Fox’s heart
Cuore di volpe
- Known today as
- The dried heart of a fox.
- Kind
- Animal
- Constituents
- myoglobin and muscle protein, nothing specific
- In the Canale glossary
- On the Manner of Discerning and Healing the Bewitched, Appendix A: Part Three, Chapter 10: Amulets
Fox’s heart: what did Canale use it for?
Worn, and burnt through the house, against hexes and unclean spirits (ch. 10).
Fox’s heart: what does modern science say?
No effect. Animal parts as amulets belong to the oldest layer of the tradition, borrowed by Canale from his sources.
Pharmacognosy & Toxicology
- Constituents
- Mechanism
- Worn or burned, a fox’s heart is muscle: there is no substance in it to act, and its place in the house is the logic of the hunter carrying the hunted. The smoke of burning flesh is the one measurable product.
- Toxic dose
- None.
- Standing
- A sympathetic charm.
- Canale, F. (1622). Discerning and Healing the Bewitched, ch. 10. Read in part · the text read
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.
Verification
- Checked
- October 1, 2026
- Passes
- Every sentence read against its sources, in the pass over the remaining 343 entries
- 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
- Sources
- 1 cited: 1 read in part.
- Corrections
- None were needed.
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
- Chicago
“Fox’s heart.” In Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1. The Thinking Press, 2026–. Last modified September 25, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/foxs-heart.
- MLA
“Fox’s heart.” Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema, version 1, The Thinking Press, 25 Sept. 2026, thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/foxs-heart. Accessed 8 Oct. 2026.
- APA
Fox’s heart. (2026, September 25). In B. C. P. Statema (Ed.), Materia medica (Version 1). The Thinking Press. Retrieved October 8, 2026, from https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/foxs-heart
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See Also
Drawing on the same sources: Canale
Honey · Damascus prunes · Honeyed wine and honeyed water · the bibliography →
Nearby in the alphabet
Frankincense (The resin of Boswellia sacra and related trees) · Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) · Friar’s balsam (storax, balsam of tolu, and aloes, in spirit) · Fool’s webcap (A tawny webcap of European woods) · Fu ling (the sclerotium of a fungus that grows on pines) · Foetid pills · Funeral bell (A small brown mushroom of rotting wood) · Fly agaric (white-spotted toadstool of fairy tales, of birch and pine woods)
Historical description, not medical advice.