Black pepper
Piper; Sanskrit pippali
- Known today as
- The dried fruit of Piper nigrum.
- Kind
- Plant, in 4 older authorities
- Constituents
- piperine
- Earliest authority here
- Zosimus (fl. c. AD 300)
- Qualities
- Hot and dry in the fourth degree (Galenic tradition). What the degrees mean
- In other databases
- Plants of the World Online search · GBIF search · Wikidata search
Revised October 1, 2026: Tradition, lore, modern assessment, and sources extended. Version 1, first published September 25, 2026.
Black pepper: what was it used for?
The hottest of the common spices: for chills, agues, and a cold stomach, and in theriac and the warming powders.
Black pepper: what does modern science say?
Piperine is a mild stimulant of digestion and increases the absorption of some other substances. Piperine stirs the secretions of the stomach and warms by acting on the same nerve receptors as chilli; it also slows the liver’s clearance of other drugs, which is why pepper is put into turmeric capsules and why it can raise the blood levels of some medicines.
Pharmacognosy & Toxicology
- Constituents
- Mechanism
- Piperine activates TRPV1, the chilli receptor, and inhibits the liver’s drug-metabolising enzymes and transporters.
- Checked against ChEMBL
- piperine: Measured, as the entry says (“activates TRPV1”): Transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 1 (human), EC50 3.2 µM, CHEMBL1158557.
- piperine: No measurement in ChEMBL for “inhibits the liver's drug-metabolising enzymes and transporters” (the only CYP3A4 record is a screen for activators, read as inactive); the line rests on its references.
- Toxic dose
- No toxicity in food; piperine raises the blood levels of several drugs.
- Standing
- A food.
- Srinivasan, K. (2007). “Black pepper and its pungent principle, piperine.” Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 47. Verified against its record · doi:10.1080/10408390601062054
The abstract of each source, beneath its citation. For Club members. About the Club or sign in.
Constituent names open the compound’s record at PubChem, and “ChEMBL” beside a name opens its record at ChEMBL, the European Bioinformatics Institute’s database of bioactive molecules. Where a mechanism line was checked against ChEMBL (ChEMBL 37, read 1 October 2026), the check is shown with the measured value and its source paper, or says plainly that nothing has been measured. Doses are as the references give them, for description only; this is not medical advice. Each source carries the result of its check against Crossref, PubMed, or the authority’s page: see Verification.
Black pepper: what lore surrounds it?
Peppercorns were money: a “peppercorn rent” was once a real payment.
The Pepperers’ Guild of London, recorded in 1180, became the Grocers’ Company; Venice held the trade until Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape in 1498 and answered the Arabs of Calicut that he had come for “Christians and spices.” Dowries were paid in pepper, and a peppercorn rent is a lawful rent to this day.
Used in These Compounds
Black pepper is an ingredient of 1 compound medicine in the database. For Club members. Create a free account or sign in.
Black pepper: what did the older authorities say?
- Zosimus
- Records that Alaric the Goth demanded three thousand pounds of pepper, among his ransom, to spare Rome in 408.
- The embalmers of Ramesses II
- Put peppercorns into the nostrils of the Pharaoh in 1213 BC, the oldest pepper in the West, carried from India some three thousand miles.
- Pliny
- Marvels that a thing with nothing to recommend it but its pungency should be fetched from India, and that the spice trade drained the empire of fifty million sesterces a year; long pepper sold at fifteen denarii a pound in Rome, and black at four.
- The Periplus
- The Greek sailing guide of the first century names Muziris on the Malabar coast as the port where the pepper was loaded for Egypt, and Roman coins by the thousand have been dug up there.
Sources
- Zosimus, New History V. Book, seen in reviews
- Pliny, Natural History XII. Primary text
- Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Book, seen in reviews
Verification
- Checked
- October 1, 2026
- Passes
- Every sentence read against its sources, in the fifty-entry sample
- The Standing line checked against the authority it names (EMA, WHO, FDA, CITES, Commission E)
- Every dated or regulatory claim checked by category across the database
- The mechanism read against ChEMBL (ChEMBL 37): curated mechanisms and measured activity
- Sources
- 4 cited: 1 verified against its record, 1 primary text, 2 book, seen in reviews. 1 with the abstract on file.
- Corrections
- Pliny's fifteen denarii was long pepper; black was four.
What was checked, how, and what was found is set out on the Verification page. A checked source is one whose record was found; it does not make the entry medical advice.
Cite This Entry
Version 1 · first published September 25, 2026 · last revised October 1, 2026
- Chicago
“Black pepper.” In Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1. The Thinking Press, 2026–. Last modified October 1, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/black-pepper.
- MLA
“Black pepper.” Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema, version 1, The Thinking Press, 1 Oct. 2026, thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/black-pepper. Accessed 8 Oct. 2026.
- APA
Black pepper. (2026, October 1). In B. C. P. Statema (Ed.), Materia medica (Version 1). The Thinking Press. Retrieved October 8, 2026, from https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/black-pepper
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See Also
Sharing piperine
Also in Pliny the Elder
Bladderwrack in Pliny the Elder · Bitter aloes in Pliny the Elder · Bloodstone in Pliny the Elder · Ben-nut in Pliny the Elder · everything Pliny the Elder names →
Drawing on the same sources: Pliny, Srinivasan
Of the same qualities: hot and dry
Cardamom · Black hellebore · Cinnamon · Coffee · Betony · what the degrees mean →
Nearby in the alphabet
Black walnut · Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) · Bistort (snakeweed) · Blessed ashes (blessed on Ash Wednesday) · Birch polypore (A white bracket of dead birch)
Historical description, not medical advice.