The red pigment in the plants provides another benefit: It has been used as an effective fabric dye by the women of at least one Arabian tribe, the Manasir, many of whom now live in the United Arab Emirates. The dye produces a rich, colorfast crimson hue known as dami or 'blood-red.'
Maltese mushroom's use as both foodstuff and medicine goes back thousands of years. The ancient Hebrews ate the spikes in times of famine. In the Book of Job (30:4), starving Israelites consume a plant called 'juniper root'-and modern botanists say this is C. coccineum rather than the inedible root of the juniper bush. (The use of Maltese mushroom as a famine food was most recently reported in the Canary Islands in the 19th century.)
Arab physicians of the Middle Ages considered tarthuth 'the treasure of drugs' because it had a wealth of traditional therapeutic uses, particularly as a remedy for blood disorders, digestive ailments and reproductive problems, including impotence and infertility. The great early philosopher of the Arabs, the polymath Al-Kindi (800-870), compiled a medical formulary, or aqrabadhin, that mentions tarthuth as the main ingredient of a salve used to relieve acute itching caused by foreign matter under the skin. Al-Razi (865-925), known to Europeans as Rhazes and one of the most influential of all Islamic physicians, prescribed tarthuth as a remedy for hemorrhoids as well as for nasal and uterine bleeding.
The medicinal uses of tarthuth are also cited by Ibn Masawayh (777-857), a Persian Christian who directed a hospital and served as personal physician to four caliphs at Baghdad, and by Maimonides, the celebrated 12th-century Hispanic Jewish doctor and philosopher who was court physician to Saladin in Egypt. Ninth-century Chaldean scholar Ibn Wahshiya, best known for his work Nabataean Agriculture, wrote a toxicological treatise called the Book on Poisons which includes tarthuth as a key ingredient in several antidotes.
Knowledge of the medicinal value of tarthuth was eventually passed to the Europeans-and here the plant's history takes an unusual turn. In the 16th century, the 'treasure of drugs"' became the closely guarded treasure of the Knights Hospitaller in Malta. The Hospitallers, or Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, were a fighting order formed at Jerusalem during the First Crusade, some four centuries earlier. They had a dual military and medical mission, and operated a 1000-bed hospital in Jerusalem, providing care for the sick and injured. It was there, in Palestine, that Hospitaller physicians first learned of tarthuth from their Muslim counterparts and began using the plant in their treatments.
When the Muslims recaptured Palestine from the Crusaders, the Knights Hospitaller moved their headquarters to the island of Rhodes and eventually to Malta, the strategically vital island group south of Sicily, where they were pleased to find tarthuth growing on a tiny islet.
Off the west coast of Gozo, the smaller of the two main Maltese islands, there is an irregular block of limestone rising from the sea, some 180 meters long and about 60 meters high (600 by 200') with a flattish, sloping top and sheer cliffs on all sides. Today this islet is called Fungus Rock. It is also known to the Maltese as Gebla tal-General, General's Rock, after a Hospitaller naval squadron commander credited with discovering it. Here, on the tabletop islet, C. coccineum, Maltese mushroom, grew in abundance.
On orders from their grand master, the knights quickly took control of Fungus Rock, placed guards on the mainland and barred access to any but their own. They hacked all ledges from the sides of the islet to keep people from climbing the cliffs. Trespassers who tried anyway were imprisoned and made galley slaves. Thieves who managed to steal Maltese mushroom were reportedly put to death. The only way to reach the island's top was by a primitive and precarious 'cable car' rigged on ropes and pulleys and connected to poles on the mainland. A version of that cable car, a wooden box, survived into the early 19th century, and English traveler Claudius Shaw made the dangerous crossing in 1815:
It is not a very pleasant sensation to be suspended some hundred feet above the water, and if there is any wind, the mov
The Arabs and other Muslims of the Middle Ages were the most sophisticated medical practitioners of their time and well acquainted with experimental methods. Clinical and therapeutic works written in Arabic and translated into Latin found their way into Europe's best medical schools. The massive and authoritative Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) was translated in the 12th century and served as the standard textbook for medical training in European universities even well into the 18th century. Given their medical expertise, the Arabs may well have been correct in calling Cynomorium coccineum 'the treasure of drugs.'
With the growing popularity of alternative and holistic medicine in recent decades-a trend now taken seriously by pharmaceutical companies and government health institutes-researchers have been exploring the claims of traditional therapies and herbal medicines, looking for new, scientifically supported treatments and applications.
'Interest in medicinal plants as a re-emerging health aid has been fueled by the rising costs of prescription drugs in the maintenance of personal health and well-being, and the bioprospecting of new plant-derived drugs,' report Lucy Hoareau and Edgar J. DaSilva of UNESCO's Division of Life Sciences. 'Developed countries, in recent times, are turning to the use of traditional medicinal systems that involve the use of herbal drugs and remedies,' they note in the Electronic Journal of Biotechnology (1999). 'About 1400 herbal preparations are used widely, according to a recent survey in Member States of the European Union.'
So it is not surprising to learn that scientists have been testing the properties of tarthuth. In 1978, researchers reported in an Iranian medical journal that Cynomorium coccineum harvested in Iran was 'found to possess significant blood pressure lowering activity' when tested on dogs. The strong hypotensive effect occurred chiefly in tests involving the fresh juice of the plant, or juice dissolved in water. Dried, powdered tarthuth was also tested but without so significant an effect. The researchers suspected the fresh samples enjoyed a 'special molecular arrangement' that caused the reduction in blood pressure. This study suggests that the traditional belief in tarthuth's value as a remedy for blood ailments warrants further investigation.
Saudi researchers have also worked on some of the plant's reputed health properties. Based on their initial findings, the traditional claims that Maltese mushroom improves fertility and reproductive vigor may have a basis in truth as well. Three recent studies at King Saud University found that extracts of Cynomorium coccineum, administered orally, had significant positive effects on the reproductive development and fertility levels of male and female rats. The results were published in the international journals Phytotherapy Research (1999 and 2000) and Ethnopharmacology (2001).
Modern scientific studies of this strange parasitic plant are clearly in their early stages. But they seem to be worth pursuing. Ethnopharmacology-the study of traditional plant and herbal remedies-is a burgeoning field with great social and commercial promise, and further research may indeed show there is much more to Maltese mushroom than a delightful desert treat
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www.itmonline.org/arts/cynomorium.htm