When the black death, the plague, raged in the Middle Ages, terrified people scoured the woods and marshes for medicinal herbs. They dug up angelica by the running streams and in damp clearings, for they felt certain that this plant would help them. Next to a plant called butterbur (in German, ‘plague root’), angelica was considered the most important remedy for combatting the plague. Contemporary descriptions of those dreadful times contain the most remarkable stories of the reliable help these remedies must have given. The old chronicles report that anyone who kept a piece of angelica root in his mouth all through the day would be preserved from the plague. Be that as it may, the strong aromatic taste of this root is due to an essential oil and the valerian, malic and angelic acids it contains.
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