# Musk

**Muschio**

**Known today as.** The secretion of the musk deer’s gland.

Kind: Animal

## What did Canale use it for?

Tied at the nose of the alembic; in the fumigation and the oil (chs. 6, 8, 9).

## What does modern science say?

Perfume. The trade is now restricted to protect the animal. Its scent is muscone, a large ring ketone, synthesised in 1926 after the first artificial musks were found by Albert Baur in 1888 while he was working on explosives. The musk deer is protected under CITES, and nearly all musk in perfume is now synthetic; the natural grain still enters Chinese medicine, where the Chinese Pharmacopoeia gives it for coma in critical illness, and poaching continues.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **muscone**: 3-methylcyclopentadecanone, the chief odorant
- **muscopyridine**: 
- **steroids**: 

**Mechanism.** From the preputial gland of the male musk deer: its macrocyclic ketone, muscone, is the chief odorant, and musk has been a perfume fixative since ancient times. In Chinese medicine (shexiang) it is given for coma and studied for stroke; muscone is anti-inflammatory in mice and protects the heart after infarction in rats. Synthetic musks replaced it in perfumery.

**Dose.** Natural musk carries phenol, up to a tenth in some samples, whose toxicity has to be watched in medicinal preparations.

**Standing.** The trade is controlled under CITES, though poaching and illegal trade continue; Chinese medicine, save for specially exempt drugs, uses an artificial musk created in 1994.

## What lore surrounds it?

To take the pod the deer is killed and the gland cut out, and a grain of musk will scent millions of cubic feet of air; and because the deer lives only in Central Eurasia, the rest of the world had to trade for it.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Its name.** From the Sanskrit *muṣka*, “testicle,” for the shape of the pod cut from the belly of the male musk deer of the Himalaya and Tibet, by way of Persian and Greek.

**The Islamic world.** Held musk the most fragrant of scents and the most important of all aromatics: the Prophet and his companions used it widely, and the Qur’an makes it the seal of the choice wine of Paradise.

**The Galenic physicians.** Put it into the great compounds of this book: the *diamoschu*, which Culpeper says “wonderfully helps cold afflictions of the brain,” melancholy, giddiness, the falling-sickness, and palsies, and the troches of *gallia moschata*, which “strengthen the brain and heart.”

## Sources

- King, A. (2017). *Scent from the Garden of Paradise: Musk and the Medieval Islamic World*. Leiden: Brill.
- Wikipedia, “Musk.”
- Wikipedia, “Muscone.”
- Wikipedia, “Synthetic musk.”
- *Encyclop dia Britannica* (1911), 11th ed., “Musk” and “Musk-deer,” vol. 19, p. 90. Wikisource.
- *The Koran*, trans. J. M. Rodwell (1861), Sura LXXXIII. Project Gutenberg #2800.
- Zheng, C., et al. (2025). Volatile compounds in musk and their anti-stroke mechanisms. *Metabolites* 15: 181.
- Lv, S., et al. (2022). Chemical compositions and pharmacological activities of natural musk (*Moschus*) and artificial musk: a review. *Journal of Ethnopharmacology* 284: 114799.
- Hui, H., et al. (2025). Muscone attenuates myocardial infarction by regulating ferroptosis of cardiomyocytes through Nrf2/system Xc-/GPX4 signaling pathway. *International Immunopharmacology*.
- Yan, Z., et al. (2026). Muscone promotes PINK1/Parkin-associated mitophagy to suppress NLRP3 inflammasome activation: implications for endotoxemia therapy. *Pharmaceuticals*.
- Chinese Pharmacopoeia Commission (2020). *Pharmacopoeia of the People’s Republic of China*, “Moschus.”
- CITES (2023). *Appendices I, II and III*, Moschidae.

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*Musk.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-03. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/musk

Historical description, not medical advice.