eucalyptus globulus
Myrtaceae Family

FOLKLORE AND TRADITIONAL USES
Australian Aborigines in the dry outback
chew eucalyptus roots for water.

Europeans thought it might cure malarial fever.
By the 1860s they were shipping leaves and oil
around the Mediterranean.
Although eucalyptus does not cure malaria,
trees Europeans planted them around swamps
drew up much of the water and reduced
the breeding area of malarial mosquitoes,
thus reducing their numbers.

Eucalyptus is the sole food source for the koala,
an Australian marsupial.

Source of paper pulp, fuel, lumber species
[used to build parts of ships]

For a number of years a debate has raged over the proper
categorization of plant products having therapeutic value.
When Congress passed the Kefauver-Harris Amendment
in 1962 to establish FDA approval of drug efficacy and safety,
traditional herbal remedies were no longer
extensively employed.

Most nonprescription plant medicines,
with the exception of laxatives such as senna
(senna alexandrina P. Mill., Fabaceae)
cascara sagrada (rhamnus purshiana DC., Rhamnaceae)
decongestants such as peppermint oil
(mentha x piperita L., Lamiaceae)
eucalyptus oil (eucalyptus globulus Labill., Myrtaceae),
were bypassed in the Over the Counter (OTC)
Review Panels that examined medicinal products
from 1972 to the present.
As a result, plants that were not certified
as prescription or OTC drugs were classified as foods
in the broad sense of this term.
Dorland’s Medical Dictionary, 25th edition, 1974,
defined food as “anything which, when taken into the body,
serves to nourish or build up the tissues or to supply body heat.”


Making Herbal Candles