# Ginger (Zingiber officinale)

**Zingiber**

**Known today as.** The rhizome of *Zingiber officinale*.

Kind: Plant  
Qualities: Hot in the third degree (Galenic tradition).

## What was it used for?

Heating the stomach, helping digestion, and correcting cold purges; candied as “green ginger” for the voyage.

## What does modern science say?

Among the few old remedies with good evidence: it eases nausea, including morning sickness. It was domesticated in island South-East Asia and carried across the Pacific by Austronesian voyagers before it reached India. Its gingerols act on the stomach and the nerves that signal nausea: trials support it for the sickness of pregnancy and after surgery, though not for the nausea of chemotherapy.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **6-gingerol**: 
- **6-shogaol**: formed on drying
- **zingiberene**: the scent

**Mechanism.** Gingerols act at the serotonin 5-HT3 receptors of the gut and the vomiting centre.

**Dose.** No toxicity at culinary doses; a gram a day in the trials.

**Standing.** Approved in Europe as a traditional remedy for motion sickness; supported by trials for the nausea of pregnancy.

## What lore surrounds it?

Gingerbread, first a spiced honey cake, was shaped into men at the court of Elizabeth I by one tradition, and sold at every fair; the Spanish planted ginger in Jamaica early in the sixteenth century, the first Asian spice grown in the New World.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Dioscorides.** Describes *zingiberi* as a root brought from Arabia, warming and good for the stomach.

**Pliny.** Records that ginger was thought in his day to be the root of the pepper plant, and that a pound sold for six denarii.

**The Middle Ages.** Ginger was the commonest of the costly spices, second to pepper; in fourteenth-century England a pound cost as much as a sheep, and it stood in every recipe for the cold stomach.

## Sources

- Dioscorides, *De materia medica*.
- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Ginger.” As published on botanical.com.
- Pliny, *Natural History* XII.
- Viljoen, E., et al. (2014). “A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of ginger on nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.” *Nutrition Journal* 13.
- Viljoen, E., et al. (2014). *Nutrition Journal* 13.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.