I had a deuce of a time trying to figure out exactly where this question should go on the boards. This is where I finally concluded (after deep consideration).
Little background, at least for my introduction to the term. I first heard of the fabled drug Nepenthe when I read about it in Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven’. I think I was in high school. I don’t know if any of you international posters know. But in the USA it is customary to read it for Hallowe’en. Which I suppose is irrelevant to this discussion. But I was immediately struck by this drug. I mean, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were a drug that could help you thru sorrow, or any other problem in life (I’m a staunch materialist and pragmatist, in life)? But this is also irrelevant to my question.
Anyways, Nepenthe was supposedly a very powerful drug. I mean, hashish and I think opium were among the likely candidates for it. The reason why I ask about Borage, is because it is so relatively innocuous. People once thought it made men merry. But any psychoactive affect from it is only placebo. You can actually get it in any reputable herbal store, as a tea, or a capsule.
So was Borage the fabled Nepenthe of the ancients? Thank you in advance for you civil and helpful replies.
There must be hundreds of innocuous plants known to the ancients. Why pick borage? It appears that it was a magical/poetic substance known only to the gods, like nectar and ambrosia. Is there any record of humans using nepenthe?
According to the Wikipedia article you cite, Pliny the Elder and Dioscurides thought nepenthe was borage, so you’re in good company. Apparently it was widely thought to be cannabis recently. I could see both as possibilities, and there are, no doubt, others. You’d need some more definite reason to select one from among the candidates.
I see from the page on Borage that’s it’s considered carcinogenic, so my preference would be to stay away from it.
Borage contains small amounts of pyrrolizidine alkaloids (another herb containing PAs is comfrey) and thus, especially if consumed in quantity could cause liver disease and potentially cancer. The risk is probably low if from time to time you put a couple of borage leaves into iced tea to enjoy the subtle cucumber taste (assuming you like cucumbery iced tea) and want to “repress the fuliginous vapour of dusky melancholie”. It’s also decorative in the garden for its small blue flowers.
Consuming borage oil sounds more problematic, and avoiding the herb altogether during pregnancy is advisable.
Not a factual answer but I’ll just note that one possibility would be that the actual plant - if there really was one - could have been overused and made extinct. Similarly, there could have been a variant of Borage that had this property and that the variant was used to extinction.
Again, I have no idea if that’s applicable, just throwing it out there as a possibility. Plants don’t leave much of a fossil record, on average, so it’s hard to answer questions like these.
