Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Colchicine
/ˈkɒltʃɪsiːn/noun
An alkaloid drug taken from the autumn crocus, used against gout and familial Mediterranean fever.
The Greek roots
κολχικόν
kolchikón
plant of Colchis
Literally: “the Colchian plant”
Follow a root:κολχικόν1 word
The story of the word
Colchis, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, was Medea's country and the ancient world's standing address for poison, so the deadly autumn crocus was called κολχικόν, the Colchian. Pelletier and Caventou pulled the alkaloid out of its corms in 1820. Alexander of Tralles was already prescribing the plant for gout in the sixth century, and the drug is prescribed for gout still, with the dose that treats and the dose that kills sitting uncomfortably close together.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
In a sentence
Colchicine took the swelling out of his toe in a day.
Plant breeders use colchicine to double a chromosome set.