# Nutmeg and clove (Myristica fragrans)

**Noce moscata*; *garofoli**

**Known today as.** *Myristica fragrans* and *Syzygium aromaticum*.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Tropane (anticholinergic) poisoning (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/anticholinergic)

## What did Canale use it for?

Oil of nutmeg on the stomach after vomiting; both in the distilled water, the cockerel, the pills, the fumigation, and the oil for the bewitched (chs. 5–6, 8–9).

## What does modern science say?

Clove oil is a true local anesthetic and antiseptic. Nutmeg is intoxicating in large doses.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **myristicin**: in nutmeg
- **elemicin**: 
- **eugenol**: in clove, 80 per cent of the oil

**Mechanism.** Myristicin is weakly psychoactive, perhaps through an amphetamine-like metabolite; eugenol is a local anaesthetic and antiseptic.

**Dose.** Two or three whole nutmegs bring a day of delirium, nausea, and dread; eugenol in quantity injures the liver.

**Standing.** Clove oil remains in dentistry; nutmeg is a spice.

## What lore surrounds it?

Cloves were among the aromatics, with lavender, camphor, myrrh, and labdanum, packed into the beak of the plague doctor’s mask, on the theory that sweet smells could filter the bad air believed to carry plague. Nutmeg’s history is darker than its scent: the Dutch East India Company seized the Banda Islands, the spice’s only source, in 1621, killing or driving off nearly all of the thirteen to fifteen thousand islanders and working the plantations with enslaved labor, a cost the old pharmacopoeias never recorded.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Of the clove: “There is, also, in India another grain which bears a considerable resemblance to pepper, but is longer and more brittle; it is known by the name of caryophyllon. It is said that this grain is produced in a sacred grove in India; with us it is imported for its aromatic perfume.”

## Sources

- Wikipedia, “Plague doctor costume.”
- JSTOR Daily, “The Violent History Behind Nutmeg.”
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 12.15, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Stein, U., et al. (2001). “Nutmeg (myristicin) poisoning.” *Forensic Science International* 118.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.