of Al-Samarqandi and that of Al-Kindi, one reads uses
quoted from Dioscorides, and little that is new except a small quote
from Al-Kindi (a Persian physician) who recommended garlic for "pain
due to ear inflammation, and for its suppuration, pulsation and its
fistulas."
The Renaissance herbalists were somewhat less enthusiastic and more
discriminating than the Greeks about the virtues of garlic and
accepted that a food or medicine as hot and drying as garlic is
suitable for some people and not others, depending on their underlying
constitution (hot, dry, cold, or moist, etc.). For instance, Gerard
says that garlic "yeeldeth to the body no nourishment at all, it
ingendreth naughty and sharpe bloud. Therefore such as are of a hot
complexion must especially abstaine from it."
Gerard and Johnson (1633) says that garlic is "very sharpe, hot, and
dry, as Galen saith, in the fourth degree, and exulcerateth the skinne
by raising blisters." In England, where it would be a major problem,
due to the cold, damp climate, garlic was recommended in cold phlegm
conditions. According to Gerard again, garlic "attenuateth and maketh
thinne thicke and grosse humors; cutteth such as are tough and clammy,
digesteth and consumeth them." As a protectant, it was praised for the
"bitings of venomous beasts, even in so seemingly innocuous or
uncommon as the "bitings of the Mouse called in English, a Shrew."
In Renaissance England, plagues were a common part of life. Garlic was
among the most revered medicines for protecting one against any kind
of pestilence as a "preservative against the "contagious and pestilent
aire," as Gerard tells us.
Another Renaissance herbalist, Culpeper, in his famous translation and
commentary on the Pharmacopeia Londenensis (1650), merely quotes
Dioscorides verbatum.
In 18th Century England, garlic could be found in various
pharmaceutical preparations. It was often mascerated in wine, vinegar,
oil, or honey, all of which extracted, to some extent, its acrid
properties for internal or external use. The excellent Dr. William
Lewis (1791), says that "vinegar and honey excellently coincide with
and improve this medicine, as a detergent and deobstruent, in
disorders of the breast."
In fact, herbalists today often make preparations of garlic for
coughs, colds, and other chest complaints by macerating garlic in
these media.
Lewis, in his Materia Medica (1791) reports, that some writers and
doctors praise it, but some condemn it "not only as an offensive, but
as a noxious drug." Lewis explains that the reason for the mixed
reviews garlic had received was due to constitutional differences. He
says of it that:
"To warm and stimulate the solids, attenuate thick humours, and resist
putrefaction, seem to be its primary virtues. Hence, in hot bilious
constitutions, where there is already a degree of irritation, where
the juices are thin and acrimonious, or the viscera or intestines
unsound, it is apparently improper, and seldom fails to produce head-
aches, flatulencies, thirst, febrile heats, and inflammatory symptoms
in various shapes. In cold sluggish phlegmatic habits, on the other
hand, it proves a salutary and powerful corroborant, expectorant,
diuretic, and, if the patient is kept warm, sudorific."
Lewis goes on to recommend its uses for loss of appetite, and humoral
asthmas, as well as dropsy, especially in the beginning, when it can
prevent a "new accumulation of water after evacuation." This latter
use is supported by Sydenham who claims to have seen dropsies "cured
by the use of garlic alone."
As an application to the soles of the feet, it was used in the "low
stage of acute distempers" by stimulating the cardiovascular system to
relieve the head.
The influential Dr. Cullen adds that when used externally, garlic is
"not so apt to ulcerate the part as mustard, more capable of being
absorbed, and extending its action to remote parts."
Another authoritative work of late 18th century England is the Medical
Botany of William Woodville, M.D., who was a member of the Royal
College of Physicians. Woodville strongly delineates the uses and
contraindications of garlic for people with different constitutions.
He emphasizes that although it "stimulates the stomach and favors
digestion," its effects are pervasive throughout the body and thus is
more useful as a condiment with the food of "phlegmatic people." This
is a reference to people who are apt to accumulate mucus in their
systems, and being more cold than hot. He summarizes the current
medical uses of garlic as: expectorant in asthmas and other pulmonary
complaints (without inflammation), as a diuretic in dropsies, to
remove worms, as an external application to remove tumors, and as an
ear remedy (for which it is still recommended today by herbalists).
Woodville mentions that garlic is used in a variety of ways, including
swallowing the clove whole (after it is dipped in oil), or after
cutting it into pieces, and in pills after it is "beaten up." Although
a syrup and oxymel of garlic had been official in the British
Pharmacopeia, by the time Woodville>s work was written (1790), it had
been removed.
In the U.S., the Eclectic doctors, a medical school based on the use
of predominantly herbal remedies, practiced roughly from the 1880s to
the 1930s. One of the most respected practitioners among the Eclectics
was John King, who said of garlic in his American Dispensatory (1877)
that it acts as a tonic to the stomach and is useful for coughs,
cattarrhs, whooping-cough, hoarseness, and worms. He mentions that
preparations were made by mixing the juice of garlic with sweet oil of
almonds and glycerin, which was dropped into the ears for atonic
deafness. He also recommended its use in children>s diseases, and as a
"resolvant in indolent tumors." He gives the dose of fresh garlic as
from one-half drachm to two drachms, and of the juice, half a drachm
(about 2 ml). King warns that if garlic is used too freely, or when
one>s system is already in a state of excitement, that it might cause
"flatulence, gastric irritation, hemorrhoids, headache and fever."
Finally, the U.S. Dispensatory, 21st edition (1926) says that the use
of garlic was, at the present time, "limited chiefly to pulmonary
complaints, such as chronic bronchitis, asthma and sometimes whooping-
cough." The most popular preparations were said to be the syrup, made
from fresh garlic, recognized by the National Formulary, which is
given in the dose of 1-2 teaspoonfuls (4-8 ml). Garlic was official in
the U.S. Pharmacopeia (1820-1890) and the NF (1916-1926).
Ayurveda
Garlic was known as mahoushudha in Sanscrit. The plant is well-known
as a food and medicine of the Hindus and is called rasona in the Raja
Nirghanta. Other Hindi names are suggestive of its many uses, such as
Ugra-gandha "strong-smelling," mahanshadha "panacea," bhuta-ghna
"destroying demons," and so forth.
Dymock, in his classic Pharmacographia Indica (1890), mentions that
the Hindus consider garlic to be "tonic, hot, digestive, aperient,
cholagogue and alterative." As in European practice, the bulbs were
macerated with honey or other sweeteners, or crushed into foods to
help relieve coughs and mucus conditions, fevers, swellings,
gonorrhea, colic, rheumatism, and worms. In India, spicy herbs are
often boiled in milk, not only to render the milk more assimilable,
because of their ability to stimulate digestion, but as a way to
mitigate their harshness. Garlic was commonly boiled in milk and taken
in small doses for such diverse conditions as hysteria, flatulence,
sciatica, and heart disease. The ancient Sanskrit name, mahanshadha,
which means panacea, is truly justified, if one accepts its efficacy
in all these conditions.
Traditional Chinese Medicine
Garlic, or Suan, was known to the ancient Chinese people from before
written records. It was first mentioned in the Calendar of the Hsia,
which was written two thousand years before the time of Christ.
Probably the most famous historic medical figure in China is the
Yellow Emperor, who was said to set forth the principals by which
Traditional Chinese Medicine is practiced, as well as rules for
maintaining health by being in harmony with the ways of nature. A
legend is told about the beginning of use and cultivation of garlic,
which was written in the Erh-ya. It is told in this legend that the
Yellow Emperor, Huang-ti, and some of his followers were poisoned by
eating an aroid plant called yu-y¸, but after eating the garlic they
found growing on the spot, their lives were saved.
The Pentsao, the most famous materia medica of TCM, says that the
consumption of garlic is forbidden to the Buddhist priests and to
people who are fasting. The therapeutic uses of garlic, as in other
cultures, were numerous but considered to have a special influence on
the TCM organs, spleen (which transforms and assimilates food and has
to do with metabolism and energy production); and the kidney, which
stores vital energy and sends it out to other organs and tissues; and
the stomach, which ripens and rots food to get it ready for the
spleen. It was also thought to remove poisons from the body, correct
the unwholesomeness of water, and to eliminate the noxious effects of
putrid meat and fish and to keep plagues away. It can be noted that
most of these uses are similar to ones found in TEM and Ayurveda.
As we have seen, the popularity of garlic has not waned over the
centuries. In fact, we are currently undergoing an increased awareness
and appreciation of this ancient "pungent panacea."
References
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London: Humphrey Milford.
De Candolle, A. 1885. Origin of Cultivated Plants. New York: D.
Appleton & Co.
Dymock, W. 1890. A History of the Principal Drugs of Vegetable Origin,
Met With in British India. Kegan Paul, Trench, Tr¸bner & Co.: London.
Gerard, J. & Johnson, T. (ed.). 1633. The Herbal or General History of
Plants. Reprinted by Dover Publications, New York (1975).
Gunther, R.T. 1934. The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Jones, W.H.S. 1956. Pliny: Natural History. Cambridge: Harvard
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Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
King, J. 1877. The American Dispensatory, 10th ed. Cincinnati:
Wilstach, Baldwin & Co.
Levey, M. 1966. The Medical Formulary or Aqrabadhin of Al-Kindi.
Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Levey, M. & N. Al-Khaledy. 1967. The Medical Formulary of Al-
Samarqandi. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lewis, W. 1791. An Experimental History of the Materia Medica. London:
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Linnaeus, C. 1753 (1957). Species Plantarum: A Facsimile of the first
edition. London: The Ray Society.
Mannike, L. 1989. An Ancient Egyptian Herbal. Austin: University of
Texas Press.
Park, Davis & Co. 1910. Manual of Therapeutics. Detroit: Park, Davis &
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Parkinson, J. 1640. Theatrum Botanicum: The Theater of Plants. London:
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Pickering, C. 1879. Chronological History of Plants. Boston: Little,
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Shih-Chen, L. 1578. Pen Ts>ao. Translated and researched by F.P. Smith
and G.A. Stuart, published under the title Chinese Medicinal Herbs.
San Francisco: Georgetown Press, 1973.
Soyer, A. [ca. 1853]. Soyer>s Pantropheon. London: Simpkin, Marshall &
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Wood, H.C. & C.H. LaWall. 1926. The Dispensatory of the United States
of America, 21st edition. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co.
Woodville, W. 1790. Medical Botany. London: By the Author.
Formerly published in Pharmacy in History
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