Ash & Honey: The Root and The Road- S 1-E 2: The Pechoti Gland Doesn't Exist. Castor Oil Does

The Pechoti gland doesn't exist. It has never appeared in any anatomical text — pre-industrial or modern, Eastern or Western. And yet right now, millions of people are putting castor oil in their belly buttons every night because a viral claim told them it connects to 72,000 nerves and detoxes their organs. It doesn't. But castor oil itself? Three thousand years of real, documented, specific medicinal history — and almost none of it is what your feed is telling you.

This week, Alexandria Quinn Love, M.A. traces castor oil from the Ebers Papyrus (1550 BCE) — where Egyptian physicians documented it for eye irritation protection, not lash growth — through Dioscorides' De Materia Medica, medieval European medicine, and the Eclectic physicians of 19th century America. She covers the real documented uses (including why pre-industrial midwives used it for centuries — and why modern science just confirmed they were right), addresses internal use directly with the caution it deserves, and explains why Castrol motor oil is literally named after this ingredient. Plus a safe, historically grounded, vettable takeaway you can actually use.

Twenty days of personal empirical data on castor oil and eyelash growth also features. The data is not encouraging.

History first. Grain of salt always. Your belly button is not a detox portal.

Ash & Honey: The Root and The Road is hosted by Alexandria Quinn Love, M.A. — historian, formulator, and founder of Ash & Honey Botanique.

Nothing on this show is medical advice. Talk to your licensed practitioner before making any health practice a regular part of your life.

Search Ash & Honey: The Root and The Road wherever you listen.

The road was always there. Someone always walked it. Now — so do you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome back to Ash and Honey, The Root and the Road. I'm Alexandria Quinn Love, and I warned you we would go free range. Some episodes are going to be ancient history. Some are going to be social media posts that have literally made me put my phone down and just stare at the wall. Not much else I could have done. And some are going to be both. And some, like today, start with a personal failure so specific, I probably should have just kept it to myself. But here goes. Years ago, I had been using lash extensions. My lashes had thinned out. They'd honestly just given up. And somewhere on my social media feed I came across a post that promised Master Oil would fix them. So I tried it. For twenty days, every night, it somehow migrated from my lash line into my bangs overnight without fail. And apparently decided it liked it there. Because day three in, my bangs had fully committed to a look I can only describe as a front greaser, not the cool slick back kind, the kind where the front just gives up and plasters itself to your forehead. My shampoo tried, bless its heart, but it took one look at what was happening and said, Honey, no, I am not equipped for this. So I rinsed, I repeated, I rinse, still greasy, still shiny, still very much a greaser situation happening on my forehead every single morning. Oh, and my eyes talk about fire. The haze was real. I genuinely could not see clearly for the first half hour after application. What did I do? I kept doing it anyway. The full twenty days. Because I had committed, and also because I kept thinking to myself, surely, tomorrow is the day we're gonna see some improvements. The lashes will arrive. They did not arrive. Was I doing it wrong? Perhaps. But here's what nobody told me before I went anywhere near my face with that bottle. What castor oil was actually for, where it actually came from, and why what's circulating on the social media feeds looks nothing like the original. Before we go any further, your grain of salt. Take it now. Salt preserved what mattered and cut through what had gone off. That's its job again today. Not just on the claim we're about to look at, but on everything I tell you. Hold on to it the whole way through. And real quick, nothing here is medical advice. I mean that. And we'll go into that more at the end. Pastor oil is one of the oldest documented medicines we have. Not old in the way wellness brands mean it. Ancient feeling, vaguely traditional. No, old in the way that means we found it in Egyptian tombs dating back to 4000 BC. Not just mentioned in a text, in the actual tombs pressed from the seeds of the Racinus Communis, thick enough to burn as lamp oil through long desert nights. The Ibra's papyrus, one of the oldest complete medical documents in existence, dating to around 1550 BC, dedicates an entire chapter to the castor bean, laxative, remedy for abscesses, treatment for boldness. And here's the one that's going to land a little bit differently now that you've heard my eyelash story. Protection for the eyes from irritation. The Egyptians were using castor oil around their eyes, just not for lash growth. Turns out that particular ambition is entirely modernly ours. Castor oil traveled. Greece, Rome, the Arab world, medieval Europe. Castor oil shows up everywhere. Useful things always do. The Romans called it palmachristi, hand of Christ, because its reputed healing property, and they were not subtle about it. Castor oil was even detected as an embalming material on the Ptolemaic mummy dating to 100 BC. This ingredient has been inside human hands, human medicine, and human ceremony for longer than most civilizations have existed. By the time it reached the eclectic physicians of 19th century, the last major wave of botanical medicine before pharmaceuticals took over, castor oil had 3,000 years of documented specific named use behind it, not as a cure, as a tool, a particular tool for particular jobs. That distinction matters because what's on social media feeds right now keep the ingredient, but they threw out everything else. Let's look at what the historical records actually show. And this is where it gets specific, because specific is exactly what the viral claim is not. In ancient Egypt, primarily a purgative, the Hearst papyrus, written around the same era as the Evers, documents castor oil preparations used internally to expel fluid and promote diuresis, and topically as poultice for wound bandaging. The Egyptians already knew it was powerful enough to be dangerous internally. Their own texts specify that castor preparations for oral ingestion should only be used in small amounts. Three thousand years ago, they already knew. In ancient Greece, the physician Dioscorides, writing in Demateria Medica around sixty CE, documented castor oil for Erescipalis, a bacterial skin infection, as well as burns, varicose veins, and as an expectorant in anti-inflammatory, named conditions, named applications, not just general wellness. For centuries, across multiple traditions, castor oil was used to induce labor. This isn't folk myth. Modern scientists at the Max Planck Institute have identified exactly why it works. A receptor called EP3 on cells of the intestine and uterus is activated by ricinoleic acid. The pre-industrial midwives didn't know the mechanism, but they knew the outcome, and they were right. Notice this what's consistent across every single one of these traditions, specificity, named conditions, specific applications, specific people. Nobody in the pre-industrial record was telling you to sleep in it. Now, the internal use. I want to be very direct here because this is where the historical record in social media are telling you two completely different things. The pre-industrial physician who used castor oil internally was not casual about it. The Egyptians themselves flagged the risk 3,000 years ago. This is a powerful intervention, not a wellness ritual, not something you add to your morning routine because you've seen it on social media. The risks are real. The interaction with certain medical conditions and medications are real. Now, when I talk to you about castor oil, I am not going to give you a mouse because this is precisely the kind of thing that belongs in a conversation with your licensed practitioner. And before we move on, just a little note. As in castor oil, as in the stuff currently in the bottle on your nightstand, shares its name with what kept World One aircraft engines running. So yeah, specific, careful practitioner first, always. So here's what, and I have a hard time saying this, what I came across on social media recently. Put castor oil in your belly button every night. For hair growth, for organ detox, for hormone balance, for better sleep. The list depends on which post you land on. But the belly button is consistent across all of them. Millions of views, thousands of comments from people saying that it changed their life. The claim has a name attached to it, the Picotti method. The idea is that there's a gland behind the belly button called the Picoty gland that connects to 72,000 nerves and blood vessels throughout the body, making it a direct absorption highway for whatever you put on it. Okay, so here's what's true. Your belly button, it does exist. You can look right down, right now, and you can see it. Castor, it exists. Everything else from that post is invented. There is no Pacote gland. It does not appear in any anatomical text, pre-industrial or modern. It is not in Gray's anatomy. It is not an Avetic anatomical text. It is not any historical medical record from any tradition anywhere. It was not removed from medical literature. It was never in medical literature. It does not exist as a name structure in the human body. Your belly button, the umbilicus, was your connection to your mother's placenta before you were born. After birth, here's the thing: that connection closes. What remains is scar tissue. Your skin, it does absorb some substances topically, and castor oil applied to the abdominum may have some mild localized effects. But there is no absorption highway through your navel to your organs. That is not how anatomy works. And here's where I turn the grain of salt on myself, because that's the deal we make. I'm not saying the people sharing this post are lying. Most genuinely believe it. Some feel better after doing it. And that's real, even if the mechanism isn't. Warmth, ritual, slowing down before bed, paying attention to your body. Those things have genuine value. But the Pacodi gland isn't doing it. Your nervous system, your circadian rhythm, and your completely reasonable need for a moment of stillness are doing it. The ingredient borrowed a real reputation. The mechanism was invented. That's the gap. Okay, but let's be fair. Here's where castor oil actually holds up. And I'm giving you this because the show owes you the full picture. Topically, for skin, real. Ricinoleic acid, the primary fatty acid in castor oil, has documented anti-inflammatory properties. Dioscorides, documented for arcipulus and burns in 60 CE, applied to the surface of the skin for localized inflammation, joint discomfort, dry or irritated skin conditions. Historically documented and biologically coherent, your skin absorbs it. Something happens. That part is not invented. For hair and scalp, genuinely mixed. Historical present exists for oil treatments on the scalp across multiple traditions. Whether castor oil is the right tool depends entirely on your hair type, scalp condition, and constitution. What the pre-industrial record does not support is applying it to your eyelashes nightly for guaranteed growth. I have 20 days of empirical data on that one. As a purgative, real, documented, and definitely not casual. Talk to your practitioner on that one, full stop. But here's also something you can actually do, grounded in the same tradition we've spent this episode establishing. If you have a localized area of joint discomfort or dry irritated skin, not a wound, not broken skin, nothing systemic. A small amount of castor oil applied topically to that specific area and covered with a warm cloth, left for 20 minutes to 30 minutes, is historically documented, biologically coherent, and very low risk as an external application. Dioscorides documented it for inflammation. The racinoleic acid mechanism is verified by modern research. This is not a detox. It is not a protocol. It is one specific external localized application that the pre-industrial record actually supports. If you have a skin condition, a medical history, or any doubt, definitely talk to your practitioner first before trying it. And if you want to know whether it works, 20 days is apparently not the right timeline for eyelashes. For localized skin inflammation, give it a week and trust what your body tells you. The historical record consistently supports that castor oil is a specific tool for specific applications used with specificity by people who understand what they are actually doing and why. That's not a limitation. That's what makes something medicine instead of marketing. So here's where we're gonna land. Not because it does everything, but because it does specific things well in specific contexts for specific bodies. The belly button detox is not one of those things. The Pacoti gland does not exist. The mechanism was invented. They borrowed the ingredient's reputation and spread because it sounds plausible if you don't know the actual history. And the eyelashes, still not there. But I did learn something from those 20 nights. I learned exactly what castor oil feels like on skin. Thick, heavy, occlusive, which is precisely why it works as a topical for dry, inflamed, or irritated skin conditions. That's not a consolation price. That's the real thing. I just had it in the wrong place. So take the grain of salt, run it across everything, including this. Go look up the Evers papyrus, go look up racinoleic acid, go look up dioescorides. Check my work. That's the whole point. And before we go, the full version of what I have flagged at the top. I am not a doctor. Nothing on this show is medical advice. My experiences happened in my body with my history, and they are not a protocol for yours. Everybody is different, different history, different medication, different risks. Before you make anything we talk about here, a regular part of your life, especially anything internal, please talk to your licensed practitioner first. Some of what's discussed here could interact badly with something you're taking or wrong for a condition. That's not caution for caution's sake. It's true. And I'd rather say it plainly than you find out the hard way, like I did with the eyelashes. But you're already doing that. You're looking, you're researching, you're here, aren't you? The road was always there. Someone always walked it. Now so do you. Use the information from that road on the next thing that crosses your feet before it crosses your judgment. Let the burn teach you, let the honey keep you. Until next time, take care of yourself, my friend.