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What is it?

The roots and leaves of Comfrey, a fast-growing, long-lived plant that forms a ‘rosette’ of lance shaped leaves (up to 30cms long) that put up a tall flowering stem up to 1.5 meters high. Comfrey leaves have many medicinal properties, they are rough textured and covered in short stiff hairs. The roots are also very famous in herbal medicine, they are short, thick, many-branched and they have a black surface with a white, chewy, mildly sweet interior.

How has it been used?

As some of its other names suggest, (knitbone, boneset) Comfrey has been prized since ancient times for its ability to help heal broken bones and damaged tissues. In modern times it has been discovered that this is at least in part due to a substance in Comfrey called ‘allantoin’ that is able to accelerate cellular 'mitosis', meaning it speeds the process of new tissue growth.

Comfrey has been historically used for all manner of injuries and accidents including but not limited to broken bones. It has an equally strong reputation for helping with external wounds that are poorly healing.

Comfrey has been used for ulceration anywhere along the gastrointestinal tract, for bleeding from the stomach, throat, bowel, bladder and lungs. Comfrey used to be used extensively for tuberculosis and irritating dry lung complaints in general.

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Personal experiences

One night in the mid-1980s, when I was early into my herbal studies, our house cat in Melbourne crossed the road and was hit by a car. We do not know how long she must have lain on the side of the road but when we finally found her she was not in any obvious pain but she looked destroyed and could not move her back legs.

My flat mate and I took her to the emergency vet in Carlton where they told us that her spine was broken and that the right thing to do would be to put her to sleep. We decided, and the Vet agreed with us, that as she was not in acute pain that we should take her home for a day or two for everyone to say goodbye and then come back for them to do the deed.

It just so happened that I had been reading about Comfrey at that time and as we went home I had what I can only describe as a compulsion to use some for our cat. I did have a small amount of the extract with me (I started using and experimenting with herbs practically from day one that I started learning about them) and, unusually for a cat, she seemed quite happy to take a few drops straight in her mouth.

I suppose I must have really believed it was going to do her some good because I managed to convince the others in the house to leave her in my care for more than just the next day. Over the coming week a little miracle happened that, to this day, my rational brain finds hard to fathom. She rested and slept nearly the entire time but she also slowly began moving herself more and more until finally, at the end of a week, she got out of her basket and walked again. Within a month she was running, no limp, no incontinence, and no sign of having had her spine broken in two.

They did an x-ray of her spine before they told us it was broken and that she therefore had no hope, if I could go back in time I would have taken a hat around my flat-mates to get the money to go back for a second x-ray. What an amazing proof for Comfrey that would have been! I wish I had taken her back for that follow up but when you are a student it is hard enough to pay the rent let alone find the money for a vet bill.

It was an extraordinary introduction to me to Comfrey and just how powerful healing herbs can truly be. In later years as I became aware of the controversy and cautions around Comfrey I greatly reduced my use of it but I have not forgotten it.

External applications of Comfrey leaf and root in poultices, creams etc. are no problem in terms of potential toxicity and they work beautifully. The internal use of Comfrey has to be undertaken with great sensitivity. Comfrey still performs little miracles in my practice to this day but I use it rarely and extremely carefully. Comfrey combines extremely well with Calendula and Plantain to help internal or external healing and for the short term treatment of digestive tract ulceration it can work perfectly well with Slippery elm and/or Licorice root.

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Excerpt from Felter & Lloyd's Kings Dispensatory from 1898

Comfrey root is very useful in diarrhoea, dysentery, bronchial irritation, coughs, hemoptysis, other pulmonary affections, leucorrhoea, and female debility. It is also of value in passive hemorrhages from the bowels, kidneys, or womb. Comfrey is demulcent and slightly astringent. With other mucilaginous agents it exerts an influence on mucous tissues, hence the cure, by their internal use, of many pulmonary and other affections in which these tissues have been chiefly implicated.

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