By drying, fermenting, or a treatment with acids, this is changed to sugar, alizarin and purpurin, which were first isolated by the French chemist Pierre Jean Robiquet in 1826.

The pulverised roots can be dissolved in sulfuric acid, which leaves a dye called garance (the French name for madder) after drying.

In 1869, the German chemists Graebe and Liebermann synthesised artificial alizarin, which was produced industrially from 1871 onwards, effectively ending the cultivation of madder.

[citation needed] The plant's roots contain several polyphenolic compounds, such as 1,3-Dihydroxyanthraquinone (purpuroxanthin), 1,4-Dihydroxyanthraquinone (quinizarin), 1,2,4-Trihydroxyanthraquinone (purpurin) and 1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone (alizarin).

[1] Early evidence of dyeing comes from India where a piece of cotton dyed with madder has been recovered from the archaeological site at Mohenjo-daro (3rd millennium BCE).

Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder (De Re Natura) mention the plant (which the Romans called rubia passiva).

The oldest European textiles dyed with madder come from the grave of the Merovingian queen Arnegundis in Saint-Denis near Paris (between 565 and 570 AD).

Turkey red was a strong, very fast red dye for cotton obtained from madder root via a complicated multistep process involving "sumac and oak galls, calf's blood, sheep's dung, oil, soda, alum, and a solution of tin.

Greek workers familiar with the methods of its production were brought to France in 1747, and Dutch and English spies soon discovered the secret.

The root was recommended in the treatment of yellow jaundice, obstruction of the spleen, the melancholy humour, palsy, sciatica, and of bruises.