House leek

Fresh minor burn or scald with hot, tight, reddened skin, treated promptly with the crushed leaf or its juice applied directly

Acute, hot, irritated conjunctiva or eyelid margin, soothed with a well-diluted wash of the fresh juice

Overview. Sempervivum tectorum is a succulent perennial of the Crassulaceae, native to the mountains of central and southern Europe and long cultivated on roofs and walls across Europe for its remarkable hardiness, giving rise to its common name houseleek. Its thick, water-storing leaves are arranged in a tight rosette, and the fresh leaf, or the juice pressed from it, is the part used. In the physiomedicalist tradition it was classed among the cooling, relaxant agents, valued chiefly as an external application for burns and hot inflammatory skin conditions, with a lesser and now largely obsolete internal use as a mild diuretic and febrifuge.

Clinical Notes. The main modern use of houseleek, where it is used at all, is topical: the fresh leaf is split or crushed and the exposed mucilaginous pulp, or the expressed juice, applied directly to minor burns, scalds, sunburn, and other hot, reddened inflammatory skin conditions.

Properties and Uses. The juice of the leaves, readily obtained by mashing and pressure, has a cooling and slightly saline taste. It is a cooling application in much repute for acute and sub-acute ophthalmia, burns, simple erysipelas, and other cutaneous inflammations. Taken internally in doses of a teaspoonful to a tablespoonful every four hours, it increases the flow of urine, and has been much commended in catarrhal and bilious fever, and in erysipelas. The split leaves are reputed of great value as a local application to shingles, tetter, corns, and warts. Medical Herbalism journal and medherb.com The Physiomedical Dispensatory by William Cook, M.D., 1869

Description. Natural Order, Crassulaceae. The fibrous root of this plant sends off numerous tufts of thick and succulent leaves, about an inch in length and two-thirds of an inch broad, acute, stiffly fringed along the edges, and arranged in the manner of the petals of a rose-the size of the leaves regularly diminishing toward the center. The flower-stalk rises to the height of a foot from the center of one of these leafy tufts, erect, downy, sparsely leaved, and bearing at its summit a cyme of numerous large and pale-rose flowers. The plant is native to Europe, and is frequently cultivated in this country for its peculiarly-arranged leaves and its remarkable tenacity of life.