# Madder (Rubia tinctorum)

**Rubia**

**Known today as.** *Rubia tinctorum*. A scrambling perennial grown since antiquity for the red dye in its root.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: The anthranoid purgatives (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/anthranoid)

## What was it used for?

The chief red dye of the ancient and medieval world; the older pharmacopoeias also list it as a minor diuretic.

## What does modern science say?

A historic textile dye with no established medicinal action.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **alizarin**: the red, as the glycoside ruberythric acid
- **purpurin**: 
- **lucidin**: a genotoxic anthraquinone
- **rubiadin**: 

**Mechanism.** The anthraquinones are mildly laxative and diuretic and are excreted in the urine, which they turn red, and in growing bone, which they stain, the basis of the bone-growth marking that made madder a tool of anatomy. Lucidin and its primeveroside form DNA adducts, and madder root caused kidney and liver tumours in rats.

**Dose.** Any internal use is unwise; a Belgian trial for kidney stones ended with the ban.

**Standing.** Withdrawn as a medicine in Germany in 1993 after the rodent carcinogenicity; a dye only.

## What lore surrounds it?

Cotton dyed with madder survives from Mohenjo-daro in the third millennium BC, and Charlemagne’s *Capitulare de villis* orders it grown on the royal estates beside houseleek and lovage; Dioscorides and Pliny both describe it. The elaborate Turkey red process, with sumac, oak galls, calf’s blood, sheep’s dung, oil, soda, alum, and tin, carried madder dyeing from India through Turkey to France by 1747 and to Manchester by 1784, and the red coats of British infantry were dyed with madder, officers’ finer coats sometimes with costlier cochineal.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Madder is one of two plants “but little known to any but the herd of the sordid and avaricious, and this because of the large profits that are derived from them”; its use “is necessary in dyeing wool and leather,” the Italian kind being most esteemed, “and that more particularly which is grown in the suburbs of the City.” In the medical books the rubia is a diuretic, “employed with hydromel, it is curative of jaundice,” heals lichens with vinegar, and furnishes a potion for sciatica and paralysis. Pliny adds, with some distance, that “some writers” hold the shrub “curative of jaundice, even if worn as an amulet only, and looked at every now and then.”

**Culpeper.** An herb of Mars, opening first and then binding: “a sure remedy for the yellow jaundice” by opening the liver and gall; it diminishes the melancholy humour, is much used in vulnerary drinks for bruises, and the leaves and roots applied cleanse freckles and morphew from the skin.

## Sources

- Wikipedia, “*Rubia tinctorum*.”
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 19.17; 24.56, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Culpeper, N. (1653). *The Complete Herbal*, “Madder.” Project Gutenberg #49513.
- Westendorf, J., et al. (1998). “Carcinogenicity and DNA adduct formation observed in ACI rats after long-term treatment with madder root, *Rubia tinctorum* L.” *Carcinogenesis* 19.
- Blömeke, B., et al. (1992). “Formation of genotoxic metabolites from anthraquinone glycosides present in *Rubia tinctorum*.” *Mutation Research* 265.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.