Plants and their European monographs
- Licorice — Glycyrrhiza glabra L., root
European Medicines Agency monograph (EMA/HMPC/108399/2024 Rev. 1): traditional use for digestive symptoms including burning sensation and dyspepsia, and as an expectorant in cough associated with a cold. - Ribwort plantain — Plantago lanceolata L., leaf
European Medicines Agency monograph (EMA/HMPC/887979/2022 Rev. 1): traditional use for irritation of the mouth and throat with dry cough, for cough associated with a cold, and for minor inflammation of the skin.
From “Before You Begin”
The book’s safety page, quoted as it stands. Read the whole page — it is free.
- Six recipes are for the cold season and for feeling unwell. They are drunk for a few days and then stopped.
- Licorice, Chapter 37, must not be combined with diuretics, cardiac glycosides, corticosteroids or stimulant laxatives, including the buckthorn bark of Chapter 40, and calls for caution alongside medicines the liver breaks down with the enzyme CYP3A4.
- Several have a short time frame: if a cough has not cleared within a week, licorice is stopped and a doctor seen, and with willow a doctor is seen if a headache lasts more than a day or a fever more than three.
- Pregnancy. Twenty-six of the twenty-eight recipes here are restricted in pregnancy — most because safety has not been established rather than because harm has been shown, but the answer is the same either way. The two that carry no restriction are the rosehip brew of Chapter 26 and the sea buckthorn of Chapter 28, both of them fruits eaten as food across Europe.
The recipe is in the book
Chapter 37 gives the rest:
- the amounts and the steps
- what each plant does in the cup, and on what basis
- who should not drink it, from what age
- how much, and for how long