Important: Safety Warning
This page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
In addition, this page presents medical treatment from an era before modern medicine. The remedies described are ineffective against the conditions named, and some of the ingredients or doses are harmful. Do not use them to treat any illness; consult a qualified medical professional.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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DECOCTION OF BROOM (COMPOUND)
Take 1½ ounce of broom, ½ ounce of juniper berries, and ½ ounce of bruised dandelion; boil in 1½ pints of water down to a pint, and strain. Diuretic, and slightly aperient. Used in dropsy. Dose: 1/2 ounces to 2 ounces, twice or thrice a day.
This is a medicinal decoction from the sick-room chapter, not a beverage, and it is one of the entries in these old household books that has not aged into harmlessness. The points below explain the specific problems rather than offering a working version.
- Broom is a cardioactive plantScotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) contains sparteine and related quinolizidine alkaloids, which act on the heart's conduction system and on the uterus. Alkaloid content varies enormously with the plant part, season and growing conditions, so a half-ounce of dried tops is not a measured dose of anything.
- "Dropsy" is a symptom, not a diseaseThe oedema this decoction was meant to relieve is usually a sign of congestive heart failure, kidney disease or liver disease. Driving off fluid with a plant diuretic treats the swelling and leaves the cause untouched, and in a failing heart it can disturb electrolytes badly.
- The quantities are corrupt"12 ounce of bruised dandelion" is almost certainly a printer's mangling of 1/2 ounce, and the dose line runs "1/2 ounces to 2 ounces". A preparation with an active alkaloid and an unreadable weight is not something to reconstruct by guesswork.
- InteractionsSparteine is metabolised by the CYP2D6 pathway, which many common prescription drugs also use, and any diuretic taken alongside modern heart or blood-pressure medication changes how those drugs behave.
- Juniper and dandelion are the mild partJuniper berries and dandelion are both traditional diuretics and are the least of the concerns here, though juniper in quantity is reputed to irritate the kidneys and is customarily avoided in pregnancy. They do not make the broom safer; they are simply along for the ride.
- If the condition is realPersistent swelling of the legs or abdomen needs assessment by a doctor. Nothing in this entry should be used in place of that.
Broom tops had a long run in official medicine: a decoction of broom tops was a recognised remedy for dropsy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the preparation appears as decoctum scoparii in nineteenth-century pharmacopoeias. The alkaloid sparteine was isolated from the plant in the 1850s and later used as a heart drug in its own right before better-characterised agents displaced it. Compounding it with juniper and dandelion, both long-standing folk diuretics, is in keeping with the period's habit of combining several mild remedies of the same action in one bottle. Its appearance in a general household cookbook belongs to a tradition in which the same volume taught a woman to roast a joint and to nurse the family through illness, since calling a doctor cost money and the nearest chemist might be a walk away. Domestic medicine sections like this one thinned out steadily through the twentieth century as food and drug regulation, and the professionalisation of nursing, took the work out of the kitchen.