Herbs in History: Yarrow

Yarrow Achillea millefolium L. CONTENTS As Strong as Iron? Strong and Invigorating The Birth of a Legend Tracing Yarrow Through the Centuries Reconciliation References

By Alain Touwaide & Emanuela Appetiti | August 2024

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As Strong as Iron?

Illustration 1: Yarrow (Achillea millefolium L.)

If there is a plant with an impeccable pedigree, it is yarrow (Achillea millefolium L.) (Asteraceae) (Illustration 1). From Classical Antiquity to Native Americans and Canadian First Nations, it has enjoyed a special status. Its history allegedly goes as far back as Achilles, the most intrepid and courageous among the Greeks fighting Troy in the 13^th century BCE, and its therapeutic uses made it one of the most important medicinal plants among the Indigenous populations of the Northern American Continent.

 

Strong and Invigorating

Yarrow, also known as common yarrow, blood staunch, and bloodwort, is native to the northern hemisphere and can be found from the United Kingdom to the West to China to the East (Illustration 2). It has been introduced in Australia and New Zealand as a fodder for livestock and it is now considered a weed. In the United States, it can be found all across the country, except in the Colorado and Mojave Deserts.
 

Illustration 2: Native distribution of Achillea millefolium L. according to Plants of the World online.

Yarrow grows from sea level in including in maritime gardens, up to 11,500 ft, especially in the disturbed soil of grasslands and in open forests. Although it lives longer when growing in poor soils and does well on lime, it adapts to most soils, with a preference, however, for well-drained soil in a sunny position. It is both shade- and drought tolerant if well established. Yarrow easily grows in meadows, orchards and lawns, and remains green after the grass turns dry in a drought. It suffers in conditions of severe drought, but usually recovers. Similarly, it is also very hardy and can resist temperatures as low as -13° F. 
 
It is propagated by seeds and requires both light and a mild temperature (64-75 °F) for germination. Although it might be short-lived, it can be maintained by division every other year. Its root system spreads easily and makes it invasive. With an active growth period in the Spring, it flourishes shortly afterwards, from May to July.
 
Yarrow is useful and sociable: it improves soil fertility, its deep roots and drought-resistence help combat soil erosion, and its leaves are rich in minerals, thus compensating for possible deficiences in grazing cattle. It also is an excellent companion plant: it improves the health of its neighboring plants, contributes to increasing their essential oil content and, by consequence, their ability to repell predatory insects, repells pests, and attracts, instead, good insects.
 
Behind this pleasurable botanical character is an iron lady difficult to pin down through history.
 

The Birth of a Legend

In the Mediterranean World and the subsequent tradition, yarrow (Achillea millefolium L.) is supposed to have been discovered by Achilles, one of the Greeks at war against Troy. Hence its name achilleios in Greek and achillea in Latin, and also the name of Linnean genus Achillea. It does not appear at first glance in either the Hippocratic Collection or, later, in De materia medica, the encyclopedia on natural products for medicines compiled in the 1^st century CE by Dioscorides.
 
Achilles, the eponyme of the genus Achillea, was taught medicine by the wise Centaur Chiron, and used it as a medicine. His most famous healing was that of Telephus, the king of Mysia, a region in north-west Asia Minor (now Turkey).
 
As the story goes, when the Greeks were on their way to Troy, they got lost and landed by mistake in Mysia. In a fight between Greeks and Mysians, Achilles hit Telephus with his spear and wounded Telephus. This wound had a long story in the Greek tales that was summarized as follows by the fabulist Hyginus (63 BCE-17 CE) (Fables 101):
 

... when for days Telephus suffered cruel torture from the wound, he sought oracular advice from Apollo for a remedy ... Then, since the Greeks had been given an oracle too, that Troy could not be taken without the leadership of Telephus, they readily made peace with him, and begged Achilles to heal him. Achilles replied that he didn't know the art of healing.

 
Dealing with the expedition of the Greeks to reach Troy, Telephus’ story represents a defining moment for the Greeks and Greek history. However, judging from currently preserved Greek literature, it does not go back to the time of the Trojan War, possibly in the 13^th century BCE, or the Iliad, probably of the late 8^th or early 7^th century, but is a recent affabulation. Telephus does not appear, indeed, in the Iliad, and his fight against Achilles is not attested before the poet Pindar (ca. 518-ca. 438). His story was staged by the tragedians of the classical period Aeschylus (ca. 525-ca. 456), Sophocles (ca. 497-ca. 406) and Euripides (ca. 480-ca. 406), and transformed in a satyric way by Aristophanes (446-386). With these literary works, it developed with new and relevant details, especially the healing of Telephus. With Euripides—who lived in a time when Hippocratic medicine was formalizing traditional practices and knew the Hippocratic literature—this healing took a specific form. Returning to Hyginus where we left it above with Achilles saying that he did not know medicine, the healing proceeded as follows:
 

Telephus ... sought oracular advice from Apollo for a remedy. The answer came that no one could heal him except the very spear that wounded him [“he who caused the wound will heal it”] ... Ulysses said:
 
Apollo does not mean you [= Achilles], but calls the spear the inflictor of the wound
When they scraped the spear [over the wound], Telephus was healed.

 

Illustration 3: Marble bas-relief, from the House of the Relief of Telephus, at Herculaneum, now at Naples, National Archaeological Museum 6591

From literature, the scene moved to the visual arts and was represented in decoration, paintings and also monumental pieces as a marble bas-relief from the time of Pompeii (Illustration 3).
 
With the passing of time, Telephus’ story was conflated with new elements. The spear that wounded him was not of Achilles, but of Chiron—the Centaur who taught the art of medicine to Achilles—and Achilles did not discover achilleos but received knowledge of its medicinal virtues directly from Apollo, the god of medicine. One of these creative accretions that gave more substance to Telephus’ story is offered by the Roman encyclopaedist Pliny (23/24-79 CE). His passage on this point is short (25.42):
 

Achilles too, the pupil of Chiron, discovered a plant to heal wounds, which is therefore called achilleos, and he is said to have cured Telephus by it.

 
This plant was yarrow. Pliny certainly did not invent this, but most probably reproduced one of the versions of Telephus’ story that were circulating at this time.
 

Tracing Yarrow

Pliny also knew the treatment with the rust of Achilles’ spear (Historia Naturalis 25.42):
 

Some have it that Achilles was the first to find out that copper-rust is a most useful ingredient of plasters, for which reason he is represented in paintings as scraping it with his sword from his spear on to the wound of Telephus, while others hold that he used both  remedies [that is, yarrow and the iron of his spear].

 
Further on in Historia Naturalis, when analyzing metals and discussing the medical applications of iron, Pliny repeated this version of the healing, with some more details (34.152):
 

The list of remedies [made of iron] even includes rust itself, and this is the way in which Achilles is stated to have cured Telephus, whether he did it by means of a copper javelin or an iron one; at all events Achilles is so represented in painting, knocking the rust of a javelin with his sword. Rust of iron is obtained by scraping it off old nails with an iron tool dipped in water. The effect of rust is to unite wounds and dry them and staunch them ...

 
While discussing the plant supposedly used by Achilles, Pliny provides supplementary information that helps trace yarrow in the medical litearture (25.42):
 

This plant is also called by some Heraclean panaces, by others sideritis, and by us (= the Romans) millefolia; the stalk is a cubit high, and the plant branchy, covered from the bottom with leaves smaller than those of fennel.
 
Others admit that this plant is good for wounds but say that the real achilleos has a blue stalk a foot long and without branches, gracefully covered all over with separate, rounded leaves.

 
Others describe achilleos as having a square stem, heads like those of horehound, and leaves like those of the oak ; they claim that it even unites severed ligaments.
 

Some give the name sideritis to another plant, which grows on boundary walls and has a foul smell when crushed, and also to yet another, like this but with paler and more fleshy leaves, and with more tender stalks, growing in vineyards; finally to a third, two cubits high, with thin, triangular twigs, leaves like those of the fern, a long foot-stalk and seed like that of beet. All are said to be excellent for wounds.

 
In the hypothesis that the descriptions above may refer to yarrow, the truth is that there is a great many species in the genus Achillea, particularly around the Mediterranean and especially in its eastern part, in Greece and Turkey—which both made up the ancient Greek World—as well as in the Balkans, with several species not found in other regions. Suffice to mention A. abrotanoides (Vis.) Vis. native to the former Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece; A. absinthoides Halacsy in Greece; A. aegyptiaca L. only in Greece, and to mention just one me A. ageratifolia, in the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, and Bulgaria. Recently (2016) another species was identified in Turkey: A. adeniae Ayta & Ekici.
 

Illustration 4: Achilleios sideritis in the manuscript of Dioscorides, De materia medica, now at the Biblioteca Vaticana, graecus 284, f. 129 verso (10th cent., Constantinople, with plant representations added in the 14th cent.)

Going beyond the discrepancies in Pliny’s short botanical descriptions, the interesting points are the alternative names sideritis and millefolia, in addition to the use in traumatology, be it for ligaments or wounds.
 

The term sideritis is found in Dioscorides, De materia medica (4.33-36), with different species, one of which is called Achilleion (4.36). As for millefolia, it guides us to muriofullon in Greek, which is the exact equivalent of millefolia, among the alternative names of which appears Achilleios (4.114). Whereas the botanical description of the former does not match that of yarrow, that of Achilleion sideritis does (Illustration 4):
 

It grows shoots one span-long or even longer, spindle-shaped,and thin small leaves, around    them that have numerous cuts on the sides, similar to coriander, slightly bitter, slimy, strong-smelling, not unpleasant, but medicinal in scent; on top an umbel, white flowers, becoming later golden; it grows on fertile lands.

 
If the sideritis Achilleios is yarrow, the name sideritis itself provides a key to interpret Euripides’ invention about Achilles using the iron of its spear to heal Telephus. In ancient Greek, the phytonym sideritis is built on the name of iron: sideros. There is a semantic superposition in the tale of the treatment of Telephus’ wound: the sideritis species used by Achilles was not only the plant yarrow but also iron in a semantic implicit comparison.
 

Through the Centuries

Returning to Dioscorides, the properties that he attributes to sideritis Achilleios are the following (4.36):
 

Ground up the foliage of this plant, too, closes bleeding wounds, is anti-inflammatory, it reduces hemorrhage, also of the womb in application [as a pessary]; also, its decoction makes a sitz bath for women suffering from discharges; it is also administered as a remedy for dysentery.

 
Similar information can be found in Pliny and also in Galen (129-after [?] 216 BCE), De simplicibus medicamentis (On Simple Medicines), where Achilleios is considered as a species of sideritis (8.18.13):
 

Some give the name of sideritis to the Achilleios, which is similar to the previous (that is, sideritis) for its property, with abundant stypsis. Therefore, it is indicated against hemorrhage, diarrhoea and gynecological discharges.

 
In the Arabic World, ibn Sina (ca. 980-1037), best known in the West as Avicenna, repeated Galen’s brief notice, without adding any other indication or information. At around the same time, the Old English Herbal devotes two chapters to yarrow (90 and 175). If the latter is nothing more than a translation of Dioscorides’ chapter—with some explicitation—the former is much more substantial. The opening of the chapter is worth citing, not the least because Telephus is just a vague, literary reference:
 

It is said that Achilles, the chief, discovered this plant ... and with this same plant he healed those who had been struck and wounded by iron weapons. And for this reason this plant is called achilleos ... It is said that with that plant Achilles also cured a man whose name was Telephus.

 
Then, comes the list of the several indications, which total no less than 16, from toothache to snakebite: wounds inflicted by an iron weapon; swellings; dysuria; cold; “head burst or a strange swelling”; “veins hardened or difficulty in digesting food; intestines and “pain anywhere in the abdomen”; heartburn or “some purulent inflammation”: headache; venomous spiders; snakebite (prevention and treatment); rabies.
 
In the Renaissance, the 1481 printed version of the so-called Herbarium Apulei offered a much more succinct chapter in which historical reeminiscences very much faded away (f. 80 recto-81 recto). Furthermore, the indications of yarrow as in Dioscorides and Galen, as well as in the Old English Herbal are listed under the phytonym millefolium, which was mentioned by Pliny as a synonym of sideritis in Pliny and of Achilleios in Dioscorides. Nevertheless, the name achilleios appears among the synonyms of millefolium, though in a new form: Militaris achillion (military yarrow). The opening of the chapter reads as follows:
 

Achilles discovered this herb with which he treated wounds made by blows of iron [weapons]; this is why it is called achilles. He is said to have healed thelephon.

 
Indications are limited to four, with toothache, “wounds made with iron weapons”, tumors and dysuria.
 
Crossing the centuries, the uses of yarrow among Native Americans is not different, even though they are much broader. From the 2011 analysis by ethnobotanist Wendy Applequist in collaboration with anthropologist Dan Moerman, it results, indeed, that yarrow “is one of the most widely used medicinal plants in the world, primarily for wounds, digestive problems ...” with the following quantitative data (“number of most common reported uses ... by category”, order as in Moerman and Applequist’s 2011 publication). The following is a selection:
 

Skin Conditions, Wounds, Bleeding, Blood Problems 79
Blood medicine 5       
Burn dressing 6
Antihemorrhagic 2
Hemostat 2
Hemorrhoid treatment 1
Potentially Infectious Conditions 80
Febrifuge 16
Antidiarrheal 11
 

Reconciliation

Although yarrow does not have as long a history as claimed in literature, it has a remarkable one characterized by its continuity and consistency from Antiquity to Northern American native populations. Ever since, yarrow is the medicine par excellence for the treatment of bleeding wounds.
 

Illustration 5: Sideritis in the lower left angle of the folio in in the manuscript of Dioscorides, De materia medica, now at the Biblioteca Vaticana, graecus 284, f. 128 verso (10th cent., Constantinople, with plant representations added in the 14th cent.)

The elements of yarrow history do not pertain to the oldest cycle of tales of the Greek world, recorded in the Iliad. The fight between Achilles and Telephus does not appear until the 5^th century BCE, the treatment of Telephus’wounds with iron is a dramaturgic creation of Euripides in the same century, and yarrow is not known as plant used by Achilles to heal Telephus until the 1^st century CE. When yarrow enters history, it is an exact therapeutic equivalent of iron with anti-hemorrhagic, bactericide, and anti-infectious properties. Its whole history is built around this equivalence, which might have worked as a substitution according to the therapeutic principle of quid pro quo.
 

In this therapeutic function, yarrow went together with another plant credited with similar, if not identical properties: sideritis (possibly Sideritis romana L.), reported to close wounds and be anti-inflammatory in Dioscorides, De materia medica (4.33) (Illustration 5). Its name indicates that it was in a certain way a plant form of iron. Hence, its English ironwort name.
 
Folk tradition was quick to attribute yarrow use to Achilles and went even further, crediting its discovery to Achilles and, going further back in time, to a revelation by Apollo himself to Achilles. The whole construction of Telephus’ history with its successive levels of accretions is built around the therapeutic property of both iron and yarrow, and the mythical figure of Achilles, the bravest of all Greek warriors.
 
Folk traditions and dramaturgic creations completed each other. When Euripides introduced the story of Telephus’ treatment with scraps from the spear used by Achilles (whether this spear was his or of Chiron), he did not invent it out of nothing. A contemporary of the development of Hippocratic medicine of which he knew the writings, he took the substance of his invention from solid scientific literature. The further developments of the story connected Euripides’ theatral plot and the study of medicinal plants between Euripides’ time and the 1^st century CE, and substituted iron with yarrow.
 
Though therapeutically efficacious, this substitution did not go together with an exact botanical identification and knowledge of yarrow, which was compared to, associated with, and possibly also confused with sideritis.
 
The subsequent centuries better identified yarrow and distinguished it from sideritis. They maintained and reinforced yarrow fundamental use in the treatment of wounds and gradually lost knowledge of Telephus history, keepint, however, the role and figure of Achilles, as the perfect personification of both iron therapeutic efficacy and generosity beyond war bravery. This reconciled the therapeutic history—invented or real—of yarrow as a plant form of iron and its botanical characteristics, strong and invigorating.

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