Argemone Mexicana - Traditional Medicine

Traditional Medicine

The Seri of Sonora, Mexico use the entire plant both fresh and dried. An infusion is made to relieve kidney pain, to help expel a torn placenta, and in general to help cleanse the body after parturition.

When the Spanish arrived in Sonora they added this plant to their pharmacopia and called it cardosanto, which should not be mistranslated to blessed thistle (Cnicus benedictus). Use in Hispanic cultures includes as a sedative and analgesic tea, including for use to help alleviate migraine headaches. The seeds are taken as a laxative.

Argemone mexicana is used by traditional healers in Mali to treat malaria.

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