# Rose (Rosa gallica)

**Rosa**

**Known today as.** Chiefly the red or apothecary’s rose, *Rosa gallica*, and the damask rose, *Rosa* × *damascena*, as syrup, honey, sugar, water, and powder.

Kind: Plant  
Qualities: Cold and dry (Galenic tradition).

## What did Canale use it for?

Dissolved rose syrup and rose honey carry many of the purges; aromatic rose powder and rose-sugar settle the stomach after vomiting (chs. 2–6, 9).

## What does modern science say?

The “dissolved” (solutive) rose syrup was made from damask petals steeped again and again, and was used as a gentle laxative; the rest is flavor, astringency, and comfort.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **citronellol, geraniol, nerol**: the oil
- **phenylethyl alcohol**: 
- **tannins**: in the petal
- **vitamin C**: in the hip, 0.3–1.7 per cent

**Mechanism.** The petal is a mild astringent and the sugar of the syrup and conserve was the vehicle for the purges, which is Canale’s use; rose oil inhaled lowered anxiety in several small trials, and the hip’s galactolipid GOPO reduced pain in three trials of osteoarthritis, the one rose product with a clinical literature.

**Dose.** Safe.

**Standing.** The petal, not the hip, has the EMA monograph (2014): Rosae flos for mild inflammation of the mouth and throat and of the skin; the hip has the osteoarthritis trials and no monograph; Damask rose water is in the Iranian pharmacopoeia.

## What lore surrounds it?

The rose’s association with secrecy is older than its use in Canale’s oils: Hellenistic myth had Cupid give a rose to Harpocrates, god of silence, to keep Venus’s secrets, and Roman banquet rooms were carved with roses as a reminder that what was said there should stay there, a custom later carried into the confessional, where the rose marked the seal of confession. The Latin phrase *sub rosa*, “under the rose,” passed through German into English by at least 1654, and still means anything done in confidence.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Dioscorides.** Describes rose oil and the rose’s cooling, binding virtue.

**Avicenna.** Tradition credits the Persian physician with perfecting the distillation of rose water.

## Sources

- Wikipedia, “Sub rosa.”
- Christensen, R., et al. (2008). “Does the hip powder of *Rosa canina* reduce pain in osteoarthritis patients? A meta-analysis.” *Osteoarthritis and Cartilage* 16.
- EMA/HMPC (2014). *Community herbal monograph on Rosa gallica L., Rosa centifolia L., Rosa damascena Mill., flos* (EMA/HMPC/137299/2013).

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*Rose.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-09-25. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/rose

Historical description, not medical advice.