Calumba

Weak appetite and sluggish digestion where the stomach is sensitive and cannot tolerate more acrid or irritating bitters

Nausea of pregnancy or of debility, when a gentle, non-stimulating bitter is needed

Enfeebled stomach with indigestion, or feeble digestion; anorexia and debility.

Overview. Calumba is the dried root of Jateorhiza palmata, a climbing vine of the Menispermaceae native to the forests of East Africa, particularly Mozambique and Madagascar, and long exported to Europe as a trade root. It has no history of use in African traditional medicine comparable to its later adoption; it entered Western practice through colonial trade and became a staple simple bitter of eclectic and physiomedical dispensatories in the nineteenth century. The root is valued for a pure, unaromatic bitterness free of tannin, making it gentler on an irritable stomach than many other bitter tonics.

Clinical Notes. Calumba is reached for when a bitter tonic is needed but the patient's stomach is too irritable or atonic to tolerate a stronger, more astringent bitter such as gentian or hydrastis. It was historically favored in convalescence, in the nausea of pregnancy, and in low-grade tropical or infectious diarrhea, where its lack of tannin meant it would not further bind or irritate an already compromised gut.

Therapy. The least irritating and one of the best of the simple bitters and of especial value in atony of the stomach with poor appetite and feeble digestion. It is especially valuable in convalescence from acute fevers and other disorders in which there is lack of desire for food and poor digestion, with pain or without pain, immediately upon eating.

Action and Therapy. External. A violent, poisonous parasiticide for animal and vegetable parasites, to destroy head lice and the itch mite, and relieve scald head, sycosis barbae, trichophytosis, tinea versicolor and other parasitic skin diseases.