Talk:Mentha pulegium

Are there any sources for the claim that one woman died from ingesting two teaspoonfuls of pennyroyal oil and/or for the Guatemalan group unable to produce any children because of cooking with the plant accidentally?

Yes. Here is a source for the young woman from Denver, Colorado who died from ingesting Pennyroyal oil in a self-induced pregnancy Journal of American Medicine. The young woman was a dear friend of mine. I can tell you she died a tragic and painful death. Although it has been more than thirty years since her untimely death, It has always stayed with me. Please, do not take Pennyroyal. It is so very toxic and while it may have some benefits it is not worth the risk. She bought the Pennyroyal from down the street at the health store. I am not sure how much she took, but it was only a very small amount (maybe a teaspoon or two at most. Even in small doses it causes immediate liver and organ failure. Within two hours she was hospitalized with bleeding from her eyes, ears, nose, etc. She was in a como after four days and dies within the week. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.27.239.86 (talk) 06:07, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Pointless alarmism. If it was that toxic there would be far more notable deaths, and it is doubtful the ancients would have seen it as useful.

She took a massively larger dose than would ever be recommended, and in far too short a time span.

Any medicine or indeed any substance when taken in a large enough dose will kill someone, which is why we have things like LD50 numbers (the dose that will kill 50% of the test subjects, based on mg per kg of body weight, taken orally over a short period of time) for most substances. Due to ethical concerns we don't have exact numbers.

Oils are greatly concentrated, making overdoses easy, as the woman discovered.

Drinking water CAN kill a person (LD50 = 90,000 mg/kg). Taking enough Tylenol (1900 mg/kg), or even Tums can also kill you. Rat poison (Warfarin) has an LD50 of 6.7 mg/kg - but is regularly used in medicine of around .01 mg/kg - but you wouldn't eat an entire box of it, and that is what she effectively did.

This remains an anecdote and while tragic, tells us little, other than that taking a full fluid ounce of oil (2 entire bottles), or a dose of 250 mg/kg will kill you. The LD50 for rats is 150mg and for dogs it is 330mg/kg. Comparing LD50s is tricky, but for many substances it is around 80% of the rat dose, and given the speed she consumed it, we are looking at a dose of 120 mg/kg body weight (half what she took) killing 50% of the people consuming it, so naturally, she died. That does not mean there isn't a safe dose - for that, in the absense of more rigorous experiments, we should probably be checking historical recommendations, which usually err on the side of caution. - NiD.29 (talk) 09:29, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

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According to this article there was a death from pennyroyal oil back in 1978:

"Author Susun Weed cautions, however, that the pennyroyal extract Kris consumed should not be confused with highly concentrated pennyroyal oil, which caused the death of a Colorado woman in 1978. The woman, who suspected she was pregnant, was admitted to a Denver hospital two hours after drinking two one-half-ounce bottles of pennyroyal oil."

The NIH Medline page (which probably should be linked to the article) also mentions a death, but there's no definite reference to either the 1978 or 1994 deaths.

Does anyone know the outcome of the Kris Humphrey lawsuit? Did they come to any conclusion re: pennyroyal extract or did they settle out of court?

Have not seen a confirmation of the Guatemalan group. Longdaysjourney

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Have added another link to a review of the medical literature re Pennyroyal Toxicity. I think the Guatemalan reference should be taken out unless we can source it. Longdaysjourney 07:36, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

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Re: Sterile Guatemalan tribes, I did a cursory search for evidence of this and haven't found anything yet. It's quite a hefty claim to make without any evidence to support it. 2 June 2006

Guatemala tribes claim

Since the Guatemala tribes claim made me initially suspicious (it has too much of the "those ignorant savages" attitude about it) and it seesm to have done the same for others, I've moved it to here for now:

There have been confirmed reports of tribes in Guatemala being entirely unable to create a new generation of children due to the accidental usage of Pennyroyal in their cooking.

--Saforrest 14:09, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Prudent move. Safez (talk) 02:52, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Mentha pulegium or a Hedeoma in Pennyroyal, Kentucky?

Isn't the Pennyroyal region of Kentucky, mentioned in the last paragraph, most likely to have got its name from either Hedeoma pulegioides, the American False Pennyroyal, or Hedeoma hispida, Rough False Pennyroyal?

I say this because these two are definitely American species present in Kentucky,

[Hedoema pulegioides distribution]

[Hedoema hispida distribution]

whereas the Pennyroyal in this article is European, and although it has been introduced to the United States, Kentucky is not marked on the USDA website as being one of the states,

[Introduced Mentha pulegium distribution].

If it is named after a Hedeoma rather than the Pennyroyal here, the comment should be on that page.

Thoughts? Bumper12 23:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Have now moved the Kentucky statement to the Hedeoma pulegioides page, as the Pennyroyal region in Kentucky is named after that and not Mentha pulegium. Bumper12 00:58, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Clean up

As well as removing advice, I am moving the paragraphs about fleas, ants and spiders here, as there is no source:

The oil is also used as a flea repellant for pets. This latter usage is the origin of the plant's Latin species name, the flea being Pulex irritans. However the distantly related American Pennyroyal or Hedeoma pulegioides is the source of much of what is called pennyroyal oil.

Sprinkling the dried form of the herb is also known to repel spiders. The oil can also be used to deter ants.

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 11:43, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Pennyroyal in the Demeter Myth

According to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Demeter was given a drink called kukeon made from water, barley and pennyroyal by Metaneira. It is thought consumption of this drink was part of the initation ritual for the Eleusinian Mysteries. Worth adding perhaps? Thomaschina03 (talk) 12:01, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Etymology of 'Pennyroyal'

I was interested to know how the plant came to be named 'Pennyroyal', and could not find anything in the article. AlternativeGuru (talk) 01:50, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

A biologist told me that the Royal Marine used to keep the water in the barrels "fresh" by adding Pennyroyal.  The man was a highly educated person, bu I can't ask him about his sources any more 'cause he passed away. Can't find anything in Internet neither...  dreysacz from KrautPedia  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:582:8015:5600:7969:8B13:9AF3:F688 (talk) 11:06, 30 July 2016 (UTC) 

So am I. --Terminally uncool (talk) 07:58, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Move back to Pennyroyal, split off a Mentha pulegium stub?

This article was just moved from Pennyroyal to Mentha pulegium. While an improvement in some ways over the previous state (where two species were mentioned in the lead sentence, but a taxobox showed only one), there really is no content in the article which is clearly specific to M. pulegium. There isn't even a description of the plant. Confusion between the two species is deep-rooted. I can't see full text of all the references, but it appears that many of the medical reports don't give a scientific name for the plant, and at least one names the wrong plant (see [1] which is purportedly about M. pulegium, but describes it as having a range from Canada to Florida and as far west as Nebraska; this is a good description of the range of H. pulegioides, but not M. pulegium). Even if a scientific name were given in the medical literature, I'm not sure I'd trust it. Adulteration is common in the herbal products industry (especially when plants are easily confused); a label which states that a supplement contains M. pulegium is not necessarily accurate. Another source used in the article ([2]) shows a photo of a bottle of pennyroyal labeled Mentha pulegium; the product was manufactured in the United States. Did the manufacturer have a cultivated source of M. pulegium, or import it from Europe, or did they use the American species and mislabel it?

Confusion is so pervasive, that I think it makes more sense to have an article at Pennyroyal about both plants (focusing on uses and toxicity) and splitting off a stub article for Mentha pulegium. See Chamomile for a similar case where two plants are often confused.Plantdrew (talk) 16:38, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Common name "squaw mint"

I just reverted and then unreverted an IP editor's removal of the common name "squaw mint" from this article. I had initially thought that RS supported the name for M. pulegium in addition to H. pulegioides - however I think what's happening is the Wikipedia Ouroboros eating its tail again. Sources from the 20th century seem to exclusively use the name to apply only to H. pulegioides - which makes sense because it's a New World species and "squaw" is a dated reference to a Native American woman. However in sources from the 2010s and later, it's common to see it applied to M. pulegium as well. These references are usually similar in phrasing to this article itself, which suggests they were originally cribbed from it. Without doing a long cyber sleuthing session, I'm guessing it was originally part of this article because it began its life as an article on "Pennyroyal" without disambiguation of the two species. On that basis, I think we should leave it out, barring a very clearly independent RS for the name (preferably pre-Wikipedia). Sauzer (talk) 13:26, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

To add to article

To add to this article: mention of the Portuguese pennyroyal liqueur, licor de poejo. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 00:26, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

"has caused some deaths"?

I've added a reference to the "has caused some deaths" in the first paragraph, but the phrase sounds extremely wishy-washy to me. Is there some other phrase we can use that sounds more, well, encyclopedic? -- Dan Griscom (talk) 01:36, 31 October 2023 (UTC)