# Troche of agaric (Laricifomes officinalis)

**Trocisci di agarico**

**Known today as.** Lozenges of larch agaric, *Laricifomes officinalis* (syn. *Fomitopsis officinalis*), a bracket fungus.

Kind: Fungus  
Poisoning: The drastic resins (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/drastic-resin)

## What did Canale use it for?

In the purge for phlegmatic patients (ch. 4).

## What does modern science say?

Larch agaric is a genuine irritant purgative, and was later used chiefly to check the sweats of wasting disease. It is no longer used as a purgative, though it is still sold as a medicinal mushroom (agarikon).

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **agaricic acid**: a hydroxy-tricarboxylic acid, 15–20 per cent
- **agaricol**: 
- **resins**: 

**Mechanism.** The agaric of the old pharmacy is the larch polypore (*Laricifomes officinalis*), not a mushroom: agaricic acid is a drastic purgative that irritates the gut and in small doses dried the night sweats of consumptives, its one use kept into the twentieth century; it blocks the mitochondrial citrate carrier and the adenine nucleotide translocase, and the sweat glands by a local action. The troche was the resin corrected with ginger or mastic against the griping.

**Dose.** A few grains stop sweating; a dram purges violently.

**Standing.** Obsolete; the fungus is now rare in Europe and listed in several national red lists.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Describes agaric as “a fungus of a white colour, upon the trees in the vicinity of the Bosporus,” given in doses of four oboli beaten up in two cyathi of oxymel, the Galatian kind less efficacious; the male firmer and more bitter and “productive too of head-ache,” the female of looser texture, sweet at first and then bitter; after a poisoning, once the patient has vomited, agaric in one denarius with three cyathi of hydromel; and for spitting of blood, in honied wine.

## Sources

- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 25.57, 25.79, 26.19, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Grienke, U., et al. (2014). “European medicinal polypores: a modern view on traditional uses.” *Journal of Ethnopharmacology* 154.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.