Before the pharmacy, before the prescription pad, there was the monastery apothecary — and on its shelves, without exception, sat the root of Althaea officinalis. Marshmallow Root has been trusted by Western healers for more than two thousand years, from Dioscorides in the first century to Nicholas Culpeper in the seventeenth, because it does something no synthetic medicine can replicate: it physically coats the gut wall with a soft, protective gel that shields inflamed tissue while it heals. That gel — called mucilage — can make up as much as 35% of the root's dry weight, making this one of the most remarkable protective substances in the entire botanical world. In the Gut Cleanser formula, Marshmallow Root is the protector — the herb that makes the deeper cleansing work of Cascara Sagrada safe, sustainable, and gentle on the tissue it moves through. This is the story of the plant that healers named "the medicine that heals."