Herbal Remedies for Warts

Enlarge Image Image Gallery *Culpeper’s English Physician, London, circa 1794. Courtesy Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, ­Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

• Herbs to the rescue 

DADDY-Y-Y-Y!” my teenage daughter came crying to me. “It’s ugly! What can I do?” She pointed to her knee, where a rather large wart sat. In just a few months, it had grown from a tiny dot and was now very noticeable—it was summer, and she had just started wearing shorts.

I took my daughter to the local drugstore, where we bought an over-the-counter wart cream. I gave her directions for using it and promptly forgot about the matter until . . .

“DADDY-Y-Y-Y! It’s getting bigger!” After a few days of using the cream, my daughter was unnerved. To me the wart looked about the same size, but it surely hadn’t fallen off as promised by the cream’s manufacturer. So I took her to a dermatologist, who removed the wart surgically. Zip! No more wart! The procedure left a small scar, but it wasn’t big enough to be of concern—at least to me.

Then, several weeks later . . . “DADDY-Y-Y-Y! It’s back! I want to try out for cheerleaders! Do something!” Indeed, the wart had returned. Already it was bigger and meaner-looking than ever. I was desperate, but I kept my wits about me. I knew that the herb celandine had a long folk history as an effective wart remedy. Additionally, published scientific papers show that, when applied topically, celandine is an effective germ-fighter with few side effects.

Celandine grows like a weed in our garden, so I had an ample supply and suggested to my daughter that we experiment. Every day for a week after her evening shower, she was to go to the garden, pick celandine leaves, and squeeze juice from the leaf stems onto the wart. After seven days, we’d assess the situation to see whether celandine worked.

After one week, my daughter came running to me. “It’s shrinking—for the first time!” Eventually, it disappeared, once and for all.

The secret life of warts

A wart, or verruca, is a growth of skin. The common wart, Verruca vulgaris, typically occurs on the hands. Flat warts, V. plana, typically occur on the face. And the plantar wart, or V. plantaris (which derives its name from the plantar muscles of the foot), ­typically occurs on the soles of the feet. The genital (venereal) wart (Condyloma acuminatum) occurs on the genitals or in the perianal region.

All warts are evidence of the skin’s reaction to one of more than seventy-five strains of a DNA virus called human papillomavirus, or HPV. HPV infection causes the cells of the epidermis, the outermost layer of skin, to proliferate.