# Black pepper (Piper nigrum)

**Piper*; Sanskrit *pippali**

**Known today as.** The dried fruit of *Piper nigrum*.

Kind: Plant  
Qualities: Hot and dry in the fourth degree (Galenic tradition).

## 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.

## 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 and toxicology

- **piperine**: 

**Mechanism.** Piperine activates TRPV1, the chilli receptor, and inhibits the liver’s drug-metabolising enzymes and transporters.

**Dose.** No toxicity in food; piperine raises the blood levels of several drugs.

**Standing.** A food.

## 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.

## 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.
- Pliny, *Natural History* XII.
- *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea*.
- Srinivasan, K. (2007). “Black pepper and its pungent principle, piperine.” *Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition* 47.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.