Myrrh

Indolent ulcers or wounds that are slow to heal and lack healthy granulation

Overview. Myrrh is the hardened oleo-gum-resin that exudes from the bark of a small, spiny, drought-adapted tree native to the Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa. Traders have carried it across the ancient world for millennia, and physicians from Hippocrates onward valued it as a wound dressing and a warming digestive remedy. In physiomedicalist and earlier eclectic practice it was classed among the stimulating astringents, used wherever tissue was described as relaxed, boggy, or slow to heal. The resin is collected as irregular reddish tears with a balsamic, slightly bitter taste, and is used today mainly as a tincture or mouthwash for the mouth, throat, and skin.

Clinical Notes. TCM=blood-invigorating and stasis-removing, enters the heart, liver & spleen channels, activates blood circulation and relives pain to treat conditions such as amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, stomach and epigastric pain, musculoskeletal pain from wind and damp, traumatic injuries w pain and bruising and intestinal abscess, also used topically to reduce sweeling and promote healing of chronic sores and ulcerations that do not heal

Clinical Notes. Myrrh earns its place as a topical and mucosal remedy more than an internal one in modern practice. A diluted tincture makes an effective gargle or mouthwash for gingivitis, mouth ulcers, and sore throat, and it is often combined with echinacea or sage for this purpose, the astringency tightening spongy tissue while the resin's antimicrobial character helps control local infection.

Therapy. This agent has always been highly esteemed as a stimulant, although its influence is more of a local than a general character. It exercises the characteristic influence of most of the stimulants upon the excretions and secretions, acting as a diaphoretic, expectorant, sialagogue, and to a certain extent emmenagogue.