# Oxymel, and oxymel of squill **Ossimele*; *ossimele scillitico** **Known today as.** Honey boiled with vinegar; the squill version adds the bulb of sea squill. Kind: Compound Poisoning: Cardiac glycoside poisoning (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/cardiac-glycoside) ## What did Canale use it for? To cut viscous humors and to strengthen vomits (ch. 5). ## What does modern science say? Simple oxymel, says Culpeper, cuts phlegm and is a good preparative for a vomit. Squill in large doses produces nausea and vomiting and was at one time used as an emetic (see [Squill](https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/squill)). ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **acetic acid**: the vinegar - **honey sugars**: - **scillaren A and proscillaridin**: the cardiac glycosides of squill, in the oxymel of squill **Mechanism.** Simple oxymel is honey and vinegar, which Culpeper says cuts phlegm; the oxymel of squill adds the squill’s cardiac glycosides, bufadienolides that act on the heart like digitalis and, in the small doses of a cough mixture, mildly irritate the stomach and bring a reflex secretion from the bronchioles, while large doses vomit, which is why it strengthened the vomits. Poisoning by the bulb gives digitalis-like signs. **Dose.** The British Pharmaceutical Codex of 1911 gives 2 to 4 mils (half to one fluid drachm) of the oxymel of squill for coughs and colds; large doses of squill vomit, and the bulb has poisoned with digitalis-like signs. **Standing.** Oxymel of squill was official in the British Pharmacopoeia in 1911 and went into cough linctuses; a small trial in 2022 tested a Persian squill oxymel as an add-on treatment for COPD, with preliminary results. ## What lore surrounds it? Of the squill that gives the oxymel its name Folkard writes: “The Scilla maritima, or Sea Onion, was of old consecrated in Egypt to the god Typhon. The mummies of Egyptian women often hold the Squill in one hand, probably as an emblem of generation. The Egyptians planted the Squill in groves, and hung it in their houses to preserve them from evil spirits. In Arcadia, at the festival of the god Pan, the statue of the deity was decorated with Squills.” Grieve notes that the squill “is mentioned by Theophrastus in the third century before Christ,” that Dioscorides “describes the different varieties of the bulb and the method of making vinegar of Squills,” and that while the white squill is more mentioned in mediæval literature, “the medical school of Salerno preferred the red variety of the drug.” It was first recorded as cultivated in England in 1648, in the Oxford Botanic Gardens. ## What did the older authorities say? **Pliny.** Gives the squill “the very highest rank” among bulbs, “although by nature it is medicinal, and is employed for imparting an additional sharpness to vinegar”: no bulb grows larger or more pungent; two kinds serve in medicine, the male with white leaves and the female with black, and a third, the Epimenidian, is good to eat; a wine was also made from the roots of squills. ## Sources - Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 19.30, 14.19, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library. - Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Squill.” Project Gutenberg #44638. - Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Squill.” botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/s/squill86.html - Manganyi, M. C., et al. (2021). Bulbous plants *Drimia*: “a thin line between poisonous and healing compounds” with biological activities. *Pharmaceutics* 13: 1385. - Mohammadi-Araghi, M., et al. (2022). An add-on treatment for moderate COPD with squill-oxymel (a traditional formulation from *Drimia maritima* (L.) Stearn): a pilot randomized triple-blinded placebo-controlled clinical trial. *Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine* 2022. --- *Oxymel, and oxymel of squill.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-03. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/oxymel-and-oxymel-of-squill Historical description, not medical advice.