# Asarabacca (Asarum europaeum)

**Asaro**

**Known today as.** *Asarum europaeum*, wild ginger of European woods.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Aristolochic acid nephropathy (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/aristolochic)  
Toxic: yes

> **Caution.** 

## What did Canale use it for?

Leaves and root, steeped, as a moderately strong vomit (ch. 5).

## What does modern science say?

A genuine emetic. Like other members of its family it contains compounds related to aristolochic acid, which causes kidney failure and cancer, and regulators treat the genus with caution.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **asarone**: alpha- and beta-, in the oil
- **aristolochic acid I**: in the root, at low levels
- **methyleugenol**: 

**Mechanism.** The oil irritates the stomach and the vagal reflex empties it, which is the vomit Canale used; the sneezing powder works by the same irritation on the nose. Aristolochic acid, present in the European species, is the agent of a kidney scarring and urinary cancers, and asarone and methyleugenol are carcinogens in rodents.

**Dose.** A few grams of the root vomit; the kidney and cancer risks are cumulative and have no safe dose.

**Standing.** Withdrawn from the German snuffs that carried it; the FDA lists *Asarum* among the aristolochic-acid plants to be avoided; no approved use.

## What lore surrounds it?

Its chief fame after antiquity was as a purgative snuff: dried and powdered, it was a standard ingredient of sneezing powders and headache snuffs into the eighteenth century, valued, and later restricted, for how violently it cleared the head.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Says asarum “has the properties of nard, and, indeed, by some persons is known as wild nard,” with a leaf like ivy but rounder and softer, a purple flower, and a seed like a grape, best from Pontus; it is good for the liver, an ounce in honied wine and water, “purges the bowels like hellebore,” and serves for dropsy and jaundice; mixed with must it makes a strongly diuretic wine; it is taken up as the leaves appear and dried in the shade, “apt however to turn mouldy.”

**Culpeper.** Puts it under Mars, “and therefore inimical to nature”: drunk, it provokes vomiting and purges downwards and by urine; the common use is the juice of five or seven leaves in a little drink to cause vomiting, the finer powder provoking vomits and the coarser purging downwards; and the roots, “very effectual against the biting of serpents,” go into mithridate and Venice treacle.

## Sources

- Grieve, M. (1931). A Modern Herbal, “Asarabacca.”
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 12.27, 21.78, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Culpeper, N. (1653). *The Complete Herbal*, “Asarabacca.” Project Gutenberg #49513.
- FDA (2001). *Letter to industry on aristolochic acid*, listing *Asarum* species.
- Schaneberg, B. T., and Khan, I. A. (2004). “Analysis of products suspected of containing *Aristolochia* or *Asarum* species.” *Journal of Ethnopharmacology* 94.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.