# Dittany (Origanum dictamnus)

**Dittamo**

**Known today as.** Dittany of Crete, *Origanum dictamnus*, famous in antiquity for drawing out arrows.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Phytophotodermatitis (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/phototoxic)

## What did Canale use it for?

In the bath for cold complexions (ch. 7).

## What does modern science say?

Aromatic, like oregano, with some antiseptic action.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **carvacrol**: in dittany of Crete, *Origanum dictamnus*
- **dictamnine**: a furoquinoline alkaloid of white dittany, *Dictamnus albus*
- **bergapten and xanthotoxin**: furanocoumarins of white dittany

**Mechanism.** Two plants share the name. Dittany of Crete is an oregano, antimicrobial by its carvacrol; white dittany, the burning bush, is one of the most phototoxic plants of Europe, its furanocoumarins and dictamnine giving blistering burns in sunlight, and dictamnine is mutagenic in the laboratory.

**Dose.** Cretan dittany is safe as tea; white dittany should not touch skin that will see the sun.

**Standing.** Dittany of Crete has an EMA monograph (2013) for coughs and mild digestive complaints; white dittany has none.

## What lore surrounds it?

“The ancients consecrated the Dittany of Crete (Origanum Dictamnus) to the goddess Lucina, who presided over the birth of children; and she was often represented wearing a crown of this Dittany.” Folkard gives Gerarde's report “that the wilde goats or deere in Candy, when they be wounded with arrowes, do shake them out by eating of this plant, and heal their wounds,” Virgil's Venus healing Æneas with it, and Plutarch's Cretan women who, seeing the goats, “learnt to make use of the plant to aid them in childbirth.” The juice by its mere smell “drives away venomous beasts, and doth astonish them.” He warns that the Cretan dittany “is not to be confounded with the Dittany, Dittander, or Pepper-wort of the English Herbals.”

Thiselton-Dyer writes that the juice of dittany “drives away venomous beasts, and doth astonish them,” that its virtues “were famous as far back as Plutarch's time,” and that Gerarde “speaks of its marvellous efficacy in drawing forth splinters of wood, &c., and in the healing of wounds, especially those ‘made with envenomed weapons, arrows shot out of guns, and such like.’”

## What did the older authorities say?

**Aristotle.** Reports that wild goats of Crete, wounded by arrows, seek out dittany to drive the shafts from their bodies.

**Virgil.** In the *Aeneid*, Venus steeps Cretan dittany in the water that heals Aeneas, and the arrowhead falls from the wound.

## Sources

- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Dittany.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1889). *The Folk-lore of Plants*. Project Gutenberg #10118.
- EMA/HMPC (2013). *Community herbal monograph on Origanum dictamnus L., herba* (EMA/HMPC/200429/2012).
- Schempp, C. M., et al. (1996). “Dermatitis bullosa striata pratensis durch *Dictamnus albus* L.” *Hautarzt* 47.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.