# Aniseed (Pimpinella anisum)

**Anisi**

**Known today as.** *Pimpinella anisum*.

Kind: Plant  
Qualities: Hot and dry (Galenic tradition).

## What did Canale use it for?

Added to purges and hellebore infusions (chs. 2, 4–6).

## What does modern science say?

Anise is still accepted as a traditional remedy for wind and bloating, which is exactly why it was added to harsh purgatives.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **trans-anethole**: 80–95 per cent of the oil
- **estragole**: a minor component, genotoxic in rodents
- **anisaldehyde**: 

**Mechanism.** Anethole relaxes gut smooth muscle and is mildly expectorant and antimicrobial; the oil has oestrogenic activity in animals, through anethole’s polymers.

**Dose.** The oil at 1–5 ml has caused vomiting, seizures, and pulmonary oedema; the seed is safe in food and tea amounts; estragole limits the oil in children.

**Standing.** EMA monographs (2014) for the fruit and the oil for dyspepsia, wind, and as an expectorant; the oil is not for children under twelve.

## What lore surrounds it?

Anise has been cultivated in Egypt for some four thousand years. Pliny recommended it to aid sleep and, mixed with wine, against the bite of the asp. In a modern afterlife, British steam-locomotive builders of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries packed capsules of aniseed oil into white-metal bearings, so that the smell, released when a capsule burst in the heat, would warn engineers of overheating before the bearing failed.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Counts anise among the garden plants of which “there is but a single kind, these plants being the same everywhere, and no better in one place than in another”; it comes up on the fourth day after sowing, and its seed, like that of parsley, coriander, fennel, and cumin, “has no covering at all.”

## Sources

- Hortus Medicus, on anise.
- Crystal Vaults, on anise.
- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Anise.” As published on botanical.com.
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 19.35–37, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- EMA/HMPC (2014). *Community herbal monograph on Pimpinella anisum L., fructus* (EMA/HMPC/321184/2012).
- Shojaii, A., and Abdollahi Fard, M. (2012). “Review of pharmacological properties and chemical constituents of *Pimpinella anisum*.” *ISRN Pharmaceutics*.

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*Aniseed.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/aniseed

Historical description, not medical advice.