Greek sage

Greek sage: what was it used for?

A tea for digestion and the blood. The assessment report gathers its folk uses: in Madeira for headache and as a blood purifier, in Spain as a stomachic, a tranquilliser, and a wound herb, elsewhere in the Mediterranean as a carminative, and in the Paphos district of Cyprus as a tea after heavy meals and a daily breakfast drink of diabetics.

Greek sage: what does modern science say?

The European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee declined to adopt a monograph on the leaf (public statement of 2016). It recognised the plant’s medicinal use in several member states but found the documented historical information “insufficient to verify the necessary conditions of a long-standing traditional use”: some preparations had been in medicinal use for more than fifteen years but less than thirty. Its assessment report finds rosmarinic acid, carnosic acid and carnosol, flavonoids, and triterpenes in the leaf besides the oil.

Greek sage: what did the older authorities say?

The European Medicines Agency’s assessment report (2016)

Archaeological evidence suggests that the plant, hidden among the ancient authors under the general name elelisphakon, has probably been used medicinally since 1400 BC; mistranslating that word as the garden sage, S. officinalis, may have cost Greek sage its medicinal reputation and given garden sage uses that probably belonged to it.