Source

Calendula is a well-known garden plant, sometimes growing wild, with a peculiar and rather disagreeable odor, and a bitter, rough, saline taste. Both the leaves and the flowers are employed.

Medical Properties And Action

It is slightly stimulant, diaphoretic, antispasmodic, sudorific, and emmenagogue, but is seldom used internally. It contains a bitter principle known as calendulin.

Therapeutic Uses

Calendula has been employed in low forms of fevers, scrofula, jaundice, amenorrhea, etc. Externally it is used in the form of tincture - Tinctura Calendula - in its full strength or diluted, and is very serviceable in exercising a curative influence in the treatment of incised wounds and contusions, preventing inflammation and suppuration. Some writers consider it to be unequaled as a local application after surgical operations, as it promotes union by first intention. It is applied as a lotion on lint. It is also thought to be a preventive against gangrene and tetanus.

Dose

Of the tinctura of calendula,

to

Dental Uses

Calendula, in the form of tincture, is employed in dental practice as an application to wounded or irritated pulps of teeth, when partially exposed; also after the extraction of teeth; wounds about the mouth; and in such cases it proves a very useful remedy. A few drops added to a wine-glass of water form a soothing and efficient mouth-wash for the soreness resulting from the removal of salivary calculus: also useful in superficial inflammations of the mucous membrane of the mouth, etc.