# Clove *Cloves, the dried flower-buds; *Syzygium aromaticum*; *Eugenia caryophyllata* of Thunberg; *Caryophyllus aromaticus* of Linnaeus; German *Gewürznelke* and *Nägelein*, the little spice-nail; Italian *garofoli*; Chinese *ting-hsiang** **Known today as.** The unopened flower-buds of a pyramidal evergreen tree of the myrtle family, up to twelve metres high, native to the Moluccas and the southern Philippines and now grown chiefly on Zanzibar and Pemba: picked when the calyx reddens, dried to the shape of a small blunt nail, and oily enough to give up their oil under a thumbnail. Kind: Plant Toxic: yes > **Caution.** Oil of cloves swallowed, by a child above all, has caused coma, fits, a clotting disorder, and liver damage; Köhler called the oil a strong irritant. The spice in food and the bud chewed are another matter. ## What was it used for? “The most stimulating and carminative of all aromatics,” Grieve calls it, given in powder or infusion for nausea, flatulence, and languid indigestion, and chiefly to help the action of other medicines; the oil a strong germicide and antiseptic and a feeble local anaesthetic applied to decayed teeth. Köhler’s pharmacopoeia knew the buds mostly as an aromatic ingredient of mixtures, chewed to sweeten the breath, and for toothache, where the oil above all was used. In Canale’s manual the clove goes with nutmeg into the distilled water, the pills, the fumigation, and the oil for the bewitched, as the press’s entry on [nutmeg and clove](https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/nutmeg-and-clove) records. ## What does modern science say? The oil is mostly eugenol, which a 2021 review describes as a phenolic monoterpenoid with anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, analgesic, and antimicrobial properties, declared by the World Health Organization non-mutagenic and generally recognised as safe, and used in pharmacy, dentistry, flavouring, and cosmetics. The old use on the teeth has been tested: in 73 adult volunteers a home-made clove gel and a 20 percent benzocaine gel both lowered the pain of needle sticks in the gum below the placebos, and did not differ from each other. The oil is not harmless swallowed: a child who drank oil of cloves fell into coma with fits, a clotting disorder, and acute liver damage, a picture the authors likened to a paracetamol overdose. ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **eugenol**: the greater part of the clove oil, up to a fifth of the bud’s weight by Köhler; a phenolic monoterpenoid found by Bonastre in 1827 - **caryophyllin**: an odourless crystalline principle found in 1825, which Grieve took for a phytosterol - **tannin**: thirteen parts in a hundred by the old analysis Köhler cites, with gum and resin **Mechanism.** Eugenol, by the 2021 review, has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, analgesic, and antimicrobial actions; on the gum a clove gel numbed a needle stick as well as 20 percent benzocaine. Swallowed in quantity the oil injured the liver and the clotting of a child in a manner the physicians likened to paracetamol poisoning. **Dose.** Fluid extract 5 to 30 drops, oil 1 to 5 drops, infusion half an ounce to an ounce, by Grieve; a home-made clove gel on the gum for five minutes in the dental trial. **Standing.** A spice, a dental anaesthetic with one small trial behind the old use, and a source of eugenol that regulators count safe as a flavouring; the neat oil is a poison in a child’s hands. ## What lore surrounds it? The nail in the name is the bud’s shape: the German *Nägelein* and the English clove, from the French *clou*, both say so, and Köhler traces the German word back through Hildegard’s *Nelchin*. The Portuguese held the spice islands from 1524 and the Dutch drove them out about 1600, monopolised the trade, and rooted out every clove tree not under their protection, planting Amboina instead; even so the French governor of Bourbon got seeds and seedlings away, the tree reached Cayenne in 1793 and Zanzibar about 1800, and in Grieve’s day the island that the Dutch had never ruled sent the world most of its cloves. In the Middle Ages the cut flower-stalks, the clove-wood, were traded too, for a cheap powder that adulterated the true one, and the fallen petals were sold as *capelletti*, little hats. ## What did the older authorities say? **Pliny.** Among the spices of India he names a grain “which bears a considerable resemblance to pepper, but is longer and more brittle; it is known by the name of caryophyllon. It is said that this grain is produced in a sacred grove in India; with us it is imported for its aromatic perfume.” Whether it was the clove the commentators dispute; Köhler thought the description too short to decide. **Köhler’s *Medizinal-Pflanzen*.** The Chinese, it says, chewed cloves as early as 226 bc; a mummy is said to have worn a necklace of them; the first in Europe came, probably through the Arabs, when the emperor Constantine sent Bishop Silvester of Rome a hundred and fifty pounds of cloves among other gifts between 314 and 335. Alexander of Tralles in the sixth century recommended them for the stomach and the gout, Paulus of Aegina in the seventh knew they came from an Indian tree, and the Mediterranean trade carried them for centuries without anyone knowing their origin, until Ludovico de Varthema reached the clove islands in 1504 and Pigafetta, Magellan’s companion, saw the tree there in 1521. The buds hold up to twenty percent of a heavy oil, mostly eugenol, found in it by Bonastre in 1827. **Mrs. M. Grieve.** The spice came to Europe between the fourth and sixth centuries; the finest cloves grow on the Moluccas and Pemba. Good ones are fat, oily, and dark brown, and give out their oil when squeezed with the finger-nail; pale dry ones yield little. The trees “absorb an enormous amount of moisture, and if placed near water their weight is visibly increased after a few hours; dishonest dealers often make use of this knowledge,” and the powdered stems were sold as pure powdered cloves. ## Sources - Pliny the Elder. *The Natural History*, trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley, vol. 3, Book 12, ch. 15, “Caryophyllon, lycion, and the Chironian pyxacanthus.” Project Gutenberg, 59131. - Köhler, F. E., & Pabst, G. (ed.) (1887–98). *Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen*, Bd. 2, “Eugenia caryophyllata Thunberg,” and Tafel 125. Internet Archive, mobot31753002839121. - Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Cloves.” As published on botanical.com. - Nisar, M. F., Khadim, M., Rafiq, M., Chen, J., Yang, Y., & Wan, C. C. (2021). Pharmacological properties and health benefits of eugenol: a comprehensive review. *Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity* 2021: 2497354. doi:10.1155/2021/2497354 - Alqareer, A., Alyahya, A., & Andersson, L. (2006). The effect of clove and benzocaine versus placebo as topical anesthetics. *Journal of Dentistry* 34: 747–750. doi:10.1016/j.jdent.2006.01.009 - Hartnoll, G., Moore, D., & Douek, D. (1993). Near fatal ingestion of oil of cloves. *Archives of Disease in Childhood* 69: 392–393. doi:10.1136/adc.69.3.392 --- *Clove.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-04. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/clove Historical description, not medical advice.