Witch hazel

Witch hazel: what was it used for?

An astringent above all. Grieve calls leaves and bark alike “valuable in checking internal and external haemorrhage, most efficacious in the treatment of piles,” useful for bruises and inflammatory swellings and for diarrhoea and dysentery, and she reports that the North American Indians had long used it in poultices for painful swellings and tumours. The distilled extract was laid on varicose veins on a lint bandage kept constantly moist, and a pad of it on a burst vein, she says, would stop the bleeding. Pond’s Extract of Witch Hazel was “much used in our grandmother’s days as a general household remedy for burns, scalds, and inflammatory conditions of the skin,” and diluted with warm water the extract was used for inflamed eyelids.

Witch hazel: what does modern science say?

The European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee has three monographs on it, all for traditional use, “exclusively based upon long-standing use”: the bark and the leaf for minor inflammation and dryness of the skin, for the itching and burning of haemorrhoids, and as a mouthwash or gargle for minor inflammation in the mouth; and the distillate for minor skin inflammation and for the temporary relief of eye discomfort from dryness, wind, or sun. Its assessment report puts the leaf’s tannins at 3 to 10 per cent and the bark’s at 8 to 12, the bark the richer in hamamelitannin.

Witch hazel: what did the older authorities say?

Mrs. M. Grieve

A tea of the leaves or bark “may be taken freely with advantage, being good for bleeding of the stomach and in complaints of the bowels,” and given as an injection for bleeding piles, “the relief being marvellous and the cure speedy.” Witch hazel, she adds, had been supposed to owe its use to an action on the muscular fibre of the veins.