# Basil (Ocimum basilicum)

**Ocimo**

**Known today as.** *Ocimum basilicum*.

Kind: Plant

## What did Canale use it for?

Seed in the electuary and the pills (ch. 6).

## What does modern science say?

Aromatic.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **linalool**: 
- **estragole**: methyl chavicol, up to 80 per cent in some chemotypes
- **eugenol**: 
- **rosmarinic acid**: 

**Mechanism.** The oil is carminative and antimicrobial; estragole is genotoxic and carcinogenic in rodents, which is why the European authorities limit the oil but not the herb. Basil seed swells in water into a mucilage that is a bulk laxative, which is the seed of Canale’s electuary.

**Dose.** The herb is safe as food; the oil is restricted on account of estragole, and a 2001 European opinion found it genotoxic with no safe level.

**Standing.** No monograph for the herb; the seed is used in South Asia as a cooling drink and bulk laxative.

## What lore surrounds it?

The name comes from the Greek *basilikon*, “royal,” and legend credits Alexander the Great with bringing the plant to Greece. A Greek Orthodox tradition holds that St. Helena found the True Cross by following basil growing at the site, so that the plant is treated as holy and still used to sprinkle holy water. In Hinduism, holy basil, tulsi, is the goddess Tulasi, wife of Krishna. French tradition gave it the opposite valence, holding that basil must be cursed as it is sown or it will not grow, whence *semer le basilic*, “to rant.” In Italian courtship a young woman set a pot of basil on her windowsill, and a suitor who came with a sprig of his own was assured of her love: the plant behind Boccaccio’s tale in the *Decameron* and Keats’s “Isabella, or the Pot of Basil.”

## Sources

- Herb Society of America, on basil.
- EMA/HMPC (2021). *Public statement on the use of herbal medicinal products containing estragole*.
- Scientific Committee on Food (2001). *Opinion on estragole*.

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*Basil.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-09-25. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/basil

Historical description, not medical advice.