Verbenalin is a chemical compound, classified as an iridoid glucoside, that is found in Verbena officinalis. It is one of the sleep-promoting (soporific) components in Verbena officinalis. Attenuated-total-reflectance infrared spectroscopy (ATR-IR) and near-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (NIR) in hyphenation with multivariate analysis was utilized to quantify verbenalin and verbascoside in Verbena officinalis. A new high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method as a reference was established and validated. For both vibrational spectroscopic methods test-set and cross validation were performed. Different data-pre-treatments like SNV, 1st and 2nd derivative were applied to remove systematic errors and were evaluated. Twelve iridoid glycosides have been evaluated for their anti-inflammatory activity on two models: the carrageenan-induced mouse paw edema and the TPA-induced mouse ear edema.