# Fig (Ficus carica)

**Ficus**

**Known today as.** *Ficus carica*.

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

## What was it used for?

Figs ripen boils and soften the chest; in antidotes with rue and walnuts.

## What does modern science say?

A mild laxative food.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **ficin**: a cysteine protease of the latex
- **psoralen and bergapten**: furanocoumarins of the leaf and sap
- **fibre and sugars**: in the fruit

**Mechanism.** The latex’s ficin digests protein, which softens a boil’s head and removes warts; the fruit’s fibre and sorbitol are a mild laxative. The leaf and sap are strongly phototoxic, and fig-leaf burns are a yearly summer injury.

**Dose.** The fruit is a food; the latex blisters the skin, above all in sun.

**Standing.** A food; the dried fruit was in the lenitive electuary of the London Pharmacopoeia; the leaf has no approved use.

## What lore surrounds it?

Folkard gives the fig to Bacchus, “often represented as crowned with Fig-leaves,” whose female votaries at Athens “wore round their necks collars composed of dried Figs,” and to Rome's Ficus ruminalis, the wild fig “upon the roots of which stranded the cradle containing the infants Romulus and Remus.” Yet “the Romans considered the Fig a tree at once impure and ill-omened,” and the Arval priests, when a fig sprang up on the roof of the temple of the goddess Dia, “after they had uprooted the desecrating tree, they destroyed the temple as being defiled.” The soothsayer Calchas lost his contest with Mopsus over the count of a fig-tree's fruit, “ten thousand except one,” and “pined away and died”; “the ancient Egyptians held the Fig-leaf sacred to the goddess Isis.”

Thiselton-Dyer adds that “the Italians, again, affirm that in each leaf of the fig-tree an evil spirit dwells,” and the proverbs: a man of show without practice “is said to be like ‘fig-tree fuel, much smoke and little fire,’” and “Peel a fig for your friend, and a peach for your enemy.”

## What did the older authorities say?

**Isaiah.** The prophet orders a lump of figs laid on King Hezekiah’s boil, and he recovers.

**Pliny.** Figs, walnuts, and rue made the antidote found among Mithridates’ papers (see [Rue](https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/rue)).

## Sources

- Isaiah 38:21.
- Pliny, *Natural History* XXIII.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Fig.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1889). *The Folk-lore of Plants*. Project Gutenberg #10118.
- Bollero, D., et al. (2001). “Fig leaf tanning lotion and sun-related burns: case reports.” *Burns* 27.
- Lansky, E. P., et al. (2008). “*Ficus* spp. (fig): ethnobotany and potential as anticancer and anti-inflammatory agents.” *Journal of Ethnopharmacology* 119.

---

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

Historical description, not medical advice.