# Sweet almond, oil of

**Oglio di mandole dolci**

**Known today as.** Oil pressed from sweet almonds.

Kind: Food & Drink

## What did Canale use it for?

In a gentle vomit, and to anoint the stomach before hellebore (ch. 5).

## What does modern science say?

A bland oil, given in mucilage for chronic coughs; Grieve adds “costiveness,” and its emulsions are emollient.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **oleic acid**: the chief glyceride; about 70 per cent of the oil is monounsaturated
- **linoleic acid**: about 17 per cent, polyunsaturated
- **vitamin E**: 

**Mechanism.** An emollient and a bland oil: on the skin it softens; swallowed, it was given for coughs and “costiveness,” and in Canale it went into a gentle vomit and onto the stomach before hellebore. Almond allergy is the one danger, from local reactions to anaphylaxis.

**Dose.** A food; anaphylaxis in the allergic.

**Standing.** Official in the United States and British pharmacopoeias of King’s day (1898), and among the British Pharmacopoeia’s almond preparations in Grieve’s.

## What lore surrounds it?

Folkard tells the Thracian legend from Servius: Phyllis, wedded to Demophoon and abandoned when he was recalled to Athens, “expired of grief, and was transformed into an Almond-tree,” and when he returned and “clasped the tree in remorseful embrace,” the leafless tree “suddenly shot forth and blossomed.” The Hebrew Shakad “means to make haste, or to awake early,” Aaron's rod that budded was of almond, and in Tuscany “a branch of the Almond-tree is employed to discover hidden treasures.” “Pliny considered Almonds a most powerful remedy against inebriation,” and “to dream of eating Almonds portends a journey: if they taste sweet, it will be a prosperous one; if bitter, the contrary.”

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Says perfumes mixed with oil keep the better the thicker the oil is, “such as the oil of almonds, for instance,” and that the Egyptian metopion is an oil of bitter almonds; of bitter almonds he adds that they “are provocative of sleep, and sharpen the appetite,” are applied for headache, especially the headache of inebriation, with vinegar and rose oil, and with honey heal the bites of dogs.

## Sources

- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 13.2–3, 23.75, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Almond.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- “Almond” (Almond oil). *Wikipedia* (read 2 October 2026).
- Canale, F. (1622). *Del modo di conoscer et sanare i maleficiati*. Brescia.
- Ahmad, Z. (2010). “The uses and properties of almond oil.” *Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice* 16.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.