# Sandalwood (Santalum album)

*Red and white saunders*

**Known today as.** The heartwood of *Santalum album*; red saunders is *Pterocarpus santalinus*.

Kind: Resin & Wood  
Qualities: Cold and dry (Galenic tradition).

## What was it used for?

Cooling and cordial, for hot fevers and the heart, in the cordial powders.

## What does modern science say?

A perfume; no established medicinal effect. Its scent is from santalol, which has a mild sedative effect when inhaled in laboratory studies; there is no evidence for its old medical uses. Indian sandalwood is now listed as vulnerable, the heartwood takes decades to form, and most of the world’s supply comes from plantations in Western Australia.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **alpha-santalol**: 45–55 per cent of the oil
- **beta-santalol**: 20 per cent
- **santalenes**: 

**Mechanism.** The santalols are sedative in mice on inhalation and antimicrobial; the oil was given for gonorrhoea into the twentieth century because it is excreted in the urine, and is now in trials as a cream for eczema and warts; the “cooling” of the Galenists and of Ayurveda is the scent and a mild skin anaesthesia. Alpha-santalol activates an olfactory receptor in skin cells that speeds wound healing in culture (Busse, 2014).

**Dose.** Safe externally; the oil swallowed irritates the kidney.

**Standing.** *Santalum album* is listed as vulnerable by the IUCN and its export is controlled by India; the oil is a perfumery staple.

## What lore surrounds it?

The trees of Mysore were a royal monopoly from 1792, every one the property of the sultan and then of the maharaja, and the sandalwood of Hawaii was cut to nothing between 1790 and 1825 to pay for the chiefs’ purchases from American traders.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Sanskrit *chandana*.** Sandalwood is the oldest of the Indian incense woods, pressed into a paste for the forehead marks of worship and the anointing of images, and burned on the pyre; Buddhism carried it east to China and Japan as the chief wood of the temple censer.

**The Arab and Persian physicians.** Brought it into the cooling cordials of Galenic medicine, red saunders for the blood and white for the heart and the fevers, from which it passed to the Latin West.

## Sources

- Culpeper, N. (1653). *Pharmacopœia Londinensis*.
- Burdock, G. A., and Carabin, I. G. (2008). “Safety assessment of sandalwood oil.” *Food and Chemical Toxicology* 46.
- Busse, D., et al. (2014). “A synthetic sandalwood odorant induces wound-healing processes in human keratinocytes via the olfactory receptor OR2AT4.” *Journal of Investigative Dermatology* 134.
- Moy, R. L., and Levenson, C. (2017). “Sandalwood album oil as a botanical therapeutic in dermatology.” *Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology* 10.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.