Useful and medicinal properties of the soapberry medicinal
( Tatar soap, soroca)
Perennial herbaceous plant up to 90 cm high with creeping branchy rhizome and reddish-brown wrinkled roots. Stems straight, branched only in the upper part. Leaves opposite, oblong-lanceolate or elliptical, rough at the edges, on short petioles. The flowers are pink or white, rather large, pleasantly smelling. Fruit - a box with numerous small kidney-shaped seeds. Blooms in June-August, fruits ripen in August-September.
occurs in the forest-steppe and steppe zones of the European part of Russia, in the Caucasus, less often in the south of Western Siberia, in the north of Kazakhstan and in Central Asia. Often bred as an ornamental plant.
Medicinal value has rhizomes with roots of the soap, called the red soap root. The active substances in them are triterpene saponins, the content of which reaches 20%.Rhizomes with roots are excavated in the autumn, shaken from the soil, if it is strongly humified, washed in water, dried in dryers, previously cleared from the ground parts. The color of the finished raw material is reddish-brown, in the fracture it is yellowish-white, there is no smell, the taste is sweet at first, then hot, mucous.
In the root of the soap dish contains saponins( soapy substances), so the decoctions of the root foam like soap and therefore are used for washing delicate woolen and silk fabrics.
Rhizomes and roots of the soap house have long established themselves as an expectorant for the treatment of bronchitis and other respiratory diseases. To dilute and facilitate expectoration of sputum, usually use cold infusion or decoction from the red soap root. As a strong expectorant, it is useful in all diseases of the respiratory tract( bronchitis, pertussis, etc.).In addition, the soap is a diuretic and cholagogue( with jaundice), used as a diaphoretic, laxative.
In homeopathy tincture is applied from the dried underground parts of the soap dish.
In folk medicine preparations from rhizomes and roots( sometimes from leaves) are used as a choleretic agent, with abundant accumulation of gases in the gastrointestinal tract, rheumatism and gout, and also for the treatment of various skin diseases( eczema, scaly lichen, furunculosis).With venereal diseases drink a decoction of a mixture of herbs.
The root of the soap is consumed externally with toothache( chewing), with angina( rinsing), from the common cold( drawing the broth into the nostrils).
Application of
Infusion is prepared based on 1 hour of a spoonful of raw material on a glass of cold boiled water. Insist 8 hours. Take 1/4 cup several times a day( preferably after eating), as an expectorant broth or infusion do not require soaking roots and removing foam. In other cases, the roots of the soap are finely chopped, soaked in water for 5-6 hours, several times draining the foam, then dried and made from them by a decoction in this way.
To improve the expectorant action of the decoction, it is recommended to add 5 grams of ammonia anise drops and baking soda( per cup of broth) to it, and to improve the taste, up to 20 g of syrup.
Decoction is prepared from the calculation of 6 g of root per glass of water and take 1 tbsp.spoon 3-4 times a day. Infusion and decoction have a diuretic and laxative effect.
We remind you that with the therapeutic use of the soap root, you should not allow an arbitrary overdose of the drugs, since the soap saponins have a locally irritating effect. Ingestion of large doses of infusion or decoction can cause nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea. In such cases, the treatment with a soap-dish should be stopped immediately.