# Mint, oil of

**Oglio di menta**

**Known today as.** Oil of garden or spear mint.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Convulsant terpenes (thujone, pinocamphone, camphor) (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/convulsant-terpenes)

## What did Canale use it for?

Rubbed on the stomach after vomiting (ch. 5).

## What does modern science say?

Spearmint is carminative and antispasmodic; peppermint oil, the best studied of the mint oils, relaxes gut muscle.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **menthol**: 30–50 per cent of peppermint oil
- **menthone**: 
- **pulegone**: small in peppermint; the toxin of pennyroyal
- **1,8-cineole**: 

**Mechanism.** Menthol activates the cold receptor TRPM8, which is the cool on the skin and in the stomach; it also opens the irritant channel TRPA1, and blocks calcium channels in gut muscle, which is the antispasmodic action proven in trials of enteric-coated peppermint oil for irritable bowel; on the skin it is a counter-irritant and a mild local anaesthetic.

**Dose.** Safe in capsule doses of 0.2–0.4 ml; the neat oil burns, and menthol near an infant’s nose can stop its breathing by reflex.

**Standing.** EMA monograph (2007, revised 2020) for peppermint oil in irritable bowel syndrome, and for tension headache on the skin; a Cochrane-grade body of trials supports the bowel use.

## What lore surrounds it?

Of the mint Folkard gives Ovid's nymph Minthe, beloved of Pluto, whom Proserpine “transformed his mistress into the herb which is called by her name.” It was Herba bona and Herba sancta, woven into brides' garlands as the corona Veneris, later “dedicated to the Virgin, under the name of Herba Sanctæ Mariæ,” and strewn in churches. Among the women of the Abruzzi, a mint plant met on a walk is bruised between the fingers “in order to ensure that, on the day of their death, Jesus Christ will assist them,” and in Holstein mint is carried at peasant funerals. Pliny held that “the smell of Mint doth stir up the minde and taste to a greedy desire of meat.”

Grieve has Pliny's Greeks and Romans who “crowned themselves with Peppermint at their feasts and adorned their tables with its sprays,” and notes that peppermint “only came into general use in the medicine of Western Europe about the middle of the eighteenth century,” the oldest district being Mitcham in Surrey, where cultivation “dates from about 1750.” The round-leaved Egyptian mint “is frequently found on the ruins of monasteries, the monks having used it for the languor following epileptic fits, as it was considered refreshing to the brain,” and spearmint's names include Our Lady's Mint and Sage of Bethlehem.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Matthew 23:23.** Among the herbs tithed by the Pharisees.

## Sources

- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Mint.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Mints.” botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/m/mints-39.html
- EMA/HMPC (2007; revised 2020). *Community herbal monograph on Mentha x piperita L., aetheroleum* (EMEA/HMPC/349466/2006; Revision 1, EMA/HMPC/522410/2013, 2020).
- Alammar, N., et al. (2019). “The impact of peppermint oil on the irritable bowel syndrome: a meta-analysis.” *BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine* 19.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.