Healing clay

The use of medicinal clay in folk medicine goes back to prehistoric times. Indigenous peoples around the world still use clay widely, which is related to geophagy. The first recorded use of medicinal clay goes back to ancient Mesopotamia.

A wide variety of clays are used for medicinal purposes—primarily for external applications, such as the clay baths in health spas (mud therapy). Among the clays most commonly used are kaolin and the smectite clays such as bentonite, montmorillonite, and Fuller's earth.

The first recorded use of medicinal clay is on Mesopotamian clay tablets around 2500 B.C. Also, ancient Egyptians used clay. The Pharaohs’ physicians used the material as anti-inflammatory agents and antiseptics. It was used as a preservative for making mummies and is also reported that Cleopatra used clays to preserve her complexion.

The Ebers Papyrus of about 1550 BC (but containing the tradition going back many centuries earlier) is an important medical text from ancient Egypt. It describes the use of ochre for a wide variety of complaints, including for intestinal problems, as well as for various eye complaints.

This was a clay used in Classical Antiquity. It was mined on the island of Lemnos. Its use continued until the 19th century, as it was still listed in an important pharmacopoeia in 1848 (the deposits may have been exhausted by then).

Pliny reports about the Lemnian earth:

if rubbed under the eyes, it moderates pain and watering from the same, and prevents the flow from the lachrymal ducts. In cases of haemorrhage it should be administered with vinegar. It is used against complaints of the spleen and kidneys, copious menstruation, also against poisons, and wounds caused by serpents.

Lemnian clay was shaped into tablets, or little cakes, and then distinctive seals were stamped into them, giving rise to its name terra sigillata—Latin for 'sealed earth'. Dioscorides also commented upon the use of terra sigillata.

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