If you think I'm about to suggest applying marshmallows to your irritated skin, you are right. It is a little-known fact that marshmallows, now made of sugar and gums, were once made from a plant called the marshmallow plant. Marshmallows are an old-time confection, and their main ingredient originally was a mallow plant that is inclined to grow – guess where – in the marsh. Its roots contain a large quantity of a very slimy substance called mucilage. Several centuries ago, a very chic dessert called pate de guimauve was made by grinding the root and adding the resulting powder to beaten egg whites and sugar. The end result, served at many a royal dinner, was also known as marsh-mellows. In time, the ground marshmallow root in the confection was replaced by animal gels and gums. Today, there is hardly a natural ingredient in those sticky sweets found at the grocery store, but this wasn’t always the case.

Though we no longer use marshmallow root in candy making, herbalists have always used and continue to use marshmallow to sooth irritated tissue, whether inside or outside the body. The plant is native to Europe, but it can now be found growing in most moist spots worldwide.

If you have a wound that won’t heal, a wound that you want to heal quickly, or a patch of skin that is giving you a problem, laying some marshmallow on it will get the healing process going.

The marshmallow belongs to a very slimy group of plants, the mallow family, which includes okra, cotton, hibiscus, and hollyhock. The common denominator with these plants is their production of a viscous slime. If you have ever eaten okra, or bindi as it is called in Indian cuisine, you are familiar with the substance in question. One thousand species of mallows have been discovered around the globe, and all have this slimy quality to a greater or lesser degree.

The mucilage in mallow plants is a complex sugar composed of a number of polysaccharides. One of these is made up of 1-rhmanose, d-galactose, d-galacturonic acid, and d-glucuronic acid. The structure of the polysaccharides contained in marshmallow is such that they cannot be digested by the human body. Beyond polysaccharides, the root contains pectin, asparagine, and tannins.

Marshmallow is the most famous of the mallow family for soothing irritated tissues. The indigestible nature of its mucilage means that when you are taking marshmallow for internal irritations, the slime will slither its way down the entire digestive tract, soothing as it goes and guaranteeing relief from top to bottom.

The leaves of the marshmallow plant as well as the root are used as medicine. Marshmallow leaves are of a slightly different chemical makeup. They contain the same mucilage as the roots, but they also come packing flavonoids including kaempferol, quercetin, and diosmetin glucosides; additionally, the leaves contain the coumarin scopoletin and phenolic acids including syringic acid, caffeic acid, salicylic acid, and vanillic acid.

We aren’t’ really accustomed to putting many slimy things in our mouths, and as such, vegetables like okra have a limited following. Though our palates may have a problem with the consistency, our tissues love the stuff. The internal uses of marshmallow include healing irritated respiratory, digestive, and urinary systems, where it acts as a soothing anti-inflammatory. Here, however, our concern is the skin.

When it comes to the skin, marshmallow has been used to treat abscesses, boils, varicose veins, ulcers, inflammations of the mouth and throat, inflamed hemorrhoids, wounds, burns, scalds, and bedsores. One of the most famous uses for marshmallow is in "drawing creme," so-called because when a paste of marshmallow and slippery elm is applied to a splinter, thorn, or even a bee stinger, the cream will almost miraculously draw out the offending item and speed the wound’s healing.

I had never had the chance to use marshmallow on a bee sting until recently, and I was astounded at the results. My nephew Nicholas was out playing in my mother’s yard when he came across a nest of hornets which promptly attacked him in the vicious manner for which they are famous. I happened to be at the house when he was stung, but I didn’t have my herb bag with me. As the poor child screamed, I noticed some marshmallow growing in my mother’s herb garden. In a matter of minutes, I had ground the leaves in the food processor and packed them on my nephew’s stings. A Virginia hornet sting can hurt a grown-up for days, and for kids it’s even worse. I am happy to report that my nephew’s pain went away completely within two hours’ time!

After this event, I came across a paragraph in Maude Grieve’s A Modern Herbal that backed up my experience: The fresh leaves, steeped in hot water, and applied to the affected parts as poultices, also any place where stung by wasps or bees take away the pain, inflammation, and swelling. Pliny stated that the green leaves, beaten with nitre and applied drew out thorns and prickles in the flesh.

If you have active kids or are an active adult, keep either a marshmallow plant in the garden or some dried leaves in stock for times when someone has a run-in with a winged terrorist or a splintery piece of wood. Gerard was in agreement with all of this, but he also included any occasion when pain emanated from the skin: The mucilage or slimie juice of the roots, is mixed very effectively with all oils, ointments, and plasiters that slacken and mitigate paine. It cureth rifts of the fundament, it comforteth, defendeth, and preserveth dangerous greene wounds from any manner of accidents that may happen there, it helpeth digestion in them, and bring old ulcers to maturation.

Early herbalists felt that marshmallow not only relieved pain, but also sped the healing process. During Gerard’s day, people with fresh wounds that refused to heal were treated with marshmallow to good effect. The same is true today.

Marshmallow was described by Dioscorides 2,000 years ago, so we are fairly safe in saying that it has been used in domestic medicine from the earliest periods. During the eighth century A.D., Charlemagne demanded that it be cultivated in his domain due to its healing capacity. He did this not necessarily for humanitarian reasons. Charlemagne kept an army of soldiers pretty busy, and he liked to get them back in action as soon as possible after they were wounded. Marshmallow grows throughout Europe, Asia Minor, and western and northern Asia and is used to heal the skin everywhere it is found.

The scientific name for marshmallow is Althaea officinalis, which comes from its ancient uses. Althos in Greek means to heal, and the plant was called "the official healer." Besides using it in medicine, both the Romans and the Egyptians ate the root as a vegetable. Grieve says that the poor in Syria use the marshmallow root for food on a regular basis. In the Bible, it is cited as a food eaten in times of famine. Personally, I would have to be pretty hungry to put the slimy stuff in my mouth, but maybe it’s not bad with butter.

If you have a wound that won’t heal, a wound that you want to heal quickly, or a patch of skin that is giving you a problem, laying some marshmallow on it will get the healing process going. Grieve also said this about the plant: "The powdered or crushed fresh root make a good poultice that will remove the most obstinate inflammation and prevent mortification. Its efficacy in this direction has earned its name of mortification root." What a lovely name, rotting flesh root! Well, the realities of life aren’t all that pretty either, and you really don’t want any part of you to rot. Here again we see the powerful attributes of the plant: when it was laid on a wound, it prevented gangrene.