CommonName: Akee | ScientificName: Blighia sapida
December 31, 2010I first came accross Akee while visiting Jamaica, twenty years ago. It was served with salt cod and “Akee and Codfish” I was convinced that it was one of the most delicious foods I have ever eaten. When I got back from Jamaica, I looked for it and found it canned in Carribean markets. However, What I later learned was the unless the Akee is prepared properly, it will kill you. And, you do by vomiting! It has always been my experience that food is better when prepared by someone who knows how to prepare the food; and this seems to really be the case with Akee!
It is a member of the Sapindaceae family which includes Lychee, Longan, Rambutan, and Kennips. So, a very useful and delicious group of tropical plants!
Common name: Malus sativus | Scientific name: Malus sativus
December 30, 2010
Resources
Long used by traditional societies to boost well being, various mushrooms have been shown to improve immune function. The list includes shitake (Lentinus edodes) (3), maitake (Grifola frondosa) (4), Porcini (Boletus edulis) (5), and the oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) (6). There is sufficient evidence to support these mushrooms being used during the cough and cold season to increase immunity to infections. There is data to support their being used in anticancer regimens. There is sufficient data for these foods to be used to bolster the health of small children with a history of inner ear infections. Mushrooms and their ability to stimulate immune function have been demonstrated in vitro and in animal and human studies. (3–6) The public needs to know about this tool of disease prevention.
Brown sugar has been used since time immemorial to boost health. It is used as a building tonic in India. In the New World tropics it is used to secure the health of the elderly, the young, and the sick. Brekhman demonstrated that brown sugar acts as a resistogen. Studies with test animals demonstrated that brown sugar raises resistance to stressors. On the other hand, refined sugar has been demonstrated to cause a host of diseases. The general public needs to know that if they want to sweeten their drinks, they should be sweetening them with unrefined cane sugar. (7)
Food and beverage represents an excellent opportunity to prevent disease. And, there is a significant data regarding foods and beverage for health. There is also significant interest on the part of the consumer to use foods for health. However, health food is at the moment a bit of a headless chicken. Some data needs additional research for its true relevance to become apparent. Other data is ready to be put into action. For foods for health to become totally realised, the subject must be taken on by a distinct discipline. In the hands of a discipline that concerns itself with food for health, all of the bits and pieces of data can be synthesized into useful information.
Posted in Archives, Food, Scientific Name, Scientific Name | Leave a commentEchinacea angustifolium Eclectic Physician’s Notes
December 30, 2010
Introduction
The Eclectics were living in western towns and had access to both the Native Americans that used Echinacea angustifolium, and the plant itself. They pioneered its study and discovered more about it than has been discovered in the 100 years since they stopped studying it. If you want to know about this plant, read what the Eclectics wrote about it in their textbooks! Here you will find all the excerpts.
One of the things I find really interesting is this…..they took an obscure plant, studied it, and discovered it had a million applications. To me, its the story of why its worth studying medicinal plants. You never know what amazing discovery you will find. Anyhow, without further fuss, here are the Eclectic notes on Echinacea.
ECHINACEAE ANGUSTIFOLIA
1892: Neiderkorn
An alterative of great value in strumous diathesis, syphilis, old sores and wounds. a powerful antiseptic, locally and internally, in diptheria, typhoid conditions, cholera infantum, and in blood poisoning.
1895: Watkins:
Strumous and syphilitic diathesis, ulceration with prfuse secretion, tendency to systemic poisoning, foul phagedenic ulcers, diarrhoea with nausea and vomiting, profuse and bad smelling discharges, purplish skin with bluish shining appearance, vesicular eruptions, viscid exudations, painful superficial irritations, burning of surface, breath offensive, dusky colored mucous membranes, profuse acrid saliva, tendency to gangrene and sloughing, weakness and emaciation. Ten drops to one drachm in four ounces water; teaspoonful every three hours.
1898; Webster; (Antiseptics, Antizymotics, Correctives)
ECHINACEA ANGUSTIFOLIA
This remedy promises to fill one of the most important purposes of any of this class. It is comparatively a new one, but has already afforded eminent satisfaction to quite a large number of Eclectics as a corrector of depraved states of the blood, where ordinary remedies have failed to satisfy the demand.
It resembles both baptisia and rhus tox., in some respects, though as a remedy for the septic phase of typhoid fever, where there is a tendency to gangrenous states it excels the former remedy, while in erysipelas where sloughing is imminent, it is preferable to the latter. Its action seems to be more that of restorative to the tissues generally than these, while it possesses none the less power as an antiseptic.
Dr. Meyer, of Nebraska , who introduced the remedy, has successfully administered it in diseases of the stomach, cholera infantum; cholera morbus; intermittent, remittent, congestive, continued and typhoid, fevers; and in small pox, measles, boils, carbuncles, ulcerated sore throat and ulcers of the lower extremities. According to his observation it has no superior in malarial fevers. In six out of ten cases of typhoid fever, two of the patients were out of bed on the eighth day, three on the tenth, and one on the twelfth. He asserts that twenty-five drops of the pure tincture injected into the rectum, in case of hemorrhoids, repeating the injections three times per day, will promptly effect a cure. He recommends it locally, as a cure for the effects of the stings of bees and wasps, snake bites and poisoning from rhus and other noxious plants. He makes the following statement regarding its value in rattlesnake bites:-
I injected some of the poison into my system, on the forefinger of the left hand; the swelling was rapid, and in six hours was up to the elbow. At this time I took a dose of the medicine, washed the swelling with it and lay down to sleep. I slept four hours, and on rising did not find a single sign of swelling on my finger or arm.? The recoveries from rattlesnake poisoning are effected in from one to two hours.
From his knowledge of the influence of this remedy upon other poisons, Dr. Meyer prophesied its success as a remedy for hydrophobia – which Professor Goss has, in a measure, verified, he having used it in the cases of two persons who had been bitten by a rabid dog; several months later no manifestation of the disease was apparent. He has had more success with it since.
Dr. Hayes, of Denver , Colorado , reported six cases of malignant diphtheria cured by this agent, in the Eclectic Medical Journal – where the principal portion of the information regarding it emanated. The first one he considered hopeless, and so informed the parents; but to his surprise, the patient, a girl twelve years of age, recovered upon echinacea, being convalescent in four days. The auxiliary treatment consisted of the inhalation of oil of eucalyptus, evaporated in hot water.
I have used it in one seemingly hopeless case of diphtheria with complete success. In another, where the evidence of malignant blood poisoning was pronounced by marked exhaustion, extensive exudation and sloughing of the fauces, the patient was tidied through to convalescence upon echinacea, but was afterward killed by injudicious feeding. Another genuine case – and this means a severe one – recovered promptly upon echinacea, and still another which had been saturated with the drug for several days previous to the onset, perished from blocking of the respiratory passages with exudate. It seems to be the remedy for the form where the blood depravation manifests itself in tendency to sloughing of the soft tissues, while it possesses no power to correct that condition which tends to the throwing out of plastic exudates. These four are the only genuine cases met with between the reading of the report referred to and this writing, but I have formed a very favorable opinion of the remedy from this limited experience. Diphtheria reports may usually be received with some allowance, considering the proneness of thoughtless or ignorant practitioners to include all cases of follicular tonsillitis – a harmless and self-limiting, though unpleasant condition, readily amenable to aconite and phytolacea, in combination – in the diagnosis.
Dr. Hayes reports success with echinacea in ?mountain fever.? Fifteen cases were successfully treated, all but one – which had been maltreated by another physician – recovering within fourteen days from commencement. Several cases of the same kind were aborted by the remedy, at an early stage. He also cured two cases of typhoid fever with it in twenty-one and fourteen days respectively. Both had been exposed to sewer gas.
I have employed echinacea in both typhoid and typhus fever, with the best of satisfaction. I believe that unless there is the serious abdominal complication demanding baptisia in alternation, or a pronounced indication of the tongue calling for some more-specific corrective, this agent may be safely relied upon in all cases of a dynamic fever, however classed nosologically. It is a sedative, and such influence is very acceptable in many such cases. It seems to correct the downward tendency of the fluids, restoring proper blood-making, secretion, excretion and innervation, probably by acting as an antiferment.
October 23, 1887, writes Dr. Hayes, in the report referred to, ?I was called to a case with a history of blood poisoning and treatment with caustic, mercuric bichloride and hot water – a man sixty-five years of age. Two physicians had given him up. I was much inclined to follow their example, but thought it a good case to test echinacea. On entering the room Professor Scudder’s ?rose’ and Professor Howe’s ?tandog’ were suggested by the intolerable stench. Examination revealed a mass of dead flesh between the metacarpal bones of the index finger and thumb of the right hand. Lifting it, the metacarpal bone lay bare the whole length, both extensor and flexor muscles having sloughed off. The old man was very weak and exhibited the characteristic symptoms of severe poisoning, so I dismissed the thought of amputation and applied the echinacea locally, diluting it one-half; also gave it internally full strength. At the end of a week the patient was out of bed.
?The other day he walked into my office and exhibited his hand. The chasm was pretty well filled with healthy flesh, the bone being visible at only one small point, the edges of the wound (?) contracted, and so covered with skin that it is reduced to less than one-third its former dimensions. Several times during the treatment I withdrew the internal medicine. Every attempt was followed in a short time by sloughing at some point.?
Shortly after my return from Europe (October, 1890) a rancher from San Bernardino county applied to me for relied from effects of a tarantula bite on the hand, received while working among his grape vines. The bite had been inflicted more than a month before I saw the hand, and plenty of time had elapsed for the effects of the poison to become manifested locally. The middle finger of the right hand over the dorsal aspect of the first phalanx, presented a purplish, sloughing ulcer, as large as a silver quarter, and the whole finger was enormously swollen its entire length, and presented a bluish, shiny appearance. The entire hand was purple and oedematous, while the patient was worn and emaciated from the constitutional effects of the poison and loss of rest resulting from the local discomfort. The home doctor had treated the case from the beginning, but nothing used had seemed to afford any benefit.
I prescribed echinacea as follows: -
R Echinacea (s. m.), fzss.
Glycerine, fzss.
Aqua, ad fzvi.
S. Take a teaspoonful every hour while awake. Also. -
R Echinacea (s. m.), fzss.
Aqua, ad fzvi.
S. Use to saturate a compress applied to the ulcer, wetting every two hours.
Thus I gave the agent singly, determined to allow it a fair field and no favors.
On the second day afterward I saw the hand, and was surprised at the evidence of improvement already visible; and within a week the angry appearance was all gone and ulcer nearly healed. All the malignant aspects of the case had given way, and a few days more sufficed to send the patient on his way rejoicing.
During the December following, one of my old patrons, a carpenter, accidentally inflicted an ugly wound across the back of his hand, with a saw, on a rainy day, and this, with the effects of a wetting received, resulted in serious prospects for the wounded member. When I first saw it, the ragged wound was everted, erysipelatous in appearance, the whole hand presenting an angry and oedematous aspect. The pain was severe, extending along the tendons of the extensors to the forearm, threateningly. Here I used the echinacea, both internally and locally, though the internal use was associated with that of aconite and rhus tox. A speedy recovery followed.
Dr Goss commends this agent very highly in syphilis – in both secondary and tertiary stages. Antisyphilitics are so few, and so unreliable generally, that we may well afford to investigate the merits of this new acquisition, in this direction.
The following extract is from an article on this agent, by Dr. W. E. Kinnett, published in the first volume of the Annals of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery . It suggests still further uses for it, as a plasma remedy: -
?I did not have to wait long to test my new medicine. I was treating a case of perityphilitis in a girl fifteen years old and it seemed that an abscess would be the result, most of the symptoms being present. I thought of my echinacea as an ?antiseptic? and a blood ?purifier?; I at once commenced administering internally, thirty drops every three hours, and saturated a cloth and applied to the part and kept it wet with the medicine continually. The symptoms of abscess soon began to disappear and my patient improved rapidly.
?I have made extensive use of echinacea in follicular tonsillitis, combining it or giving it alone. I have used it as a dressing for wounds and open sores and find it a very fine remedy, and in many cases superior to anything else I have found.
?I have also been using it in cases of cholera morbus and cholera infantum, combining it with neutralizing cordial in some cases, and in others I have combined it with other remedies that were indicated, such as aconite and nux vomica, and at other times giving it alone.
?I have just dismissed a very severe case of dysentery in a child two years old, which I treated mainly with echinacea, adding other indicated remedies. It sweetens the breath, corrects the very bad smell of the discharges from the bowels, and acts as a tonic.
I have injected it into pus cavities after evacuating them (using full strength) and they healed more rapidly than any I had previously treated. I have used it in two cases of rhus poisoning with success. It does not cause pain when applied to recent wounds. I have not had any cases of diphtheria since I have been testing the remedy. As soon as a case presents itself I will give echinacea a thorough trial. I administer it in doses of from five to thirty drops every two or three hours in water or syrup.?
I have recently been using echinacea in an aggravated case of rhus poisoning, which in California sometimes results in serious consequences. A year before, the patient, a youth who had been in the habit of going into the mountains with dogs and chasing rabbits until dripping with perspiration while breaking through the chaparral thickly lined with the shrub, was confined to his bed for three weeks suffering excruciatingly with the burning and itching all over the body, while his face was swollen beyond recognition. The following season he repeated the rabbit hunt and was again severely poisoned but was only confined to bed for a week. Echinacea was used internally, and as a bath, several times a day upon this occasion, the alcohol vapor bath being employed in connection with it. Since that time he has been exposed to the same influence with complete immunity from the poisonous effects of the scrub, several times.
1898; Webster; (Skin) – Echinacea Purparea
Echinacea is a remedy of rare virtue when superficial irritation of acute and painful character is met. Burning of the surface with redness is a good indication for its use. In some very severe cases of this kind I have met with gratifying success from the continued local and internal use of the remedy.
In chafing and other forms of erythema, echinacea is one of the most reliable remedies we possess, not only for temporary relief of the burning and itching, but for permanent cure. The internal use of the agent seems to relieve the system at large, or else th skin itself, of the irritable element with predisposes to the condition.
Form for Use. – A twenty-five per cent. dilution of the specific medicine or a saturated tincture in water. Cloths can be saturated with this and applied to the affected surface, or if this be impracticable, the part may be frequently bathed with the preparation. Internally, a teaspoonful may be given every hour or two.
1901: Locke
Specific echinaceae is made of the root gathered in the far west. This differs materially in properties from that grown farther east. It has but little taste, but leaves in the throat and tongue a tingling sensation.
This is a perenial herb with a thick, black root, the latter having a pungent taste. The plant grows to the heighth of two or three feet, being found in rocky and sandy soils.
This remedy is one of the most important of our recent accesions. It is both alterative and antiseptic. It is used in many disorders of the blood, as syphilis, scrofula, and chronic ulcerations. It is one of the reliable remedies for blood poisoning.
Echinaceae causes an excessive flow of saliva and perspiration. THe fresh root scraped and given freely is the treatment used by the sioux indians for snake bite. It is a remedy of some value in typhoid fever, and is well spoken of in diptheria, spinal meningitis, and in unhealthy conditions of the mouth and fauces. It may be employed in cases in which baptisia is useful.
The dose of this remedy ranges from two to ten drops of the specific preparation.
1905: Neiderkorn
sp.med: Tendency to formation of multiple cellular abscesses, bluish coloration of skin, evidence of bad blood. dose: twenty drops every three hours.
1905: Petersen: ECHINACEA ANGUSTIFOLIA:
Syn – Echinacea: Black Sampson: Cone Flower.
P. E. – Root.
N. O. – Compositae.
N. H. – In the Western states. U.S.A.
Properties: Alterative: antiseptic: anti-syphilitic.
Use: The remedy in all depraved conditions of the blood. Has an alterative and restorative effect on the tissues, hastens retrograde metamorphosis and has marked antiseptic properties; therefore its range of usefulness in both acture and chronic affections is large. We think of it in scrofula, syphilis, typhoid fever, puerperal fever, diphtheria, uraemic poisons, appendicitis, cholera infantum, cholera morbus, diarrhoea, cerebral spinal meningitis, carbuncles, septic fevers, boils, tonsilitis, small-pox, measles, pneumonia, and in fact all septic and depraved conditions of the blood it is the remedy and should be given in good sized doses either alone or with other indicated remedies. In ulcers, ulcerated sore throat, catarrh, nasal catarrh, inflammation of the male and female urethra, and of the vagina, in exzema, erysipelas, rhus tox poisoning, use it internally and locally. In poisonous bites of rattlesnakes, tarantulas, wasps, etc. give in 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoonful doses every 1/4 to 1/2 hour, until relieved; then in smaller doses and at longer intervals; it should also be applied to the sore pure or in 25 to 50% solution according to the severity of the case. In hemorrhoids it may be injected in the tumore, 15 to 20 drops, repeated if necessary. Of value in gonorrhoea. Has been recommended in hydrophobia. In skin diseases of systemic origin echinacea should not be forgotten, both locally and internally. In ulcers, sores, boils, etc., where it fails to cure, the cause will be found to be a deficiency of the lime salts, such as calcium phos. 2x, calcium sulph. 1x. or in some cases silica 3x. and if such is the case these elements should be supplied and the trouble will be corrected. As echinacea has a tendency to correct abnormalities and exerts this same influence on the temperature of the body, it is a valuable remedy in both sthenic and asthenic conditions and may be associated or alternated in these cases with other indicated remedies. used with some of our special sedatives it will to some degree counteract their depressing effect. As a wet surgical dressing it has no equal. The average dose of echinacea is from 5 to 10 drops 3 to 4 times a day; but in severe cases and poisoning of the blood by poisonous bites, etc., it must be used in much larges doses and at short intervals. Locally use pure or in 25 to 50% solution. In constitutional syphilis it is a great remedy if associated with other alteratives such as berberis aquafolium or iris versicolor. In septic conditions from abortion or in puerperal septicaemia it is the best remedy we have.
1909: Felter and Lloyd: ECHINACEA – ECHINACEA
History - Conspicuous among the remedies introduced within recent years, echinacea undoubtedly takes the first rank. As with all new remedies, it has suffered the usual over-estimation, and the exaggerated claims made for it led by Prof. Lloyd to view it with suspicion for a long time. Prof. H. T. Webster (Dynam. Therap.), was the first to give an extensive, though sectional account of the therapy of the drug. Though now a well-known drug, echinacea stands peculiarly along in being essentially a new remedy. Many remedies which have lately been introduced can be traced back for years, and some of them for centuries, as having at some time occupied a place in either domestic or professional practice, but our ancient scientific works are silent concerning this species of echinacea.
Gray, in his Synoptical Flora of North America, published some years ago, wrote: “Used in popular medicine under the name black sampson,” but since he refers to the plant as “black sampson”, a name applied to Echinacea purpurea, it may be accepted that he referred to that drug. A careful search through the large numbers of works upon domestic medicine, herbals, medical botanies, and the so-called “irregular” works upon practice, contained in the Lloyd Library, failed to reveal even a mention of Echinacea angustifolia as a medicinal agent. In this connection, the following from the pen of Mr C. G. Lloyd, who identified the drug first used by Dr Meyer and Dr King, will serve to distinguish between black sampson and Echinacea angustifolia:
“Echinacea purpurea, Moench, is a plant growing in the eastern states from Pennsylvania west. it was introduced in King’s Dispensatory under the name of Rudbeckia purpurea, and the common name black sampson. Echinacea angustifolia, De Candolle, is an entirely different plant, found only in prairie regions, and not occurring east of the prairie regions of Illinois, and has never been used under the name black sampson. There is no mention of it in medical literature preceding the paper of Drs. Meyer and King”. The first notices concerning echinacea are from Eclectic physicians, and the drug is, from start to finish, an Eclectic medicine.
Echinacea angustifolia is an indigenous plant of the composite , growing chiefly in the western states, from Illinois to Nebraska, an dsouthward through Missouri to Texas, thriving best in rich prairie soil. That which grows in marshy places is of inferior quality. It has also been stated that it grows in rocky and sandy soil. The plant, however, which is abundant in Kansas, Nebraska, and neighboring localities, is not mentioned by P. A. Rydberg, in his recently published Flora of the Sand Hills of Nebraska (Contributions to the U.S. Nat. Herbarium, Vol. III, No.3, 1895). The plant blooms from June to August. Echinacea is sometimes known in Kansas as nigger-head, a name derived from the shape and somber hue of its fruiting head. The scientific appellations are derived from physical features of the plant, and are therefore descriptive. The generic term Echinacea, is derived from the Greek echinos, meaning hedge-hog or sea-urchin, referring to the spiny, hedge-hog like fruiting head; while the specific name angustifolia, comes from the two Latin words, angustus (narrow) and folium (leaf), contrasting thereby this species with the other forms of Echinacea, this being the narrow-leaved species.
The introduction of echinacea into professional practice is due conjointly to Dr. H. F. C. Meyer, of Pawnee City, Neb., and the late Prof. John King. The former had, for many years (since 1870), been using the plant without knowing its botanical position. In a letter to Prof. King (see E.M.J., 1887), in 1886, he communicated to the latter his uses of the drug, as he had employed it for 16 years. His claims for the remedy were based upon the conclusion that it was “an antispasmodic and antidote for blood-poisoning.” The enthusiastic doctor had been using it in a secret mixture with wormwood and hops, which he had denominated “Meyer’s Blood Purifier.” Among his claims for it was its antidotal action upon the poison of various insects, and particularly that of the rattlesnake. Meyer stated that he even allowed a rattler to bite him, after which he bathed the parts with some of the tincture, took a drachm of it internally, an dlaid down and slept, and upon awakening all traces of swelling had disappeared! Prof. King wrote: “He (Dr. Meyer) kindly offered to send the writer a rattler 8 feet long, that the antidotal influence of the tincture upon dogs, rabbits, etc. bitten by said serpent, might be tested; but having no friendship for the reptile, and being unaccustomed to handling this poisonous ophidian, the generous offer was courteously declined.”
The following range of affections were those in which Dr. Meyer claimed success for this remedy: Malarial fever, cholera morbus, cholera infantum, boils, and internal abscesses, typhoid fever (internally and locally to abdomen); ulcerated sore throat, old ulcers, poisoning from rhus, erysipelas, carbuncles, bites and stings of bees, wasps, spiders, etc.; in nasal and pharyngeal catarrh, hemorrhoids, various fevers, including typhoid, congestive, and remittent; trichinosis, nervous headache, acne, scrofulous ophthalmia, milk crust, scald head, and eczema; also in colic in horses. Subsequent use of the drug has in a measure substantiated the seemingly incredulous claims of its introducer, for it will be observed that most of the conditions were such as might be due to blood depravation, or to noxious introductions from without the body – the very field in which echinacea is known to display its power.
In the autumn of 1885, Dr. Meyer sent to Prof. J. U. Lloyd a quantity of the root, desiring the latter to enlighten him as to its botanical name. At the same time he expressed Dr. King a quantity of the tincture. Prof. Lloyd, questioning the claims of Meyer, wrote to him that he could not bame the plant from the root alone, whereupon the latter shipped another quantity of the root, followed (September 28, 1886) by a specimen plant, which Mr Curtis G. Lloyd then identified as Echinacea angustifolia of De Candolle (see paper by Prof. Lloyd on Echinacea, in E. M. Jour., Augl, 1897).
Prof. King, appearing to have more faith than Prof. Lloyd in the possibilities of the new drug, took an active interest in it, and by experimenting extensively was soon convinced of its great value. His use of it led him to report success in obstinate naso-pharyngeal catarrh; in rheumatism (one case being of the articular variety); in cholera morbus and cholera infantum; in chronic ulcers of the leg (one case of which was complicated with an eczematous eruption of years standing); also in painful chronic hemorrhoids, vaginal leucorrhoea with ulceration of the os uteri, poisoning from poison ivy, and stings of wasps and bees, with very extensive swelling. Dyspepsia, with pain an dgreat distress, aggravated by partaking of food, and long resisting treatment, also yielded to it. Goss (Chicago Medical Times, 1888), who became interested in the drug, praised it as a remedy for mad dog bites, chronic catarrh, chronic ulcers, gonorrhoea, and syphilis. Dr. A. Parker, of Wilber, Neb., also reported success with it in an apparently hopeless case of septicaemia. Then followed the reports of Dr. Hayes (see below), whose statements did much to obtain general recognition for the drug.
Action, Medical Uses, and Dosage - As a therapeutic agent echinacea is often used both internally and locally at the same time; therefore in this article the internal and external uses will not be given separately, but collectively. And inasmuch as echafolta is a name given to distinguish a purified form of echinacea, the remarks concerning the one are equally applicable to the other, except in important surgical cases, where greater cleanliness is desired, when echafolta is to be preferred.
Under the older classification of remedies, echinaca would probably be classed as an antiseptic an dalterative. Strictly speaking, it is practically impossible to classify an agent like echinacea by applying to it one or two words to indicate its virtues. The day is rapidly approaching when these qualifying claims will have no place in medicine, for they but inadequately convey to our minds the therapeutic possibilites of our drugs. Especially is this so with regard to such terms as alterative, stimulant, tonic, etc. If any single statement were to be made concerning the virtues of echinacea, it would read something like this: “A corrector of the depravation of the body fluids,” and even this does not sufficiently cover the ground. Its extraordinary powers – combining essentially that formerly included under the terms antiseptic, antifermentative, and antizymotic – are well shown in its power over changes produced in the fluids of the body, whether from internal causes or from external introductions. The changes may be manifested in a disturbed balance of the fluids resulting in such tissue alterations as are exhibited in boils, carbuncles, abscesses, or cellular glandular inflammations. They may be from the introduction of serpent or insect venon, or they may be due to such fearful poisons as give rise to malignant diphtheria, cerebro-spinal meningitis, or puerperal and other forms of septicaemia. Such changes, whether they be septic or of devitalized morbid accumulations, or alterations in the fluids themselves, appear to have met their antagonist in echinacea. “Bad blood,” so called, asthenia, and adynamia, and particularly a tendency to malignancy in acute and subacute disorders, seem to be special indicators for the use of echinacea.
Outside of the claims made for this remedy by its introducer, which included many of the conditions for which it is now valued, it first attracted general notice as a remedy for septicaemia, in which malady it appeared to promise more than any remedy previously in use. The reports of Dr. Hayes (E.M.J., 1888, pp.68, 142) gave an impetus to the use of the drug in this direction; since which time physicians, whose statements are valued, have lauded it as a remedy in various forms of blood-poisoning. Thus it has been successfully employed in injuries complicated with septic infection. A crushed hand, thought to be beyond aid, with the intolerable stench of putrid flesh, was saved by the application of echinacea. It has given equally satisfactory results in alarming cases of venom infection, with great depression, from the bites of the rattlesnake, tarantula and other spiders, and from the stings of scorpions, bees, wasps, etc. Prof. Webster, among others, speaks highly of its action in slow forms of cerebro-spinal meningitis, using it as the basic remedy (in connection with other indicated drugs), because of its sedative virtues, controlling, as he believes, the vascular area concerned in the nutrition of the cerebro-spinal meninges, and for its effects upon the general circulation. The cases benefited were those characterized by a slow, feeble pulse, or at least a pulse not appreciably quickened, with the temperature scarcely elevated, and cold extremities. The evidences of cerebral disturbances were erratic. Headache, with a peculiar periodical flushing of the face, even to the neck, was present, and associated with these symptoms, dizziness and profound prostration. Prof. Webster was the first, we believe, to employ the remedy in this affection. He asserts that as a stimulant to the capillary circulation, no remedy is comparable with it, and that it endows the vessels with a recuperative power or formative force, so as to enable them to successfully resist local inflammatory processes due to debility and blood depravation.
While clinical evidence is strong in support of the curative action of echinacea in diphtheria, the writer can not but feel that in some instances, at least, the reports have been based upon mistaken diagnoses, and upon non-malignant cases. He is forced to this view from a liberal use of the drug in several cases of a malignant type, in which it utterly failed to accomplish the results desired. Non-malignant forms of diphtheria tend to recovery, and we should be careful about endorsing remedies as curatives in such cases, lest we bring discredit upon a good remedy by making sweeping claims for it which can not be substantiated when the drug is put to a test in the severer forms of the disease. Nevertheless, in these non-malignant cases it appears to expedite convalescence.
In the various forms of tonsilitis it has given better results, particularly in the necrotic form, with dirty-looking ulcerative surfaces. It comes well endorsed as a remedy for that malignant form of quinsy known in some of the western states as “black tongue.” Echinacea will contribute much to the cure of various catarrhal affections of the nose, naso-pharynx, and other portions of the respiratory tract.
It is specially indicated by ulcerated and fetid mucous surfaces, with dusky or dark coloration, and a general debilitated habit. Many patients who have taken echinacea for other purposes have remarked its beneficial effects upon catarrh, from which they were suffering at the same time. Chronic catarrhal bronchitis and fetid bronchitis have been signally benefited by echinacea, and it has done that which few remedies can accomplish, i.e., it has overcome the stench of pulmonary gangrene, and, if given early, it is asserted to avert a gangrenous termination in pulmonic affections. A case of typhoid pneumonia reported by Shelley (Med. Gleaner, 1894) with a “jet-black coating of the tongue,” evidencing sepsis, improved rapidly under echinacea, in about 2-drop doses every 3 hours.
Echinacea is a good appetizer, and improves digestion. The writer has used it with good results in fermantative dyspepsia, with offensive breath and gastric pain as prominent symptoms, which was also aggravated upon taking food. It is also efficient in duodenal catarrh, and other forms of intestinal indigestion, with pain and debility. Few remedies are as efficient in ulcerative stomatitis, and in nursing sore-mouth it is asserted to be promptly curative. It has been praised in diarrhoea, cholera morbus, cholera infantum, and dysentery, all of the semi-inflammatory type, with a tendency to malignancy. Applied externally and given internally, it has been of service in aborting typhlitis and perityphlitis.
Echinacea has been prominently mentioned as a remedy for fevers. In the eruptive fevers, as measles, chicken-pox, an dscarlet fever, it has received some praise, especially for its control over the catarrhal phases of the former, and its influence in masking the odor and controlling the pain of the scarlatinal angina. The fevers, however, in which it has accomplished the best results are of the typhoid and typho-malarial types, as well as in sympathetic fevers from septic infection and rheumatic attacks. Notwithstanding that it has been recommended as one of the best antimalarial remedies, it appears to exert but little influence over periodicity. Prof. King reported signal failure in every case of ague in which he gave it a trial. Others, however, speak of it as a remedy for malaria when of an asthenic character. Possibly in such conditions it might prove of value, as the fevers in which it has proved so successful have been chiefly characterized by adynamia. Very likely its usefulness here depends more upon its influence over the asthenia than upon the miasmatic poison. However, Dr. Snyder, of Cameron, Mo., a good authority, contends that it is an excellent remedy for chronic malaria, a personal use of it having first convinced him of its value. The doctor has not, however, given us the special cases to which it is adapted. Epidemic influenza (la grippe) is occasionally ameliorated by echinacea, and in all such cases, with great debility, it assists materially in securing a good convalescence.
Puerperal fever, due to septicaemia, yields somewhat to echinacea with potassium chlorate and other indicated remedies; yet, in some cases it is inadequate to check the disease unless a thorough curetting of the womb, to insure against the absorption of imprisoned fragments of placenta or unhealthy discharges, be first resorted to. Frequently this procedure along, with a free use of hydrogen dioxide solution as a douche, is sufficient to cure, but a marked debility often persists. It is this debility that is so pronouncedly benefited by echinacea, and in two instances the writer has though that the high temperature was averted, and the weakened system greatly sustained, by the liberal use of echinacea, until curetting had been accomplished. Others have been more fortunate in the use of the drug, giving it the credit of being the main agent in accomplishing cures. Its internal and local use is recommended. Hayes commends it in “mountain fever,” an affection often mistaken for typhoid fever.
Echinacea is in some respects a remedy for pain. It relieves the pain of erysipelas, and contributes largely to a resolution of the swelling when extensive, tense, and of a pruplish-red hue. It is reported to have relieved the pain of cancerous growths, particularly when involving the mucous membranes, as cancer of the fauces. Prof. Farnum calls attention to the wonderful rapidity with which the odor of carcinoma is overcome by echafolta. He strongly recommends it as an application for cancer, and relates a case of mammary cancer long held in check by it. He also advises its internal administration in cancerous cachexia. So great is the confidence placed in this agent by our foremost surgeons that they have been content to use it with sterilized water to cleanse and dress, after operations, discharging tubercular abscesses, gangrene, empyema with gangrene of the lung, appendicitis, and carcinoma of the breast and testicle (Farnum). Prof L. E. ……. advises echafolta as a preventative of sepsis, giving it internally previously to operations, to act as an intestinal antiseptic, and locally, as a corrective, to dress any traumatism showing signs of sepsis, and as a wash in abdominal and pelvic operations into which any organ has discharged septic contents. Phlegmonous swellings, old sores, erysipelas with sloughing phagedena, dissecting or surgical wounds, phlegmasia dolens, dermatitis venenata, and pus cavities should be treated with echinacea or echafolta, both locally and internally. A most remarkable case came under the writer’s care in which a high fever with marked adynamia, associated with the development of cellular abscesses and a hemorrhagic diarrhoea, yielded to echinacea and Rhus aromatica. Other medicines did but little good until these remedies were brought into use. The abscesses were of a non-active variety, somewhat painful, but not excessively so; they numbered about 10 or 12 at any given time in various parts of the body. The alvine discharges were passed involuntarily, except when kept under control by the fragrant sumach. The boy, whose age was but 4 years, lingered in this condition for over 2 months. Echinacea surely kept the child alive, for whenever the dose, which was 10 drops every 3 hours, was lessened, the symptoms were greatly exaggerated. In spite of his low condition and the very unsanitary surroundings, recovery took place rapidly, as soon as the active symptoms subsided.
Echinacea is highly endorsed as a topical dressing for malignant carbuncle. Painful mammitis has been very successfully treated with it, and, used as an injection, it relieves the pain and inflammation in gonorrhoea. Several physicians have used it in syphilis, and declare it a good remedy for that disease, but this seems like claiming too much. It is, however, like thuja, efficient in allaying the pain and healing the ulcers, particularly of the mouth, throat, and tongue, affecting syphilitics. Dr. Snyder extols echinacea as an efficient remedy for impotence. It acts admirably in purulent salpingitis, contributing toward a cure and allaying the distressing pain. Evidence is abundant, concerning its value in leucorrhoea, with offensive discharges; and Webster reports it as valuable in erythematous or erysipelatous vulvitis, being especially effective in that form affecting strumous children. Echinacea is a remedy for eczema. It is adapted to chronic cases with sticky or glutinous exudations associated with asthenia and general depravity. Liberal doses should be administered for a prolonged period. A striking malady, which had been diagnosed as psoriasis, resulting from vaccination, came under the care of Prof. Ellingwood, of Chicago. A shedding of the hair and a diffuse skin disease, with loss of the nails and thick skin frm the palms an dsoles ensued, followed by a destructive iritis of the left eye and corneal ulcer of the right eye. Prospects were fair for a fatal termination. Perfect recovery, with the exception of the loss of the left eye, followed the use of liberal doses of echinacea, together withsyrup of iodide of iron and phospho-albumen.
Dropsy after scarlatina is said to have been cured by echafolta. As this condition usually tends to a spontaneous cure it is difficult to determine how much any remedy contributes to such a result. Likewise echinacea has been recommended to prevent (!) hydrophobia. How one can prevent a result of this kind from a dog bite, and especially as the very existence of that so-called disease is denied by many is not clear. Like many other new remedies echinacea has been reported curative in smallpox. It appears to have mitigated many of the severer symptoms of tubercular phthisis, and renders expectoration easier in “stone-cutter’” or “grinder’s” consumption. It would be no great surprise if this remedy should prove effective inimpressing a tubercular diathesis, thereby preventing a termination in consumption.
The dose of either specific echinacea or echafolta ranges from 1 to 5 drops; larger doses (even 60 drops) may be employed, but small doses are generally most efficient if frequently repeated. They may be given in water or syrup, or water and glycerin, as: R Echafolta, fl3j to fl3ij; water, q.s. fl3iv. Mix. Sig. Teaspoonful every 1/2 or 1 hour in acute cases; every 3 or 4 hours in chronic affections. If these preparations are to be dispensed in hot weather, or are to be used in fermentative gastro-intestinal disorders, the substitution of 1 ounce of flycerin for 1 fluid ounce of the water is advisable. For external use both preparations may be employed, th…… in point of cleanliness echafolta is to be preferred. Solutions of from 1 to 60 per cent strength may be applied by means of a saturated compress every 2 hours, or oftener, if necessity demands.
Specific Indications and Uses - To correct fluid depravation, “bad blood,” tendency to sepsis and malignancy, as in gangrene, sloughing and phagedenic ulcerations, carbuncles, boils, and various forms of septicaemia; foul discharges, with weakness and emaciation; deepened, bluish or purplish coloration of skin or mucous membranes, with a low form of inflammation; dirty-brownish tongue; jet-black tongue; tendency to the formation of multiple cellular abscesses of semi-active character, with marked asthenia. Of especial importance in typhoid, septicaemic and other adynamic fevers, an din malignant carbuncle, pulmonary gangrene, cerebro-spinal meningitis and pyosalpinx. Echafolta is advised as a cleansing wash in surgical operations, and to annul the pain of and to deodorize carcinomata.
1911: Fyfe
Tongue coated black, putresecent odor from excess of broken down material being eliminated from the system, as in scarlet fever, diptheria, spinal meningitis and typhoid fever, strumous diathesis, old sores and wounds, snake bites and bits of rabid dogs, tendency to boils and carbuncles.
In poisonous stings of insects and bites of snakes and animals this agent should be used locally and internally. cerevrospinal meningitis, diptheria, remittent and intermittent fevers, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, cholera infantum, erysipelas, syphilis, typhoid pneumonia are among the prominent diseases likely to present indications for this medicament.
Echinacea augustifolia is alterative, stimulant, tonic, sedative, and antiseptic.
1919: Ellingwood
Echinacea angustifolia
Synonym – Black Sampson, cone flower, purple cone flower.
Part Employed - The root.
This plant grows throughout the central and western portions of the United States, especially on the elevated tableands, and in the northern portions, where it was known to the Indians as a cure for snake poison.
There is considerable confusion concerning the identity of the active medicinal species of echinacea. The echinacea purpurea of the Eastern States has been thought to be identical with the echinacea angustifolia of the Western States. It is often used for the same purposes, but is universally disappointing. King introduced it into his dispensatory as rudebeekia purpurea.
Preparations - Fluid Extract of the root, miscible with water without material precipitation. Dose, one-fourthe to one-half fluid dram.
Specific Medicine Echinacea. Dose, five to forty or even sixty drops.
Echafolta is a purified, assayed form of Echinacea. The dosage of both is the same. Externally or for surgical purposes it is advised as superior to the other preparations of Echinacea. It is prescribed for the same conditions.
For from twenty to twenty-five years, Echinacea has been passing through the stages of critical experimentation under the observation of several thousand physicians, and its remarkable properties are receiving positive confirmation. As yet, but few disparaging statements have been made. All who use it correctly fall quickly into line as enthusiasts in its praise; the experience of the write is similar to that of the rest, the results in nearly all cases having been satisfactory. The laboratory observations have been extensive but are not yet complete.
Physiological Action -The following laboratory observations of its action upon the blood were made by Victor von Unruh, M. D., of New York City:
More than one hundred blood counts were made in cases of infectious diseases, mainly in tuberculosis. The results showed that echinacea increases the phagocytic power of the leukocytes; it normalizes the percentage count of the neutrophiles (Arneth count). Hyperleukocytosis and leukopenia are directly improved by echinacea; the proportion of white to red cells is rendered normal; and the elimination of waste products is stimulated to a degree which puts this drug in the first rank among all alteratives. The stimulation toward phagocytosis become very evident in cases where it was impossible to find any evidence of phagocytosis before echinacea was administered, and where after the use of this drug for a period of only a few days the phagocytes were seen to contain as many as eight bacilli within the cell. In all cases where the percentage count among the neutrophiles (polymorphonuclears) has been such as give an unfavourable prognosis inasmuch as those neutrophiles containing one and two nuclei predominated over those containing three, relatively and absolutely, the administration of echinacea for only two weeks has normalized the percentage so as to give to the class containing three nuclei. Echinacea thus gives to the class normally strongest in phagocytosis the power where it obtains in the normal condition of the leukocytes. “Subculoid Echinacea” was used for these experiments.
I have long been assured from the observation of this remedy that it directly influences the opsonic index. I wrote von Unruh directly, asking him for his opinion from his long experience and from his laboratory observations of the action of this remedy. He replied as follows: “Quoting from McFarland’s Pathogenic Bacteria, the opsonic theory teaches that the leukocytes are disinclined to take up bacteria unless they are prepared for phagocytosis by contact with certain substances in the serum, that in some manner modify them. This modifying substance is the opsonin. I have definitely demonstrated and am continuing to observe, that the action of echinacea on the leukocytes is such that it will raise phagocytosis to its possible maximum.” The logical deduction, therefore, is that the opsonic index is correspondingly raised by this agent.
When a half teaspoonful dose of the tincture is taken into the mouth, a pungent warmth is at once experienced which increases to a tingling, and remains for half an hour after the agent is ejected. it is similar to that of aconite, but not so much solely of the nerve end organs. The sensation is partly of nerve tingling, and more from an apparent mild nerve irritant effect. it much more resembles the action of xanthoxylum. If a small quantity be swallowed undiluted, it produces an apparent constriction of the throat, sensation of irritation, and strangulation, much greater in some patients than in others, and always disagreeable. The sensation persists for some minutes, notwithstanding the throat is gargled, water is drunk, and the agent entirely removed.
The toxic effect of this agent is manifested by reduction of temperature, the frequency of the pulse is diminished, the mucous membrane becomes dry and parched, accompainied with a prickly sensation; there is headache of a bursting character, and a tendency to fainting is observed if the patient assumes an erect posture. After poisonous doses, these symptoms are more intensified. The face and upper portion of the trunk are flushed, there is pain throughout the body, which is more marked in the large articulations. There is dimness of vision, intense thirst, gastric pains followed by vomiting and watery diarrhoea. No fatal case of poisoning is recorded, to our knowledge, and only when given in extreme doses are any of the above undesirable influences observed.
The physiological effects are manifested by its action upon the blood, and upon the mucous surfaces. The natural secretions are at first augmented, the temperature is then lowered, the pulse is slowed, and the capillary circulation restored. It exerts a peculiar affinity over local debilitated inflammatory conditions, attended with blood dyscrasis. It has its greatest field in adynamic fevers, reducing the pulse and temperature and subduing delirium.
It promotes the flow of saliva in an active manner. The warmth and tingling extend down the esophagus to the stomach, but no further unpleasant influence is observed. In a short time diaphoresis is observed, and the continuation of the remedy stimulates the kidneys to increased action. All of the glandular organs seem to feel the stimulating influence, and their functional activity is increased. The stomach is improved in its function, the bowels operate better, an dabsorption, assimilation, and general nutrition are materially improved. It encourages secretion and excretion, preventing further auto-intoxication, and quickly correcting the influence in the system of any that has occurred. It stimulates retrograde metabolism, or tissue waste, more markedly than any other single remedy known. It influences the entire lymphatic system, and the condition of the blood suggests that the patient has been taking stimulants. Its influence upon the capillary circulation is not comparable with that of any other known remedy, for while it is a stimulant to the circulation in these vessels, it also seems to endow them with a certain amount of recuperative power or formative force by which it is constituted, not only a general stimulant and tonic to the circulation, but also peculiarly so, to local inflammations of a debilitating character, as when administering liver and iron remedies in abundance. Sallow, pallid and dingy conditions of the skin of the face quickly disappear, and the rosy hue of health is apparent. Anaemic conditions improve with increased nerve tone. There are but few subjective symptoms from large doses of this agent. It is apparently non-toxic, and to any unpleasant extent non-irritant. The agent certainly has a marked effect upon the nervous system, but its specific influence upon the central organs has not yet been determined.
This agent is markedly anesthetic in its local influence. Applied to open wounds and to painful swellings, while the alcohol may at first induce a burning sensation, this is quickly followed by entire relief from pain in many cases. So marked is this influence that it could well be used for an antiseptic local anesthetic.
I am convinced that success in certain cases depends upon the fact that the patient must have at times, a sufficiently large quantity of this remedy in order to produce full antitoxic effects on the virulent infections. I would therefore emphasize the statement which I have previously made that it is perfectly safe to give echinacea is massive doses – from two drams to half an ounce every two or three hours – for a time at least, when the system is overwhelmed with the toxins. This applies to tetanus, anthrax, actinomycosis, pyemia, diphtheria, hydrophobia, and meningitis.
Specific Symptomatology - It is the remedy for blood poisoning, if there is one in the Materia Medica. Its field covers acute auto-infection, slow progressive blood taint, faults of the blood from imperfect elimination of all possible character, and from the development of disease germs within the blood. It acts equally well, whether the profoun dinfluence be exerted upon the nervous system, as in puerperal sepsis, and uraemia, or whether there be prostration and exhaustion, as in pernicious malarial and septic fevers or whether its influence is shown by anaemia, glandular ulceration or skin disease.
It is especially indicated where there is a tendency to gangrenous states and sloughing of the soft tissues, throat dark and full, tongue full, with dirty dark-brown or black coat, in all cases where there are sepsis and zymosis.
It undoubtedly exercises a direct sedative influence over all of the fever processes in typhoid, cerebro-spinal meningitis, malarial fevers, asthenic diphtheria, etc., for while it equalizes the circulation, it also acts as a sedative to abnormal vascular excitement and lowers the temperature, if this be elevated while if this be subnormal, the singular effect upon the vital forces conspires toward a restoration of the normal condition. As a sedative it is comparable in some respect with baptisia, rhus and bryonia.
I think this sedative influence is largely exercised through its power to destroy the germs of the infection, thus removing the cause.
Therapy - Echinacea is par excellence a corrector of any deprivation of the body fluids. It influences those conditions included under the terms septic, fermentative and zymotic. Those which manifest themselves in a disturbed balance of the fluids, resulting in alterations of the tissues such as are exhibited in boils, carbuncles, abscesses and cellular and glandular inflammations. These same conditions result from the introduction of the venoma of serpents and poisonous insects of every character, also frm the introduction of disease germs from pus and other putrid and infectious sources.
As an intestinal antiseptic the agent is bound to take first rank with all physicians when once known. Experiments with it to determine its immediate influence upon the fevers caused by continued absorption of septic material, such as typhoid fever, puerperal fever, and the fever of the afterstages of diphtheria, show that its influence upon the pernicious germs begins at once.
In several cases reported, where special sedatives were not given, the temperature has declined from one-half to two degrees within a few hours after its use was begun, and has not increased until the agent was discontinued.
It has then slowly increased toward the previous high point until the remedy was again taken, when a decline was soon apparent.
It does not produce abrupt drops in the temperature, as often follows the curetting of a septic womb, or as the removal of a quantity of septic material often causes, but if effects an almost immediate stop in germ development, and a steady restoration from its pernicious influence. In the treatment of typhoid fever in the Cook County Hospital, Chicago, it was used in the Eclectic wards for about two years, or more, and twenty-one days was the extreme extent of the fever, and the mortality was the lowest known. In many cases taken early, the fever was limited to fourteen days without delirium.
In private practice the reports of many physicians are much more enthusiastic, claiming that when given in the initial stage the fever has disappeared in seven days, and that fourteen days is the extreme limit.
The blood does not become impaired, the assimilation and nutrition are remarkably increased, the nerve force is retained, elimination from all organs is improved, ulceration of Peyer’s glands ceases, the enteric symptoms abate, there is but little, if any, tympanites, and there has as yet been no case of hemorrhage or perforation reported as having occurred after the agent was begun. It certainly is avaluable acquisition to typhoid therapeutics. All recent reports confirm these stagements.
Its influence in septic fevers is the same as in typhoid. It seems to act as a nerve stimulant upon the vital forces depressed by the poison. This fact was especially true in a case where extreme septic absorption after a badly conducted abortion caused acute nephritis and suppression of the urine. Uremia supervened, with delirium and mild convulsions. Twenty drops of the fluid extract of echinacea were given every two hours continuously. Extreme heat was applied over the kidneys, and a single dose of an antispasmodic was given, the echinacea along being continued. The fever dropped in two days, the mind cleared, the urinary secretion was restored, and the patient made a rapid and uninterrupted recovery.
It is a most important remedy in uraemic poisoning, and will supersede all other single remedies.
It has been in constant use in diphtheria for three years. It is used locally as well as internally. the exudates contract and disappear, the local evidences of septic absorption are gone, the fever declines, the vital forces increase, depression, mental and physical disappears, and the improvement is continual. In ulcerated sore throat of any character, in ulcerated sore mouth, in stomatitis materni, in post-nasal or catarrhal ulcerations it is prompt and effectual. It is preferred in these cases by those who use it.
In local inflammation of any portion of the intestinal tract, it has given excellent satisfaction. It quickly overcomes local blood stasis, prevents or cures ulceration, and retards pus formation by determining resolution. Reports of its use in appendicitis have been satisfactory, indeed. One writer treated several cass of unmistakable diagnosis, and satisfactory cure resulted. The writer treated one marked case of appendicitis where pus formation and future operation seemed inevitable. The improvement was apparent after the agent had been taken in a few hours, and recovery was complete in twelve days from attack.
Its use in cholera infantum has been satisfactory, especially if nervous phenomena are present. The frequent discharges gradually cease, the patient is soothed and the nerve force increases as the fever abates. Extreme nervous phenomena do not appear.
Webster, of San Francisco, in 1892, suggested the use of echinacea in spinal meningitis. It should be especially valuable if any blood dyserasia lies at the bottom of the difficulty Following Webster’s suggestions, other physicians, from their personal observations, have been able to ascribe undoubted curative virtues to this agent in this and other convulsive and inflammatory disorders of the brain and cord. it directly antidotes the infection.
As a sedative in cerebro-spinal meningitis, Webster is disposed to believe that it specifically influences the vaxcular area concerned in the nutrition of the cerebro-spinal meninges.
Since the above was first written the use of echinacea for cerebro-spinal meningitis has been established among those who have been experimenting with the remedy in this disease. There is no doubt whatever that its influence is destroying the virus is specific, an deffectual if given in sufficient doses. Five drops is about the ordinary dose for a child, but even this can be increased to twenty in extreme cases. It may be used in conjunction with hexymethylenamine.
At the same time, it must not be forgotten that in all spasmodic diseases, depending upon the infection both conditions must be treated together, and gelsemium in full physiologic doses must be given with echinacea.
In the treatment of erysipelas it has given more than ordinary satisfaction, and has established itself permanently in that disorder. It is especially needed when sloughing and tissue disintegration occur, its external influence being most reliable.
In the pain of mammary cancer and in the chronic inflammation of the mammary gland, the result of badly treated puerperal mastitis, where the part has become reddened and congested, the remedy has worked satisfactorily.
In bed sores, fever sores, and in chronic ulcerations it is exceedingly useful. It is diluted and applied directly, while it is given internally. It is of much value in old tibial ulcers, in chronic glandular indurations and in scrofulous and syphilitic nodules and other specific skin disorders. The extract or the fluid extract can be combined with an ointment base such as lanolin in the proportion of one part to one, two or three parts of the base and freely applied. It can be injected into the sinuses of carbuncles, or into the structure of the diseased parts with only good results.
Logan treated ten cases of stubborn skin disease of undoubted syphilitic origin with this remedy along. It was applied externally and given in full doses internally, with a satisfactory cure in every case.
In the treatment of syphilis very many observations have been reported. It has been used entirely alone and also in conjunction with alterative syrups, but in no case yet reported has mercury been used with it. The longest time of all cases yet reported, needed to perfect the cure, was nine months.
The writer’s observations, in all cases he has treated, are that the patient begins to feel a general improved condition after taking the remedy a few days. Some of them are enthusiastic concerning the sense of well-being they experience. It begins by removing all the sensations of discomfort, and the patient’s mind becomes hopeful and encouraged. The specific fever in the first stages soon declines, and there is a permanent abatement of the evidences of the disease. There are absolutely no undesirable influences observed, and no after effects,a nd no undesirable side influences to overcome. I have not, however, depended upon this agent alone, in all cases. There are too many definite conditions present to be met with one remedy. I think results ae hastened by correct adjustments of three or four other vegetable alteratives with this.
The influences of echinacea are not always enhanced by the use of the iodides. On the other hand, I have had satisfactory results, where the iodides, having previously been given in conjunction with it, were withdrawn, and the echinacea continued alone. The rapid amelioration of the disorders of the skin, after the withdrawal of the iodides, was especially remarked if berberis was substituted for them.
The following most remarkable case occurred in my practice:
A gentleman, aged about forty-five years, in apparently good health, was vaccinated, and as the result of supposed impure virus a most unusual train of the symptoms supervened. His vitality began to wane, and the became so weak that he could not sit up. His hair came out, and a skin disease pronounced by experts to be psoriasis, appeared upon his extremities first, and afterward upon his body. In the writer’s opinion, the condition had but little resemblance to psoriasis. It seemed more like an acute development of leprosy than any other known condition.
This advanced rapidly, his nails began to fall off, he lost flesh, and a violent iritis of the left eye developed and ulceration of the cornea in the right set in, and for this difficulty he was referred to Prof. H. M. Martin, President of the Chicago Ophthalmic College.
Dr. Martin gave him ten grains of the iodide of potassium three times daily, and fed him freely upon phospho-albumin. The loss of hair was stopped, but no other favorable results were obtained. The condition progressed rapidly towards an apparently fatal termination. At this juncture, Dr. Martin asked the writer to see the case with him. It looked as if there was no possible salvation for the patient, but as a dernier ressort, the writer suggested Echinacea twenty drops every two hours, and the phospho-albusain to be continued. With this treatment, in from four to six weeks, the patient regained his normal weight of more than one hundred and fifty pounds and enjoyed afterward as good health as ever in his life.
Echinacca has been used with great success in aggravated and prolonged cases of rhus poisoning, both locally and internally.
The agent has been long in use among the Indians in the West as a sure cure for snake bite. It has created a furor among the practitioners, who have used it in the bites of poisonous animals, that has made the reports, apparently, too exaggerated to establish credulity on the part of the inexperienced. Cases that seemed hopeless have rapidly improved after the agent was applied and administered. There is at present no abatement in the enthusiasm. One physician controlled the violent symptoms from the bite of a tarantula, and quickly eliminated all trace of the poison with its use.
Dr. Banta of California treated a min bitten by a scorpion, reported in the Eclectic Medical Journal, with echinacea with rapid cure.
In a paper read at the Ohio State Eclectic Medical Society in 1895, Dr. Gregory Smith stated that in 1871 Dr. H. C. F. Meyer commenced the use of this remedy.
He says: “In malarial troubles it has no superior.” He also recommends it as a remedy for hemorrhoids; twenty-five drops of the pure tincture injected into the rectum three times a day promptly effect a cure. “It is also prompt in stings from insects and in poisoning by contact with certain plants.” As an antidote to the venom of the crotalus horridus it stands without a peer. He gives the history of 613 cases of rattlesnake bit in men and animals, all successfully treated. With the courage of his convictions upon him he injected the venom of the crotalus into the first finger of his left hand; the swelling was rapid and in six hours was up to the elbow. At this time he took a dose of the remedy, bathed the part thoroughly, and laid down to pleasant dreams. On awakening in four hours the pain and swelling were gone.
The fresh root scraped and given freely is the treatment used by the Sioux Indians for snake bite. Recoveries from crotalus poisoning are effected in from two to twelve hours.
By far the most difficult reports to credit are those of the individuals bitten by rabid animals; there are between twenty and thirty reports at the present time. In no case has hydrophobia yet occurred, and this was the only remedy used in many of the cases. In five or six cases, animals bitten at the same time as the patient had developed rabies, and had even conveyed it to other animals, and yet the patient showed no evidence of poisoning, if the remedy was used at once. One case exhibited the developing symptoms of hydrophobia before the agent was begun. They disappeared shortly after treatment. In no case has an opportunity offered to try the remedy after the symptoms were actually developed. One poorly nourished anilals and jaundiced child was badly bitten and the treatment improved the general condition in a marked manner. In the treatment of hydrophobia, a case is reported, which was bitten by a rabid animal out of a litter of six half grown pups, all of which showed signs of hydrophobia and were killed. A number of parties were bitten by these pups. Two who were bitten died of hydrophobia, three were treated at the Pasteur institute and cured, one was treated with echinacea and cured.
The doctor prescribed teaspoonful doses of echafolta, every three hours. The remedy was introduced on saturated gauze into the wounds, and covered all the injured surfaces. This was secured by a roller bandage. Prior to the administration of the remedy the symptoms of nervous irritation and incipient hydrophobia were strongly marked. These symptoms abated rapidly, and the patient recovered in a satisfactory manner.
A large amount of satisfactory evidence has accumulated confirmatory of our statements concerning the curative action of the remedy in tetanus. Dr. John Herring reported one marked cure. Dr. Lewis reports three cases, where the remedy was injected into the wound after tetanic symptoms had shown themselves. All the tissues surrounding the wound were filled with the remedy by hypodermic injection and gauze saturated with a full strength preparation was kept constantly applied. The agent was also administered in half-dram doses internally, every two or three hours.
Another physician has reported the observation of quite a number of cases, where tetanus had either markedly developed, or was anticipated.
The use of the remedy satisfactorily overcame all apparent symptoms where present,a nd where not present, no tetanic phenomena developed. In the diagnosis of this disease the physician may confuse septic phenomena sometimes with those of developing tetanus, and the cure of the septic conditions may have been taken for a cure of tetanus.
In the treatment of tetanus, I am confident that no antiseptic alone will cover the entire pathology of this disease. There must be a powerful antispasmodic given in conjunction with the germ destroying agent, and vice versa. Echinacea or phenol hypodermically, or both, with gelsemium, lobelia, or veratrum carefully selected and adjusted should meet the indications of all early cases.
These same facts should apply to cases bitten by dogs and wherever convulsions result from infection.
The agent has had a most marvelous influence in overcoming pyemia. We have had some extreme cases reported. where it would seem that the patient was psoitively beyond all help, where amelioration of the symptoms was pronounced, and the restoration satisfactory.
In the treatment of small-pox conclusive proofs are now furnished us which declare the remedy to be of great efficacy, not only in ameliorating all the phenomena of the disease, but in preventing sequela. When applied to the skin in a form of a lotion, the pustules are benign in their character, and terminate with a minimum of sear.
In the treatment of erysipelas the remedy has proven itself all we anticipated for it.Dr. Wilkenloh reports the treatment of at least five cases of goitre, three of which had exophthalmic complications, and all were cured, with this remedy alone. The doctor gave the remedy internally in full doses, and injected from five to fifteen minims directly into the thyroid gland, and kept gauze, saturated and applied externally. As no other remedy than this was used, there could be no doubt about its positive influence.
Applied to painful surfaces, to local acute and painful inflammations of the integument, or to painful wounds, its anaesthetic influence is soon pronounced, and is of great benefit, in preserving freedom from pain during the active healing processes, which are stimulated and encouraged by this remedy. Prof. Farnum is enthusiastic over the action of the remedy in overcoming the odor of cancer, whether in the early stages, or in the latter stage of the development of this serious disease. He advises it spersistent administration in all cases where there is a cancerous cachexia, believing that it retards the development of cancer and greatly prolongs the patient’s life.
We have already referred to its specific use in the treatment of phlegnemous swelling, old sores, dissecting and surgical wounds, and where there are pus cavities of long standing. Also as a very positive remedy, applied to all cases where gangrene is anticipated, or has appeared.
Its influence in gangrene of the extremities has been very pronounced. In gangrene of the fingers the curative benefits are observable from the first application. It is useful in dermatitis venenata, in erysipelas with sloughing phagedena, and in phlegmasia alba dolens, or phlebitis. In this latter condition its external use will greatly assist the internal medication.
In the treatment of Anthrax, echinacea has proven in a number of cases to be an exceedingly reliable remedy. Dr. Lewis of Canton, Pa., first reported on it in 1907 in Ellingwood’s Therapeutist, and Dr. Aylesworth of Collingwood, Canada, confirmed all of his statements, the observations of the two doctors having been made about the same time, each without knowledge of the other. In these cases, very large doses from one to two drams, frequently repeated, are required.
Twenty to forty minims of echinacea every two hours with proper local treatment, such as iodine locally, will cure actinomycosis.
In the treatment of catarrh, it is used internally, and applied locally in the form of a spray, if necessary. It is not only an important remedy in nasal catarrh, but it is important in intestinal catarrh. I used it with excellent advantage in a so-called incurable case of ulcerative colitis with heavy discharge of mucus and pus.
Dr. Fair is emphatic in his statements that patients exposed to diphtheria should take echinacea in from ten to twenty drop doses every two hours with the positive expectation of preventing the disease. If the first symptoms appear as the usual premonitory evidences, the dose should be increased and other indicated remedies will ward off the disease. I have much confidence in this statement and would suggest that it be carried out fully.
The use of echinacea in the treatment of impetigo contagiosa is confirmed. One doctor treated several very severe cases and the rational action of the remedy suggests that its use externally and internally in this disease will prove highly satisfactory.
Another physician whose name is not given treated infection and a purulent discharge from the urethra where there was urinary retention for two days, with this remedy. He passed a catheter as far down as possible, and then combined one part echinacea with six parts of sterilized water. He forced this slowly against the constriction. Relaxation took place probably from the local anesthetic influence of the remedy in a few minutes. The catheter was withdrawn, and the water passed freely. He repeated the treatment once or twice a day to a complete cure.
Dr. Rounseville reported to the Wisconsin State Medical Society that he had used echinacea with excellent results in both diabetes mellitus, and diabetes insipidus, and also in some forms of albuminuria, and in each of the cases he obtained results that confirmed his opinion that the agent was one that would be material assistance combined with other measures.
Dr. Hewitt used echinacea in alopecia. He made a strong solution and combined with it agents that would assist in stimulating the nutritive functions of the hair follicles. He was well satisfied with the result.
A directly curative influence from thsi agent alone has beensecured, where from vaccination a general infection has been induced. I am confident that no other single medicine will accomplish as much in these cases, immediately, and as satisfactorily as this remedy.
Dr. Hall of Clearwater, Neb., obtained the same results from injecting the full strength remedy where there was renal hemorrhage with very painful piles. The curative effect was pronounced. Others agree with him in the treatment of piles with echinacea. I am convinced that it would be good practice to use collinsonia, hamamelis or aesculus in conjunction with this remedy.
Dr. Yates treated an eruptive disease with purulent discharge which we call nettle rash with echinacea internally, and permanganate of potassium solution externally. The results were exceedingly prompt.
Many cases of tibial ulcer treated with echinacea with curative results, are reported. The agent is used both internally and externally, associated often with other successful measures.
One doctor had an opportunity to observe the action of echinacea in some fowl that had taken strychnine which was used to poison animals. Those that received the medicine, lived. All those that did not get it, died. This is simply a suggestion in favor of trying echinacea as an antidote for strychnine poisoning.
Posted in Archives, Medicine, Scientific Name, Scientific Name, Uncategorized | Leave a commentEchinacea angustifolium as an Adaptogen
December 30, 2010
Echinacea angustifolia (DC.)
Plant family: Compositae
Common name: Echinacea
Part used: Root
Chemical constituents
Significant phytochemicals include echinacin, echinacoside, essential oils, inulin, polyacetylenes, and polysacharides (10)
Pharmacy
480 grains to the fluid ounce alcohol 65%. dose: gtt 5 to one dram in water every 4 hours. (11)
History
The western tribes used Echinacea angustifolia to treat venomous bites (insect and snake) and a collection of infections. As colonial expansion spread westward, the settlers encountered the drug as a cure for rattlesnake bite. They found it effective at treating potentially lethal rattlesnake bites and as a result, it became a popular domestic remedy. At the same time, medicine show healers and snake oil salesmen used it as a miracle cure for a wide variety of complaints. The association with these charlatans hindered the drug passing into serious medical circles.
In time, it came to the attention of the Eclectic practitioners. Though at first they
were wary of the drug, they did give it a trial to see if there was anything to it. Initially, they used it in simple infections. As Eclectic confidence in the drug grew, it became the standard treatment for the prevention, cure, and control of infection. The Eclectics, who were reported to have an above average record of treating infectious disease, achieved this using Echinacea. The Eclectics greatly increased the understanding of the drug and in time, introduced it to the greater medical community.
Eclectic uses (1–9)
Actions
Alterative, tonic, anti-zymotic, antiseptic, anti-fermentative, corrector of depraved states of the blood, corrects downward action of fluid, restores proper blood making, secretion, excretion, and innervation, acts as an antiferment, corrects physiological abnormalities associated with chronic disease, corrects abnormalities of body temperature, counteracts the depressing effects of sedatives, averts pulmonary and other forms of gangrene.
Indications
“To correct fluid depravation, ‘bad blood,’ tendency to sepsis and malignancy, as in gangrene, sloughing and phagedenic ulceration’s, carbuncles, boils, and various forms of septicaemia; foul discharges, with weakness and emaciation; deepened, bluish or purplish coloration of skin or mucous membranes, with a low form of inflammation; dirty-brownish tongue; jet-black tongue; tendency to the formation of multiple cellular abscesses of semi-active character, with marked asthenia. Of especial importance in typhoid, septicaemic and other adynamic fevers, and in malignant carbuncle, pulmonary gangrene, cerebra-spinal meningitis and pyosalpinx. Echafolta is advised as a cleansing wash in surgical operations, and to annul the pain of and to deodorize carcinomata.” (8)
General
General debilitated habit, tendency to infection, blood depravity (internal infection) or external noxious agent (snake, spider bite.), strumous diathesis, syphilis, primary and secondary, diphtheria, typhoid conditions, septic phase of typhoid, blood poisoning, syphilitic diathesis, ulceration with profuse secretion, tendency to systemic poisoning, breath offensive, dusky coloured mucous membranes, profuse acid saliva, tendency to gangrene and sloughing, weakness and emaciation, disorders of the blood (syphilis, scrofula, chronic ulceration), spinal meningitis, puerperal fever, adynamic fevers, fevers of septic infection and rheumatic attacks, intermittent, remittent, congestive, continued, and typhoid fevers, ague, malaria, chronic malaria, typho-malarial fevers, rabid dog bites, malignant diphtheria, malignant blood poisoning with marked exhaustion, extensive exudation and sloughing of the fauces, blood depravation manifesting as sloughing of tissues, mountain fever, infections following exposure to sewer gas, dynamic fevers, perityphilitis, follicular tonsillitis, Tonsilitis, sthenic and asthenic conditions, epidemic influenza, debility associated with influenza, eruptive fevers (chicken pox, small pox, measles, scarlet fever), scarlatinal angina, tetanus, anthrax, infections introduced by vaccination, debility caused by vaccination, stings of wasps and bees, bites of snakes, in particular rattle snake, poison ivy, noxious plants, cancer, mucous membrane cancer, breast cancer, testicular cancer, cancerous cachexia.
Digestive
Cholera infantum, diarrhoea with nausea and vomiting, profuse and bad smelling discharge, diseases of the stomach, cholera morbus, ulcers of the throat, haemorrhoids, dysentery, unhealthy conditions of the mouth and throat, appendicitis, ulcerated sore throat, dyspepsia with pain and great distress upon eating, dyspepsia of long standing, indigestion, lack of appetite, fermantative dyspepsia with offensive breath and gastric pain, duodenal catarrh, intestinal indigestion with pain and debility, ulcerative stomatitis, nursing sore mouth, diarrhoea, dysentery, semi-inflammatory type of dysentery with a tendency to malignancy, typhilitis, perityphilitis, abdominal and pelvic operations into which an organ has discharged septic material, incurable ulcerative colitis, digestive tract mucous membrane abnormalities.
Endocrine
Diabetes insipidus, diabetes mellitus.
Genito-urinary
Inflammation of the male and female urethra, erythematous vulvitis, erysipelas vulvitis, erysipelas vulvitis of strumous children, inflammation of the vagina, gonorrhoea, leucorrhea, ulceration of the os uteri, purulent salpingitis, dropsy following scarlatina, uraemic poisonings.
Musculoskeletal
Rheumatism, articular rheumatism, rheumatic attacks, phlebitis, infections of the muscles threatening or causing gangrene, phlegmansia alba dolens.
Nervous
Nervous headache, pain associated with skin conditions (rhus poisoning erysipelas, etc.), pain of cancerous growths on mucous membranes (cancer of the throat).
Respiratory
Pneumonia, catarrh, nasal catarrh, pharyngeal catarrh, chronic catarrh, affections of the nose, naso-pharynx, other portions of the respiratory tract, black tongue, ulcerated, fetid mucous surfaces, with dusky or dark coloration with chronic debilitated habit, chronic catarrhal bronchitis, fetid bronchitis, pulmonary gangrene, typhoid pneumonia, tubercular phthisis, stone cutters or grinders consumption, tubercular diathesis.
Skin
Old sores and wounds, foul phagedenic ulcers, ulcers, purplish skin with bluish shining appearance, vesicular eruptions, viscid exudations, painful superficial irritations, burning of surface, erysipelas, boils, carbuncles, ulcers of the lower extremities, pus filled cavities, conditions with superficial irritation of acute and painful nature, chaffing, erythema, predisposition to irritable states resulting in skin irritations, formation of multiple cellular abscesses, eczema, skin diseases of systemic origin, milk crust, acne, scald head, chronic ulceration’s of the leg, tubercular abscesses, gangrene, empyema, phlegmonous swellings, old sores, erysipelas with sloughing phagedena, dissecting surgical wounds, phlegmasia dolens, dermatitis venenata, cellular abscesses with haemorrhage diarrhoea, malignant carbuncle, painful mammitis, chronic inflammation of the mammary gland, syphilitic ulcers of the mouth, throat, and tongue, chronic eczema with glutinous exudations associated with asthenia and general depravity, psoriasis, psoriasis following vaccination, bed sores, fever sores, old tibial ulcers, chronic glandular indurations, scrofulous and syphilitic nodules, alopecia.
The drug from Selye’s perspective
State of Resistance
The drug was used to raise resistance to primary syphilis, diphtheria, typhoid conditions, spinal meningitis, puerperal fever, septic fevers, small pox, measles, rabies, mountain fever, sewer gas fever, tonsillitis, influenza, chicken pox, scarlet fever, tetanus, anthrax, gonorrhoea, blood depravity (bacteria or bile), general debilitated habit, tendency to systemic poisoning, tendency to infection, tuberculosis, adynamic fevers, rheumatic fever, intermittent, remittent, congestive, continued or typhoid fevers, septic phase of typhoid fever, malaria, malignant diphtheria, influenza, vaccination, rheumatism, diabetes, dropsy following scarlet fever, stone grinders consumption, pneumonia, snake and insect bites.
State of Exhaustion
The drug was used when resistance could no longer be maintained and State of Exhaustion set in. Diseases causing the State of Exhaustion treated with this drug including syphilis, malaria, tuberculosis, and cancer. Signs of State of Exhaustion, remedied with the drug included debility, strumous diathesis, tendency to infections, mucous membrane ulceration with profuse excretion, tendency to gangrene, sloughing away, and emaciation, ague, ulcerative colitis, respiratory ulceration, phthisis, consumption, old sores and wounds, erysipelas, old tibial ulcers, bed sores, chronic glandular indurations, cachexia, and temperature abnormalities.
Adaptation Energy
From Selye’s perspective, the drug was used to augment the GAS, which suggests it increases adaptation energy. Evidence to this effect includes the following. The Eclectics saw Echinacea as the ultimate stimulant to the preservative capacity. When the body needed to mount resistance to an infection, the drug was employed. If a person had a wound from a dissection, had been exposed to sewer gas, or had been bitten by a mad dog, the drug was used. The drug was used to increase resistance to almost all known bacterial, viral, and fungal infections. The drug was also used when the body was no longer able to resist a chronic infection and State of Exhaustion commenced. Lastly, the drug was used to stimulate healing in fresh wounds and non-healing ulcers and sores.
Brekhman’s adaptogen criterion
An adaptogen should be innocuous and cause minimal disorders in the physiological functions of an organism.
The drug is considered innocuous both in Eclectic and contemporary literature. (1–10)
The action of an adaptogen should be non-specific i.e. it should increase resistance to adverse influences of a wide range of factors of physical, chemical, and biological nature.
Clinically the drug was used to raise resistance to acute and chronic infections, autoimmune disease (rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis), and cancer. (1–9)
Experimentally, compounds found in the drug have been shown to directly increase resistance to bacterial (Staph, Strep), viral (influenza, HIV), fungal (Candida), and protozoan infection. They have been shown to indirectly increase resistance to the same via immune stimulation They have been shown to increase resistance to cancer, Carcinogenesis, liver and free radical damage. (10)
An adaptogen may possess normalising action irrespective of the direction of the foregoing pathological changes.
Clinically the drug was used to normalise abnormal function associated with State of Exhaustion . It was also used to normalise immune function (hyper, auto, or hypo) and to normalise healing capacity when the ability had been lost. (1–9)
Experimentally, the drug contains constituents that have been shown to normalise a host of physiological functions including excessive gastric acidity, membrane permeability abnormalities, abnormal inflammation, abnormal immune function, hyperlipidemia, hypercholesterolemia, hyperglycaemia, and hypertension. (10)
Discussion
The drug exhibits properties consistent with Brekhman’s definition of an adaptogen. It is innocuous, it raises resistance to a broad spectrum of biological threats to well being, and it normalises function.
Beyond this, Echinacea angustifolia, one of the most popular herbal medicines, offers the medical thinker a different perspective on infectious disease prevention.
At the moment, the medical community relies on vaccination to protect people from infections. This is problematic, in part because vaccinations have risks, and in part, because a vaccination only protects a person against one infection. There are so many potential infections, vaccinating people against the infectious threat of the day is a time consuming, cumbersome and expensive endeavour.
Echinacea angustifolia, on the other hand, offers increased resistance to any and all microbes the body encounters. By increasing immune function, the body has an increased ability to resist any microbe that requires neutralisation. It is the non-specificity of Echinacea, and drugs like it that makes these drugs so interesting. In addition, Echinacea angustifolium represents another divergence from standard infection prevention practices. This drug garners the bodies own defence mechanisms to neutralise a threat to well being. It encourages the body to do what it was meant to do. It works with the body to encourage enhanced self-protection.
Potential clinical applications
There is evidence suggesting Echinacea angustifolium may have a role in preventing epidemic infectious disease. There is also evidence the drug may have a role in preventing infection—induced State of Exhaustion .
Future research
• The effect of Echinacea angustifolia on the GAS. The drug should be tested out in the animal model to determine its specific effect on the GAS.
• Echinacea angustifolia and biological warfare. The drug was universally used to increase resistance to any and all infections (viral, bacterial, and protozoan). Contemporary research indicates that the drug is an immune stimulant, increasing both immune cell counts and immune cell activity. The drug offers increased non-specific resistance to microbial infection. The drugs’ role in increasing resistance to biological warfare should be examined.
• Echinacea angustifolia and infection induced State of Exhaustion . The drug was used when State of Exhaustion set in. Indeed, its clinical indications perfectly match the profile of an organism in State of Exhaustion . Its role in State of Exhaustion in diseases like HIV and hepatitis C should be examined.
Eco-availability
The drug is readily raised.
References for Echinacea angustifolia
• Neiderkorn, JS. The Physicians and Students Ready Guide to Specific Medication. The Little Printing Company. Bradford , Ohio . 1892. P. 8.
• Watkins, Lyman. An Eclectic Compendium of the Practice of Medicine. John M.Scudder’s Sons. Cincinnati . 1895. P. 43.
• Webster, HT. Dynamical Therapeutics—A work devoted to the Theory and Practice of Specific Medication with special references to the newer remedies. Webster Medical Publishing Company. Oakland . Second Edition. 1898. P. 69, 146, 255, 399, 479, 545.
• Felter, Harvey Wickes and Lloyd, John Uri. Kings’ American Dispensatory. Volume one and Volume two. Ohio Valley Company. Cincinnati . 1898. P. 671.
• Felter, Harvey. Syllabus of Eclectic Materia Medica and Therapeutics. Compiled from notes taken from the lectures of F.J.Locke. Edited with pharmacological additions by H.W.Felter. Second edition, with appendix. Scudder Brothers Company. Cincinnati.1901. P. 418.
• Neiderkorn, JS. A Handy Reference Book. Published for the Author. Cincinnati . 1905. P. 22.
• Peterson, F.J. Materia Medica and Clinical Therapeutics. Published by the Author. Los Olivos , California . 1905. P. 83.
• Fyfe, John William. Pocket Essentials of Modern Materia Medica and Therapeutics. The Scudder Brothers Company. 1903. P. 108.
• Ellingwood, Finley. American Materia Medica, Therapeutics, and Pharmacognosy. Ellingwood’s Therapeutist. Chicago . 1919. P. 358.
• Dr. DukesPhytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases. Agricultural Research Service. USDA.
• Lloyd Brothers. Dosebook of Specific Medicines. Lloyd Brothers. Cincinatti. 1930.
Posted in Archives, Medicine, Scientific Name, Scientific Name | Leave a commentEchinacea angustifolium as a Wound Healing Agent
December 29, 2010Resources
Introductory Article
Professional level article
Introductory Article
The First Aid Miracle : Echinacea angustifolia
Today, when people think of Echinacea, they think of Flu prevention. They pull Echinacea tablets from the medicine chest in desperate attempts to prevent coughs and colds from taking hold. In fact, millions now insist Echinacea keeps them flu free year-after-year. It is so popular even drug stores carry it!
What most Echinacea fans do not know is that a 100 years ago it was primarily used as a wound healing agent. It ruled supreme in the world of first aid and was a standard treatment for cuts, bites, and burns. Doctors only abandoned it as a wound healer when antibiotics came into existence. Ironically, as we approach the year 2000 antibiotics are failing and Echinacea is being dusted off and put back into the first aid box.
Paradise Lost: Topical Antibiotics Begin to Fail
For the last 40 years, people have used topical antibiotics to prevent wound infection. Millions of pounds of antibiotic cream have been spread over thousands of miles of injured skin. Untold skin infections have been prevented.
Unfortunately, when antibiotics are over used, bacteria become resistant to them. Lots of studies now indicate that the bacteria known to cause skin infections are unaffected by our common antibiotics. In fact, some doctors say that because of topical antibiotic abuse they are running out of antibiotics that work in common skin infections like acne and also in more serious skin infections. The message? We need to slow our use of topical antibiotics and find a few alternatives for our first aid program.
Look on the Bright Side
Fortunately, the world of herbal medicine is loaded with plants that can keep wounds from becoming infected. For thousands of years the Native Americans used Echinacea to prevent infection in arrow wounds, venomous bites, and burns. Colonial doctors found that it could be used to prevent gangrene in barnyard wounds. Looking into alternatives such as these may even result in us finding superior wound healing agents!
Looking Backwards Correctly
When we dip into the past to find herbal solutions for today’s problems, we need to be precise in our retrieval dipping. Often contemporary people are sloppy about bringing information from the past into the present and this is unfortunate. Experience and knowledge about herbal remedies was built up over generations – people learnt through trial and error. When we fail to follow their directions on the use of these medicinal plants we do not take advantage of their acquired knowledge. We toss it out the window. When we review Echinacea’s past as a wound healing agent, we need to review it carefully!
Not Any Echinacea Will Do!
When we discuss ‘Echinacea’ as a wound healing agent or for any other purpose, we need to be specific There are eight Echinacea species and each is different. An orange is not a lemon and, in much the same way, Echinacea angustifolia is not Echinacea purpurea. When it comes to wound healing, the species to be used is Echinacea angustifolia. We know this from the historical record.
- The limited records we have of the Native American use of the Echinacea species show they preferred Echinacea angustifolia for wound healing(2-5).
- The Physicians who pioneered Echinacea use and studied it the most, the Eclectics, stated very clearly that Echinacea angustifolia was the superior wound healer and that all other species were universally disappointing (1).
When we are looking for new wound healing agents, let’s not go backwards. Let’s take the knowledge of those that came before and go forward! Echinacea angustifolia is the wound healing agent! What else can we learn from those that came before?
Native American Use of Echinacea Angustifolia
Towards the tail end of the last century The Bureau of American Ethnology started cataloguing the Native American knowledge of plants. As a result of this field research, we know the following about the Native American use of Echinacea angustifolia:
- It was used to prevent infection in venomous bites (snake, mosquito, wasp, tarantula, scorpion, etc)(2-5).
- It was used as a pain killer and healing agent for burns (2-5).
- It was used to reduce pain and prevent infection in recent wounds and to clean out wounds that had become infected (2-5).
The Eclectic Physicians Recommendation
The Eclectic doctors encountered Echinacea angustifolia when they made their way East on the wagon trains travelling from New York to the Ohio territories. The Ohio pioneers, having learned of its uses from the Native Americans, were quick to tell the arriving East coast doctors all about it. These doctors saw the power of Echinacea angustifolia and used it to prevent infection anytime the skin was broken or damaged. Life in the territories was physical and resulted in constant bites, scratches, burns, and cuts. The Eclectic physicians needed something that could prevent gangrene and they found it in Echinacea angustifolia.
The Eclectic physicians started using Echinacea angustifolia in 1854 and continued until their institute closed in 1930. Over the course of those years they learned a lot. They found that when it was applied externally and taken internally, wounds did not become infected and this included serious wounds.
Last century most patients unfortunate enough to have surgery died of infected surgical wounds. The Eclectics found that when Echinacea angustifolia was used surgical patients lived! Even the Eclectics were shocked (and delighted) with this development.
Oddly enough, almost 100 years later, surgery is once again becoming more risky. Today, hospitals have become breeding grounds for antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. The very place you are most likely to have surgery is the place you are most likely to encounter a bacteria which will not respond to antibiotics.
The fact the Eclectics found Echinacea worked in surgical wounds tells us it will probably keep a domestic scratch free of infection. But what of the contemporary researchers, have they been able to validate these historic uses?
Echinacea angustifolia 2000
Contemporary research has validated the Native American and Eclectic use of Echinacea angustifolia as a wound healing agent. The folks in the laboratories have pulled the herb apart and discovered it works in two distinct ways. Firstly, it seems to prevent wounds from becoming infected and secondly it speeds up the wound healing process. Let’s look at these two activities separately.
1. Prevention of Bacterial Infection
Imagine a prizefighter punching away at his opponent. Boom, bang, boom, bang. Lots of punches in rapid succession begin wear the opponent out. Eventually one well placed punch knocks the opponent out for the count. Echinacea angustifolia works the same way on bacteria which is trying to cause an infection in a wound. It hammers and hammers bacteria until they look like road kill. Here are a few examples of the bacterial abuse dolled out by Echinacea angustifolia.
Boom!
Echinacea angustifolia contains compounds which directly attack bacteria (13-16). Theorists suggest these compounds weaken the bacterial cell wall and with their cell wall battered and tattered, they are more vulnerable to immune cell attack.
Bang!
Echinacea angustifolia stimulates the production of the white bloods cells responsible for killing bacteria. It makes more immune cells available to pummel bacteria (11,12). It also stimulates the killing ability of these newly created white blood cells to behave in a more vicious manner! (11-12). The end consequence being a herd of vicious immune cells riding the bacteria hard.
Boom!
Bacteria use a compound called hyaluronidase to melt their way into the body. You’ve heard of digging your way to China? Well, bacteria use hyaluronidase to dig their way into you. It is their chemical ‘shovel’. Echinacea angustifolia contains compounds which inhibit or lock up hyaluronidase. It takes their shovel away from them! Once their shovel is gone, they are stopped dead in their tracks.
2. Faster Wound Healing
More than just preventing bacterial infection, Echinacea angustifolia stimulates the healing process itself, reduces inflammation, and decreases pain. As topical antibiotics merely prevent bacterial infection, you can see why some considered Echinacea angustifolia to be a superior wound healing agent. You get several activities for the price of one! Let’s have a closer look at these fringe benefits.
Seal Me Up Scotty !
The immune cells responsible for killing bacteria are also responsible for initiating the healing or sealing up process. Using Echinacea angustifolia wounds take less time to heal (13-19).
I’m Swelling and I Can’t Get Up !
First aid situations often involve swelling or inflammation. Insect bites and traumatic injuries both have a tendency to swell. Echinacea angustifolia has been shown to be as effective as cortisone in inflammation reduction (15-19).
Someone End My Suffering!
The Native Americans and Eclectics said that Echinacea angustifolia was an incredible pain killer. Research has shown that it contains compounds called alkylamides which block the transmission of pain. Suffer no more! (10-20)
Conclusion
For all these reasons, Echinacea angustifolia is more than just an alternative to topical antibiotics, it may actually be a superior drug. It is an immune stimulant, antibacterial agent, anti-inflammatory agent, pain killer, and healing stimulant all wrapped up into one. Yes, it all sounds good, but, does it work! Here are a few case histories from my clinical practice which add a level of reality to this discussion.
Case Notes from My Medical Practice
Seven Year Old Savagely Attacked by Bees
A seven year old boy accidentally stepped over a yellow jacket’s nest. The bees were not happy and stung him repeatedly on his arms and legs. The stings were bathed in Echinacea by way of compresses. The expected swelling and pain did not occur, and, the child was back at play within three hours of the attack. Previously this particular child had displayed great swelling around insect bites.
Coffee Maker Burned
A 55 year old women was making coffee with a French cafetiere. When she pushed the plunger down, the glass coffee maker exploded bathing her left arm, from shoulder to wrist, with
boiling water and coffee grounds. The burn was almost instantly bathed with Echinacea and was compressed with Echinacea for the next day. The women was able to sleep that night without the aid of pain killers and the burn did not blister as was expected.
Absent Minded Professor Tries to Remove Thumb the Hard Way
A professor inclined to spend his time thinking and not paying attention grabbed a public bathroom doorknob. The doorknob was broken and the professor received a cut on the thumb. The wound was significant and required butterfly bandaging. Echinacea angutifolia tincture was sprayed onto the wound several times a day. The wound did not become infected, healed amazingly quickly, and resulted in little scarring.
Kitchen Worker Keeps on Working
A 45 year old Chef complained of the constant cuts and burns received while on the job. Steam burns received working over boiling pots made work a misery. Cleaning vegetables and meat exposed these wounds to lots of bacteria was causing lots of infections. The chef kept a sprits bottle of Echinacea angustifolia in the kitchen. By spraying wounds as soon as they occurred, and while healing, infections have been eliminated. Most importantly, he has found the spray especially good at blocking the pain of burns.
Mosquitoes Prefer Her Blood
A 50 year old woman found that mosquitoes preferred her blood over that of anyone she was with. After the fact, the bites swelled to untold proportions, had a tendency to become infected, and left unsightly scars. She spritzed the bites with Echinacea angustifolia and was able to skip the usual course of affairs! She was still bitten, but, the bites were not a problem anymore.
Parting Words /Closing Wounds
The development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria tell us we need to reduce our use of topical antibiotics. We need to reserve them for emergency situations. As they say, if you keep doing what you are doing, you will keep getting what you are getting. Right now we are running out of topical antibiotics that work and are developing flocks of antibiotic resistant super bugs.
Echinacea angustifolia is one of several herbal remedies which offer us an alternative to ‘contemporary’ medicines.
When is it reasonable to use Echinacea angustifolia?
Just about anytime you feel like reaching for topical antibiotic cream. Minor cuts, burns, scratches, and insect bites can all be safely treated with Echinacea angustifolia.
How should you use it?
Firstly, you need to get a hold of an alcoholic extract of Echinacea angustifolia root. The extract, or tincture, should be at least 45% alcohol. This tincture can be added to a small spray bottle and applied by spritz. In burns and bites the recommendation is to spritz the affected part every hour on the hour. For wounds, one needs to spritz four times a day. If you are really worried about the bites or wounds, you can use the Echinacea angustifolia internally as well. The usual prescription is to take 5 millilitres of a 1:5 tincture or 2 (250mg) tablets three times a day on top of your topical application. The good news is that you can avoid infection, experience faster healing wounds, and help to reduce the development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria!
Echinacea angustifolia and Wound Management
ABSTRACT
This article reviews the Native American and Eclectic uses of Echinacea angustifolia as a wound healing agent for a wide range of maladies, including gangrenous wounds, infected insect bites, bed sores, and ulcers. Historical uses of this drug to treat rabies, tetanus, impetigo, and erysipelas are also discussed, as well as contemporary research data to support Echinacea angustifolia’s powerful immune stimulating and anti-inflammatory properties. Although this drug appears to have been overlooked by modern phytotherapists, there appears to be a significant volume of data to support its reintroduction into widespread use as a wound healing agent.
Introduction
When one examines the historical use of Echinacea angustifolia, both amongst the Native Americans and the Eclectic physicians, one finds it hailed as the preferred wound healing agent. Initially the Native Americans applied the agent in the form of a poultice to fresh wounds, burns, venomous bites, and infected wounds. Later, the Eclectics used tinctures of Echinacea angustifolia topically and internally to prevent infection and to speed the healing of wounds. Prior to the age of antibiotics, Echinacea angustifolia was deemed a reliable and effective wound-healing agent.
Indeed, in the days before antibiotics existed, the Eclectics used Echinacea angustifolia to counter the effects of all bacterial infections, topical or otherwise. The Eclectic physicians were loathed for many reasons, one being simple professional jealousy. They had an incredibly high success rate in treating bacterial infections while their allopathic brethren did not. Success rarely makes a person or a group popular. The key to the Eclectic success was Echinacea angustifolia.
Oddly enough, if one surveys the contemporary consumer and indeed the modern practitioner, Echinacea angustifolia is rarely recommended or used in wound management. Echinacea angustifolia’s use as a vulnerary seems to have been almost entirely forgotten in the last 70 years. This is largely due to two factors. Firstly, the proponents of Echinacea angustifolia as a wound healing agent were put out of business by the allopaths 70 years ago. Secondly, at about the same time, antibiotics came into existence. It appeared that antibiotics were a group of drugs with a superior action to that of Echinacea angustifolia. This is a simplistic view, the important point being that this useful herbal medicine is no longer used in wound healing.
For many practical reasons, this forgotten use of Echinacea angustifolia needs to be resurrected. The primary reason being that wound management is once again a problem. Today, wounds represent a threat to human well being. The antibiotics which fail to clear urethritis, tonsillitis, and sinusitis, may also fail to prevent or clear topical infections resulting from domestic misadventures, occupational related injuries, and surgery. The drugs that once saved the day are not doing the job anymore.
The notion of hospital dwelling, “flesh melting” bacteria has been sensationalized by the general press. Though the hysteria generated by this coverage is largely unwarranted and represents scare mongering, these stories do speak of a very real problem confronting the medical profession. There are strains of bacteria which resist antibiotics. Some strains of bacteria have developed mechanisms, over the years, with which they “evade” death by antibiotics.
However, when one approaches the subject of wound care from the allopathic perspective, one finds a very troublesome situation. This is a good example. The allopathic medical community has at last wakened to the fact that the indiscriminate prescription of internal antibiotics leads to disastrous results. However, when one approaches the world of domestic wound healing, one finds topical antibiotic abuse alive and well. Take a trip to any chemist and you will find a rack of first aid creams filled with antibiotics of various descriptions. Unlike internal antibiotics, which require a prescription, topical antibiotics are freely available. If using antibiotics internally led to a generation of resistant bacteria, is it not logical that the topical application of antibiotics may do the same? In this case, the use of topical antibiotics is far more widespread. Perhaps no one wants to talk about topical antibiotics because no one has an alternative on hand. Regardless of the reason no one is looking at topical antibiotics. The rational mind sees they are bound to cause a problem one day soon.
The scientific community’s solution to the problem of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria is to search out new antibiotics. The theory seems to be “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Antibiotics, though a great addition to the medical repertoire, have been established to have a fatal flaw. Despite this fact, new technologies or a different way of handling the bacteria problem is not being pursued. Not only does the pharmacist have little to hand the consumer as an alternative, they are unlikely to have anything in the near immediate future. Non-antibiotic solutions to topical bacterial infections are not exactly rolling off the assembly line.
Though the allopaths appear “lost in space” in regards to wound management, phytotherapists do not need to follow their lead. We need drugs that can prevent bacterial infection in wounds and speed the healing process. The concept of using agents that simply kill the bacteria has not worked out that well. We need to abandon it. We need to employ drugs that represent a different tactic. Fortunately, with a world of plants at our disposal, we have options.
Rather than looking for antibacterial agents, why not look for plants that stimulate the immune system? Why not use plants that harness the body’s own bacteria killing ability? We have no shortage of plants which have been proven to stimulate the immune system. Echinacea angustifolia is such a plant. We may not know much about it as a wound healing agent, but in fact, there is a lot to know. It has a long history of being used to heal wounds and contemporary evidence to support that history. There is no time like the present to investigate one medicinal plant that could reinvent the world of wound healing. Let’s see what Echinacea angustifolia has to offer the practitioner looking for a non-antibiotic antibiotic.
The Drug in Question: Echinacea angustifolia
To begin, though the industry refers to the Echinacea species as “Echinacea” generically, and at times the phytotherapeutic community makes the same mistake, it would be wise to dispense with this regrettable practice. These are different plants and they need to be dealt with individually.
If one examines the chemical constituents found in Echinacea angustifolia, Echinacea purpurea and Echinacea pallida, one finds each contains a different cocktail of compounds. We know that medicinal plants are made active by the chemicals that make them up. Therefore, different chemical profiles are bound to result in different actions. Though Echinacea angustifolia, Echinacea purpurea and Echinacea pallida are closely allied plants phytochemically, they are not synonymous with one another.
This article reviews the use of Echinacea angustifolia in wound healing not the Echinacea species. The story starts with the Native Americans and continues onto the Eclectics. The very limited records we have of the pre-colonial Native American use of the Echinacea species in wound healing indicate the Native Americans used Echinacea angustifolia. The Eclectics only used Echinacea angustifolia in wound healing. Indeed, the Eclectics were rather vocal about the inferiority of the other species and were adamant that the official drug was Echinacea angustifolia.
Dr. Finley Ellingwood, a leading Eclectic, said this in 1919, “There is considerable confusion concerning the identity of the active medicinal species of Echinacea. The Echinacea purpurea of the Eastern States has been thought to be identical with the Echinacea angustifolia of the Western States. It is often used for the same purposes, but is universally disappointing.”1 The pioneers of Echinacea did not confuse the species and neither should we. The drug being discussed in this article is Echinacea angustifolia and the material contained herein applies to that species alone.
Native American Use of Echinacea Angustifolia in Wound Management
Combing through the North American ethnobotanical texts, one finds that Native Americans used Echinacea angustifolia in several classes of wounds. A summary of the recorded uses would include:
1. A vulnerary in venomous bites (e.g., snake, insect, tarantula, etc.)
2. A vulnerary and anodyne in burns.
3. An antiseptic in fresh and infected wounds.2,3,4,5
Eclectic Use of Echinacea Angustifolia in Wound Management
Despite the fact the Eclectics learned of Echinacea angustifolia from the Native Americans, they regarded it as a drug they had personally discovered. The following quote comes from the 1909 version of ‘King’s Dispensatory’.
“Now a well-known drug, Echinacea (angustifolia) stands peculiarly alone in being essentially a new remedy. Many remedies which have lately been introduced, can be traced back for years, and some of them for centuries, as having at some time occupied a place in either domestic or professional practice, but our ancient scientific works are silent concerning this species of Echinacea. A careful search through the large numbers of works upon domestic medicine, herbal, medical botanies, and the so-called “irregular” works upon practice, contained in the Lloyd Library, failed to reveal even a mention of Echinacea angustifolia as a medicinal agent. The first notices concerning Echinacea (angustifolia) are from Eclectic physicians, and the drug is, from start to finish, an Eclectic medicine.” 6
This was wishful thinking on the part of the Eclectics. However, it would be accurate to say that the Eclectics pioneered its use in western medicine and expanded the horizons of its use in wound healing. By examining the Eclectic use of Echinacea angustifolia in wound healing, one sees how relevant it is in the world in which we live today.
Dr. Herbert Webster, an Eclectic physician working in California was one of the early champions of Echinacea angustifolia. In his text on materia medica, published in 1898, we find two case histories which are representative of the early Eclectic use of Echinacea angustifolia. These case histories come from his section entitled “Antiseptics, Antizymotics, Correctives”.
A Gangrenous Wound
“I was called to a case with a history of blood poisoning and treatment with caustic, mercuric bichloride and hot water – a man sixty-five years of age. Two physicians had given him up. I was much inclined to follow their example, but thought it a good case to test Echinacea. On entering the room Professor Scudder’s ‘Rose’ and Professor Howe’s ‘Tandog’ were suggested by the intolerable stench. Examination revealed a mass of dead flesh between the metacarpal bones of the index finger and thumb of the right hand. Lifting it, the metacarpal bone lay bare the whole length, both extensor and flexor muscles having sloughed off. The old man was very weak and exhibited the characteristic symptoms of severe poisoning, so I dismissed the thought of amputation and applied the Echinacea locally, diluting it one-half, also giving it internally full strength. At the end of a week the patient was out of bed.
The other day he walked into my office and exhibited his hand. The chasm was pretty well filled with healthy flesh, the bone being visible at only one small point, the edges of the wound contracted and so covered with skin that it was reduced to less than one-third its former dimensions. Several times during the treatment I withdrew the internal medicine. Every attempt was followed in a short time by sloughing at some point.“7
An Infected Insect Bite
“Shortly after my return from Europe (October, 1890) a rancher from San Bernardino county applied to me for relief from effects of a tarantula bite on the hand, received while working among his grape vines. The bite had been inflicted more than a month before I saw the hand, and plenty of time had elapsed for the effects of the poison to become manifested locally. The middle finger of the right hand over the dorsal aspect of the first phalanx, presented a purplish, sloughing ulcer, as large as a silver quarter, and the whole finger was enormously swollen its entire length, and presented a bluish, shiny appearance. The entire hand was purple and oedematous, while the patient was worn and emaciated from the constitutional effects of the poison and loss of rest resulting from the local discomfort. The home doctor had treated the case from the beginning, but nothing used had seemed to afford any benefit.
Thus I gave the agent singly, determined to allow it a fair field and no favors. On the second day afterward I saw the hand, and was surprised at the evidence of improvement already visible. Within a week the angry appearance was all gone and ulcer nearly healed. All the malignant aspects of the case had given way, and a few days more sufficed to send the patient on his way rejoicing.”7
The Eclectics found that Echinacea angustifolia was efficient in clearing bacterial infection, even when it had progressed to the point of gangrene. This use does not go beyond the Native American use for the plant. However, in the same text we do see the Eclectics becoming clever. The good doctor makes this comment, “where there is a tendency to gangrenous states it excels.”7
Not only could Echinacea angustifolia be used to prevent wounds from becoming infected and clear existing infections, it could be used in those individuals predisposed to infection! Two examples of such patients would be the bedridden and the diabetic. Today, the diabetic and the bedridden patient pose as serious a challenge to the medical profession as they did to the Eclectics. There are still patients inclined to develop slow healing sores and Echinacea angustifolia, according to the Eclectics, could make a difference.
In 1905, Dr. F. J. Petersen mentions Echinacea angustifolia for a purpose which would become a classic Eclectic use. The line is short and to the point and it altered the face of Eclectic medicine. “As a wet surgical dressing it has no equal.”8 The discovery of a plant that could prevent infections resulting from surgery opened the door for more surgery. At the time, a physician had to well and truly agonise over whether or not to proceed surgically. Echinacea angustifolia made surgery more of a realistic option.
In 1909, ‘Kings Dispensatory’ was re-released having been updated by Harvey Wickes Felter. Again we find Echinacea angustifolia being used in the surgical theatre. In this instance the drug is used internally and externally to prevent post-operative infection. An Eclectic Echinacea angustifolia product, echafolta is referenced.
“Prof. L. E. Jones advises echafolta as a preventative of sepsis, giving it internally previously to operations, to act as an intestinal antiseptic, and locally, as a corrective, to dress any traumatism showing signs of sepsis, and as a wash in abdominal and pelvic operations into which any organ has discharged septic contents. Phlegmonous swellings, old sores, erysipelas with sloughing phagedena, dissecting or surgical wounds, phlegmasia dolens, dermatitis venenata, and pus cavities should be treated with Echinacea or echafolta, both locally and internally.” 9
In this text we find mention of Echinacea angustifolia being used to prevent infection in the vulnerable and to treat those suffering from severe bacterial infections. In fact, we read of instances of bacterial infection that would be hard to imagine in the modern world. Even in these dire instances, the Eclectics found Echinacea angustifolia curative!
“To correct fluid depravation, ‘bad blood’, tendency to sepsis and malignancy, as in gangrene, sloughing and phagedenic ulcerations, carbuncles, boils, and various forms of septicaemia; foul discharges, with weakness and emaciation; deepened, bluish or purplish coloration of skin or mucous membranes, with a low form of inflammation; dirty-brownish tongue; jet-black tongue; tendency to the formation of multiple cellular abscesses of semi-active character, with marked asthenia. Of especial importance in typhoid, septicaemic and other adynamic fevers, and in malignant carbuncle, pulmonary gangrene, cerebro-spinal meningitis and pyosalphinx. Echafolta is advised as a cleansing wash in surgical operations, and to annul the pain of and to deodorize carcinomata.” 9
In the same text Felter goes on to advise the reader as to how Echinacea angustifolia should be used. The writer makes it clear that the drug was to be used internally and externally and that a purified extract was to be used in the surgical setting. “As a therapeutic agent Echinacea is often used both internally and locally at the same time; therefore in this article the internal and external uses will not be given separately, but collectively. And in as much as Echafolta is a name given to distinguish a purified form of Echinacea, the remarks concerning the one are equally applicable to the other, except in important surgical cases, where greater cleanliness is desired, when Echafolta is to be preferred.” 9
In 1919, Dr. Ellingwood wrote one of the final Eclectic texts. The Eclectic understanding of Echinacea angustifolia had increased through ongoing trials in their clinics and hospitals. This last text tells us the specific instances in which the Eclectics found the drug useful and how they used it. For those looking for non-antibiotic wound management agents, this list will be of great interest.
Painful Relief
As a consequence of European colonialism, many of the Native American Medicine Men were reduced to earning a living as travelling showmen. They travelled into white settlements to earn a bit of money and had a trick to interest towns people in the medicines they peddled. Namely, they soaked their hands in Echinacea angustifolia and after the fact handled hot coals with impunity. Echinacea angustifolia had been used in the past by the Native Americans to deaden the pain of burns. The ability of Echinacea angustifolia to block the transmission of pain suggested by this cultural phenomena reappears in Ellingwood’s text. Slightly dressed up, we learn that Echinacea angustifolia, apart from reducing the risk of infection, offered pain relief.
“This agent is markedly anaesthetic in its local influence. Applied to open wounds and to painful swellings, while the alcohol may at first induce a burning sensation, this is quickly followed by entire relief from pain in many cases. So marked is this influence that it could well be used for an antiseptic local anaesthetic. Applied to painful surfaces, to local acute and painful inflammations of the integument, or to painful wounds, its anaesthetic influence is soon pronounced, and is of great benefit, in preserving freedom from pain during the active healing processes, which are stimulated and encouraged by this remedy.”10
Wound Healing
In the Eclectic day, the sooner you got a wound healed up the better. When the integrity of the skin was broken, bacteria had an open invitation to enter the body. The Eclectics did not let wounds stay open for long and were constantly in search of drugs that would speed the process. Ellingwood mentions several instances in which Echinacea angustifolia could be used to inspire the body to bridge the gaps.
Bed Sores, Chronic Ulcers, and Tibia Ulcers
“In bed sores, fever sores and chronic ulcerations it is exceedingly useful. It is diluted and applied directly, while it is given internally. It is of much value in old tibial ulcers, in chronic glandular indurations and in scrofulous and syphilitic nodules and other specific skin disorders. The extract or the fluid extract can be combined with an ointment base such as lanolin in the proportion of one part to one, two or three parts of the base and freely applied. It can be injected into the sinuses of carbuncles, or into the structure of the diseased parts with only good results.”10
Venomous Bites
North America is inhabited by a reasonable number of venomous creatures. On the prairie, where the Eclectics practised, this was doubly the case. Generally speaking there are two sorts of venom, one type that affects the nervous system and another type which is cytotoxic. The Eclectics recommended Echinacea angustifolia for the latter. In this instance, the venom of rattlesnakes, scorpions, and tarantulas destroyed tissue on contact. A person bitten by a rattler ended up with an orange size patch of gangrenous tissue wherever the bite happened to land. The Eclectics found that this type of wound was masterfully treated by Echinacea angustifolia.
“The agent has been long in use among the Indians in the West as a sure cure for snake bite. It has created a furor among the practitioners, who have used it in the bites of poisonous animals, that has made the reports, apparently, too exaggerated to establish credulity on the part of the inexperienced. Cases that seemed hopeless have rapidly improved after the agent was applied and administered. There is at present no abatement in the enthusiasm. One physician controlled the violent symptoms from the bite of a tarantula, and quickly eliminated all trace of the poison with its use. Dr. Banta of California treated a man bitten by a scorpion, reported in the Eclectic Medical Journal, with Echinacea with rapid cure.”10
Wound Infection
Though the Eclectics treated fresh wounds with Echinacea angustifolia, they also treated wounds that had become infected or were thought to have been infected (e.g., rabies). Echinacea angustifolia was used in the same manner antibiotics are used today with one notable exception. The Eclectics used the drug to treat rabies, a viral disease. The scope of potential use, bearing this in mind, is much greater than that of antibiotics.
Rabies
“By far the most difficult reports to credit are those of the individuals bitten by rabid animals; there are between twenty and thirty reports at the present time. In no case has hydrophobia yet occurred, and this was the only remedy used in many of the cases. In five or six cases, animals bitten at the same time as the patient had developed rabies, and had even conveyed it to other animals, and yet the patient showed no evidence of poisoning, if the remedy was used at once.”10
Tetanus
“A large amount of satisfactory evidence has accumulated confirmatory of our statements concerning the curative action of the remedy in tetanus. Dr. John Herring reported one marked cure. Dr. Lewis reports three cases, where the remedy was injected into the wound after tetanic symptoms had shown themselves. All the tissues surrounding the wound were filled with the remedy by hypodermic injection and gauze saturated with a full strength preparation was kept constantly applied. The agent was also administered in half-dram doses internally, every two or three hours. Another physician has reported the observation of quite a number of cases where tetanus had either markedly developed, or was anticipated.”10
Impetigo
“The use of Echinacea in the treatment of impetigo contagiosa is confirmed. One doctor treated several very severe cases and the rational action of the remedy suggests that its use externally and internally in this disease will prove highly satisfactory.”10
Erysipelas
“In the treatment of erysipelas it has given more than ordinary satisfaction, and has established itself permanently in that disorder. It is especially needed when sloughing and tissue disintegration occur, its external influence being most reliable.”10
Using Echinacea angustifolia
Ellingwood takes us out with extremely important information regarding dosage. If one wanted to use Echinacea angustifolia effectively for those purposes enumerated by the Eclectics, one needs to use it the way they used it.
“I am convinced that success in certain cases depends upon the fact that the patient must have at times a sufficiently large quantity of this remedy in order to produce full antitoxic effects on the virulent infections. I would therefore emphasize the statement which I have previously made that it is perfectly safe to give Echinacea in massive doses – from two drams to half an ounce every two or three hours – for a time at least, when the system is overwhelmed with the toxins. This applies to tetanus, anthrax, actinomycosis, pyemia, diphtheria, hydrophobia, and meningitis.”10
Concluding the Eclectics, Echinacea angustifolia, and Wound Management
Eclectic texts indicate that Echinacea angustifolia could be used in many of the instances in which antibiotics are failing. They used it to prevent surgical wounds from becoming infected. Hospitals, breeding grounds of resistant strains of bacteria, are the place surgical wounds are created. They used it to treat wounds that had become infected. Today, wounds that manage to become infected are likely to harbour bacteria manifesting some degree of antibiotic resistance.
Moreover, the Eclectic texts indicate that the scope of Echinacea angustifolia is far wider than that of antibiotics. They used the drug to correct the tendency to infection and to stimulate the healing process. They felt that Echinacea angustifolia somehow stimulated the healing force within the body. They used it to treat viral infections and reported good success. We now know that Echinacea angustifolia stimulates the immune system, which is responsible for keeping infections at bay. The same system is behind the healing of a wound. Not only is Echinacea angustifolia a potential antibiotic substitute, it represents a superior drug.
Contemporary Research
Contemporary research is validating the Eclectic use of Echinacea angustifolia in wound healing. Much of the work has been done on animals and is terribly preliminary. However, despite the need for human research, the available work indicates that Echinacea angustifolia is the drug the Eclectics said it was – a multi-dimensional wound healing agent. It inhibits pathogens indirectly through the immune system stimulation. It also directly inhibits pathogens. It acts as an anti-inflammatory and pain killer. It would pay to look at these activities in closer detail to develop a true appreciation of this medicinal plants potential.
Indirect Pathogen Inhibition: Immune System Stimulation
Fifty years of antibiotic use has brought one lesson forward. Agents which simply kill bacteria, in time, stop working. They lead to bacteria which are able to resist the killing agent. Clearly the better solution is to harness the body’s own intrinsic ability to deal with microbial invaders. Immune system stimulation is preferable to the use of anti-microbial agents. At a minimum, it is a new direction.
Echinacea angustifolia’s ability to stimulate the immune system is well documented. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a recent discovery. The Eclectics, in 1920, found that hospitalised tuberculosis patients, when dosed with Echinacea angustifolia, experienced an increase in macrophage count. Beyond this, the Eclectics noted that prior to the administration of Echinacea angustifolia, the macrophages were disinclined to take up any of the tuberculous bacteria. After its administration, they were found to contain, on average, 8 bacteria.10 The Eclectics discovered Echinacea angustifolia’s ability to stimulate the human immune system.
Contemporary animal research confirms the Eclectic finding. Here are two examples. Ethanolic extracts of Echinacea angustifolia root extracts caused in vitro a 20-30% increase in phagocytosis.11 In carbon clearance tests, alkylamide fractions from Echinacea angustifolia increased the rate of carbon elimination.12 The ultimate solution to the bacteria problem is to get the body to do the work. The microbes might become immune to a given toxin, but they are unlikely to become immune to immune cell attack.
Direct Pathogen Inhibition: Anti-Microbial Activity
Though agents that specifically inhibit microbes represent old technology, it is interesting to note that Echinacea angustifolia contains anti-microbial constituents. A caffeic acid complex derived from the roots of Echinacea angustifolia was shown to act as a mild antibiotic.13 Four bacteriostatic and fungistatic polyacetylene compounds were isolated from Echinacea angustifolia.14 Echinacea angustifolia contains volatile oils15, 16. Volatile oils have a well demonstrated anti-microbial activity. Though none of these actions are described as being potent, they are described. This feature, though antiquated technology, would not hurt a wound.
Anti-Inflammatory Activity
The Eclectics found that Echinacea angustifolia had an anti-inflammatory effect on poisonous insect bites and snake bites. Contemporary research has confirmed that root extracts of Echinacea angustifolia are anti-inflammatory in nature.17,18 Anti-inflammatory is a fairly broad term. As it does not indicate the manner in which the inflammation is resolved, it leaves a lot to the imagination. However, in animal experiments, it has been shown to reduce inflammation. An anti-inflammatory that does not inhibit the immune system is a novel concept.
Echinacea angustifolia may act as an anti-inflammatory agent as a consequence of increasing the number and activity of macrophages. Offending agents such as venom, once taken out of circulation, stop creating inflammation. Echinacea angustifolia may be anti-inflammatory in the sense that it speeds the healing process directly. Once healing occurs, inflammation resolves. On the other hand, the plant contains phytosterols, which might inhibit the inflammatory process.19 Echinacea angustifolia also contains an essential oil15,16 of which several of the component oils have been established to have anti-inflammatory and anti-oedemic activity (Borneo, caryophyllene, alpha-pinene).21 Clearly it would be nice if additional research could clarify this situation. Most importantly, we know Echinacea angustifolia acts as an anti-inflammatory agent.
Pain Killing Activity
Though pain killers do not directly improve wound healing, they do mitigate suffering on the part of the person in need of healing. The historical records state clearly Echinacea angustifolia reduces pain and contemporary research has begun to illuminate this activity. Echinacea angustifolia contain an alkylamide which has been determined to have a local anaesthetic effect20. The same compound is responsible for the tingling sensation experienced when the root of Echinacea angustifolia is chewed.
Conclusion
The standard drugs used in wound healing are failing and the allopathic world has little to offer in their place. Not so with the world of herbal medicine. As has been demonstrated with Echinacea angustifolia, herbal medicine does have viable solutions on hand. With its extensive history and supportive contemporary research, Echinacea angustifolia may represent the “new technology” in wound healing that the world so desperately needs.
In many ways it appears an advancement to the simplistic antibiotic. It stimulates the immune system, inhibits bacteria, reduces inflammation and pain, and would appear to stimulate the healing process. When one juxtaposes its activity with that of antibiotics, one sees what a superior drug it is. There is little wonder the Eclectics were so fond of it. Regardless of whether or not the allopathic world takes note, Echinacea angustifolia offers the practitioner of phytotherapy an excellent alternative wound healing agent.
Our group of phytotherapists is presently looking at Echinacea angustifolia as a tool in wound management. We have been using it quite extensively and have found it highly effective. Several severe wounds have been miraculously turned around with its administration and many other less severe cases have been equally favourably influenced. Here is a brief list of uses we are now recommending.
- Patients undergoing surgery should start taking it internally a week prior to surgery and for a month following surgery. A tincture of 25% alcohol or more can be topically applied to the wound to speed healing. A small spray bottle makes application easier.
- People travelling to countries with rampant bacterial infection can take a small spray bottle filled with Echinacea angustifolia tincture with them as a first aid tool. There is no better a treatment for coral wounds.
- People travelling to locations infested with mosquitoes and other stinging insects can bring the same spray bottle with them to reduce inflammation and discomfort from bites.
- The patient confined to bed can use Echinacea angustifolia internally and externally to prevent and heal bed sores.
- The diabetic patient can use Echinacea angustifolia internally and externally to resolve slow healing wounds.
- The medicine chest can be stocked with a spray bottle loaded with Echinacea angustifolia to be used in domestic misadventures, cuts, scratches, and burns included.
- A small spray bottle with the tincture can be kept in the work place first aid kit. As an example, kitchen workers find it particularly useful for the constant cuts and burns inflicted on the job.
The potential applications of Echinacea angustifolia in wound healing are unlimited. The really exciting news being that this is only one herbal medicine with potential as a wound healing agent. There are many others. Calendula officinalis, Commiphora molmol and Achillea millefolium are three that quickly spring to mind. Herbal medicine is a treasure trove for all who are seeking solutions to the current predicament. It is time practitioners of phytotherapy start taking advantage of all that we have available, and perhaps teach the Allopaths a trick or two.
References
- Ellingwood, Finley. American Materia Medica, Therapeutics, and Pharmacognosy. Ellingwood’s Therapeutist. Chicago (1919).
- Gilmore, Melvin Randolph. Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region (1919).
- Gilmore, Melvin Randolph. A Study in the Ethnobotany of the Omaha Indians. Collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society. Edited by Albert Watkins. Volume 17 (1913).
- Smith, Huron. Ethnobotany of the Meswaki Indians. Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee. Volume 4. Number 2. (April, 1928).
- Densmore, Frances. Used of Plants by the Chippewa Indians. Forty-fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1928).
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Eclectic School of Medicine
December 9, 2010History of the Eclectic Movement (1825-1939)
Introduction
The Eclectic movement, a defunct 19th-century botanical medical system, operated from 1825 through 1939. The Eclectics spent more than 114 years studying North American medicinal plants. This project is based on the Eclectic materia medica.
In order to understand the Eclectic movement, it is necessary to review American medical history leading up to the 19th century and to examine 19th-century American medical history.
18th Century American Medicine
Medicine in the 18th-century North American colonies was a fusion of three primary elements: European knowledge, Native American knowledge, and improvisation. Firstly, the European colonials came to the new world with the European medical philosophies and practices. The provinces being British colonies, British medicine was the greatest influence. Secondly, the Colonials lived among Native Americans peoples who had their own system of medicine. This too was passed onto the colonials. Lastly, life in the wilderness, lacking the conveniences of Europe, required making due with what was available. (1-3)
Doctors
There were two types of doctors practicing medicine in the 18th century, those with formal medical training and those without. Doctors with formal training were rare. According to Richard H. Shryock, “Physicians, like the upper classes did not migrate overseas.” (4) When the American Revolution occurred (1776), there were approximately 3500 doctors working in the colonies, only 400 of whom had formal medical schooling. (5) Of those that did, most were trained in Britain. (6)
The doctors without schooling, often called “country doctors,” “root doctors,” or “injun doctors,” were self-taught, learned from other country doctors, or acquired their healing knowledge from the Native Americans. As Haller states, “whether these physicians had earned degrees was less an issue than was their ability to practice medicine. The term doctor became a title of respect accorded these practitioners regardless of any claim to learning.”(8) Gevitz makes a similar statement: “the patronage of medical practitioners, however they classified themselves, was based less on education than on the ability to carry out services.” (9)
Medical Education
In the early part of the 18th century, a young man interested in pursuing a formal medical education had two options: he could become an apprentice to a physician, or he could travel to Britain to receive training. (10)
Apprenticeship
The most common route to becoming a physician was apprenticeship. Boys between the ages of 14 and 18 were indentured for a term of three to seven years. This could be an arrangement between strangers but more often it happened within medical families. By watching and assisting, the apprentice learned how to bleed, prepare medicine, and perform minor surgery. The apprentice had access to the doctor’s one or two medical books, which were, almost without exception, published in Britain. (10-12)
Going Abroad for Medical Education
In the early 18th century, the few young men that went abroad to study usually studied in Britain, Edinburgh being the most common destination. In 1750, there were five American graduates of Edinburgh; in 1760, there were twenty-five. (12) As the century progressed, more Americans went abroad for training. Between 1775 and 1800, an average of 12 Americans enrolled at Edinburgh each year. According to Entin, “a medical degree from Edinburgh gave a distinct advantage to young graduates and assured them of a successful career.” (13)
Medical Schools in America
In the later part of the 18th century, medical schools began to open in America. In 1765, Dr. John Morgan (1735-1789) created a department of medicine within the College of Philadelphia. It was the first chartered medical school in the 13 colonies. (14) Morgan graduated from Edinburgh (1763) and staffed the school with other Edinburgh graduates including William Shippen, Jr. (1736-1808) and Benjamin Rush (1745-1813). (15)
The Philadelphia medical school provided an excellent education, including an apprenticeship, a two-year graded curriculum, clinical lectures, and hospital experience at the Pennsylvania Hospital (1751). By the end of the 18th century, three similar medical colleges opened, including Kings College, Columbia University (1767), the medical department of Harvard College, Cambridge (1783), and the medical department of Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (1798). (16)
Medical Theory in 18th Century America
The “school” taught American medical student learned British medical theory. According to Schultz, “The theory of the practice of medicine in British America came from England with little or no modification.” (6) British medical philosophy was largely based on the theories of Hippocrates (5th Century BC) and Galen (130-200AD).
Galen’s theory was embraced by 18th-century British medical schools, and by extension the new schools in America. He posited that health was achieved when the four humors within the body — blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile — were in balance. Disease occurred when these same humors were not in balance. Doctors deduced that the way to restore health was to balance the humors through blood letting, induction of vomiting, evacuation of the bowels, or through stimulating urination or sweating. The philosophy was called rationalism, because it was rationally deduced from Galen’s theory. It was also called humoralism and Galenic humoralism. (17.)
In addition, the 18th-century British medical schools taught the work of Paracelsus or Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541). Paracelsus believed in a chemical basis for the universe and advocated the use of mineral drugs, including mercury, lead, antimony, iron, and arsenic. (18)
A significant element of this philosophy was that a physician treated the state of the humors and not a specific disease. The treatment of specific diseases was considered quackery. (19)
In 18th-century America, Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) was a leading physician and major proponent of Galenic humoralism and the work of Paracelsus. He had studied in Edinburgh under one of the most famous British physicians, William Cullen (1712-1790) (20) and returned home with the intent of sharing his knowledge.
Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), like Cullen, believed disease was the consequence of an imbalance in the humors, specifically one resting in the blood vessels (21), and that blood letting resolved the imbalance. (22) He departed from Cullen in the extreme bleeding and purging he advocated. Of Rush’s regimens, Haller said, “Unlike his mentor Cullen, who had employed only moderate bleeding, Rush carried traditional humoralism to the height of therapeutic recklessness with heroic, extreme bleeding and purging, undeterred by criticism or by claims that his regimen did not reconcile with the mortality rates of his patients. (23) Rush considered extreme bleeding a cure all and followed it with the administration of ten grains of calomel (mercury) and ten grains of jalap (a botanical purgative). This treatment became known as “The Old Ten and Ten” and was widely used in America. (24)
Rush was the most famous physician of his day, was on the faculty of America’s first medical school, and taught many of America’s first university-trained physicians. His ideas were taught in medical schools and practiced by educated physicians across America. (25) The term Heroic Medicine is used to describe the medical practices of Rush and his followers and is said to have peaked in the first half of the 19th century. (6) However, bleeding and oral mercury were used by the American medical establishment until the beginning of the 20th century. (26)
19th Century American Medicine
In 1807, medical education in the United States took a turn for the worse. Baltimore physicians John Davide, Nathaniel Potter, James Cocke, and John Shaw founded the College of Medicine of Maryland. The school was opened for profit, had neither affiliation with an academic institution nor a hospital, and admitted students based on their ability to pay. (27) Haller called this the “Maryland Model,” and it rapidly spread across America. Within 14 years, most of the older schools dropped admission standards, graduation standards and a graded curriculum. Standard medical education became two un-graded sessions lasting sixteen to twenty weeks, the second a repetition of the first, and no clinical experience. (28-30)
Thus, at the beginning of the 19th century, the American medical system was in a state of disarray. American medical education was degenerating, and the training doctors did receive was in a flawed philosophy. Not surprisingly, public opinion of trained doctors deteriorated and confidence diminished. (31) American medicine was headed for a crisis. To quote Alexander Wilder, an Eclectic medical historian, “it was not reformation which the present state of medicine demanded, but, revolution.” (32)
Statesman Thomas Jefferson was on the forefront of demanding a change in course. In a letter to Caspar Wistar, dated 1807, Jefferson spoke out against doctors and their lethal, yet fashionable, treatments, complained that doctors knew little, assumed much, and damaged many. He said, “The patient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicines.” (33) Jefferson remarked to a friend that “whenever he saw three physicians together he looked up to see if there were buzzards in the neighborhood.” The statesman spoke out specifically against Rush and criticized him for using therapies based on an untested theory that went contrary to nature (34).
This did not represent original thinking on the part of Jefferson. When he was Minister to France (1784-89) he was exposed to the French School of medicine — a group that had broken ranks with the Rationalists. Ideas from France changed Jefferson’s thinking about medicine, and French ideas ultimately changed medical thinking in America. (35.)
New Medical Ideas from France
Following the French Revolution (1789), new hospitals and schools were created in Paris. Within these new faculties, a major rebellion against rationalism occurred. The new French School was built upon three concepts: physical examination, post-mortem examination, and statistics based on diagnosis and results. They put clinical experience and clinical results first and theory last. (36)
Along with the admittance of empirical evidence into medical practice, the French school ushered in a greater interest in specific diseases, a reduced interest in humors, distrust of heroic medical procedures, and a belief that, if left alone, the body would often heal itself. (37)
One of the implications of this philosophy was that treatments were judged from an efficacy standpoint. Pierre Louis (1787-1872), introduced the use of statistics in studying medical outcomes and determined that blood letting and purging did not work. Since the French School worked with empirical data, they were known as Empirics and their medicine Empirical medicine. (36)
Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815), American students, dissatisfied with Rationalism, studied in Paris. Paris became the major foreign centre of education for American medical students for forty years (1824-1864). When they came home, they brought empiricism with them. (36)
French Empiricism in America
By the late 1830s and early 1840s French Empiricism had a presence in America. The French school published 300 books on their theories in the 1830s, and many of these books made their way to America. (36) Two American physicians, influenced by the French School, offered the American physician an alternative to Rationalism. Dr. Elisha Bartlett and Dr. Jacob Bigelow both presented the medical public with French ideas. (37)
Jacob Bigelow (1787-1879 )
Jacob Bigelow was a visiting physician to Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard’s first professor of Materia Medica. A student of Rush, he rejected his teacher’s teachings, instead becoming a devotee of Pierre Louis. He presented Americans with the French notion that the body could heal itself. This was set forth in an address, “Discourse on Self Limited Disease,” presented to the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1835. (38-39)
Elisha Bartlett (1804-1855)
Elisha Bartlett, a Rhode Island physician, strongly influenced by the French School, disavowed rationalistic medicine, and believed in Louis’ use of statistical averages in determining treatment efficacy. He studied in Paris, dedicated his books to Pierre Louis, and encouraged students to choose Paris over Edinburgh. He made French ideas available to the American reader in his “An Essay on the Philosophy of Medical Science” (1844) and “The History, diagnosis, and treatment of the fevers of the United States”(1847). He lectured on these ideas in medical schools throughout the United States. (40)
Medical Reform in America
The medical landscape began to change. Rationalism, rooted in the Galenic tradition, was being challenged by French Empiricism. Medical thinking began to move toward French ideas with acceptance of Louis’ proof that heroic medicine did not work. (132)
Americans had figured out that heroic medicine did not work and avoided old school doctors. According to Spiegel, “Individuals who became ill frequently avoided orthodox physicians because their proffered treatment was ineffective and possibly more hazardous than the illness itself.” American celebrities, including Louisa May Alcott, William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William James, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Daniel Webster, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, publicly rejected the practices of the medical establishment. (41)
The medical establishment reacted with an unwillingness to change either their thinking or medical practices. (93) They continued to defend the practices of bleeding, purging, and leaching. (41-42)
Under the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), anti-establishment by nature, the enforcement of all manner of law was relaxed. This included the restrictive medical laws that protected the medical establishment and excluded medical non-conformists. (43)
These converging factors allowed for the unrestricted development of schools of reform medicine. In reading medical texts from that period, one begins to encounter words like regular, orthodox, old school, allopath, and dominant school being used to describe the medical establishment. Words like reformer, irregular, botanic, and empiric were used to describe those who parted company with the medical mainstream.
According to Shryock, 19th-century America was home to at least nine reform medical sects including homeopathy, Eclecticism, Thomsonianism, Chrono-thermalistism, hygiene cults, hydropathy, Christian Science, Osteopathy, and Chiropractic included. (131) Many of these sects focused on the use of botanical medicines. Reform movements associated with botanical remedies included the Homeopaths, Thomsonians, Shakers, Physico-Medicalists, and the Eclectics.
Coulter asserts that this new direction was very much in response to Rush himself. “Although physicians in the thirteen colonies made occasional use of native Medicinal plants, it was probably Rush’s rigid and systematic doctrine which provoked educated physicians, in the early nineteenth century, to set up botanical practice as a competing system.” (44) Numerous factors other than a dislike of Rush convinced reformers to concentrate on botanical remedies.
Disgust with heroic medicine
Heroic medicine made use of toxic chemicals (mercury, lead, arsenic, antimony, etc.). The reformers had seen what happened to patients treated with poisons, and they rejected the use of poisons in their new practices of medicine. (45) They were looking for non-toxic medicines and found botanical medicines to be their answer. Fortunately for them a catalogue of botanical drugs had been amassed over time by many independent researchers using numerous sources. In addition, favorable cultural and historical factors came into play.
European Cultural Belief
The English colonials arrived in North America with the belief that God provided the medicines they needed on the land on which they lived. In the Bible, (Ecclesiastes 38:4), God directs the Israelites to seek amongst the plants of the earth when in need of healing. Indeed, European theologians and naturalists taught that God provided every region with herbal medicines that would treat the conditions suffered by those living in that specific region. (46-47) Upon arrival, the colonials began looking for medicines in their midst.
Practicality Necessity
Practical necessity forced colonials to find medicines in the woods and meadows. (48) According to Gevitz, the colonials, living far away from the apothecaries of Europe, living in remote conditions, “had come prepared for self sufficiency” and “in particular, colonists would have to manage illness without the plethora of materials available through an apothecary”. (49) Physicians, according to Boorstin, also participated in the search, “Nothing was more natural than that European trained physicians, finding themselves in a new land with many unfamiliar plants, should seize the opportunity for botanical discoveries. “(50)
Trade
Like any colony, America was a source of natural resources for the European monarchies. Along with gold, silver, and spices, monarchs encouraged their colonists to seek out medicinal plants. The British crown ordered the Virginia colony to seek out medicinal plants (51-52), and as early as 1590, Virginia shipped medicinal plants to London for use in medical practice (49, 53). Collecting botanical medicines helped colonials make money.
Support from the “Old School”
When medical schools first opened in America, they encouraged the study of medical botany. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) himself was a supporter. In his book, “Medical Enquiries” (1789), Rush makes clear his view that American medicinal plants should be reviewed for their use in medicine. “Cultivate or prepare as many of them as possible, and endeavour to enlarge the materia medica, by exploring the untrodden fields and forest of the United States” (54) According to Berman, even physicians who practiced heroic medicine were “Keenly interested in scientifically developing an indigenous plant materia medica.” (55) The medical establishment encouraged medical botany.
Presence of the “Injun” Doctor and Native American Medicine
Country doctors, or “Injun” doctors, a common practitioner in America, made the materia medica of the Native Americans accessible to the general public. (56) They were called “Injun doctors” because they were largely influenced by Native American medicine. (57-59) North America was home to more than 100 different Native American Cultures that developed a complicated pharmacy long before the colonials appeared, and the Injun doctors absorbed this knowledge. (57, 60)
Botanical Medicine Cataloguers
In America, from the earliest day, there were individuals who dedicated their lives to collecting information on medicinal plants. Two such individuals were Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815), and C.S. Rafinesque (1783-1840). (61)
Benjamin Smith Barton was a professor of natural history and botany at the College of Philadelphia. He wrote “Elements of Botany “(1803) and an unfinished “Collections for an Essay towards a Materia Medica of the United States” (1798-1804). He died before the book was finished, and it was completed by his nephew William P.C.Barton as “The Vegetale Materia Medica of the United States” (1817-35). (62)
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque(1783-1840), was a professor of botany at Transylvania University (79). Rafinesque spent years learning from the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee tribes in the north and south, and from local healers and country doctors. His research culminated in “Medical Flora or Manual of Medical Botany of the United States, Volume One, (1828), and the Medical Flora, Volume Two(1830). (60) As well as being a plant explorer, according to Boyle, “It was his avowed purpose to reform medical practice by making botanical knowledge accessible to all.” (63-64)
For all these reasons, by the year 1830, a very large catalogue of medicinal plants and their medicinal uses had been collected. The reformers, looking for an alternative to the chemical drugs of the medical establishment, had a tremendous stockpile of plants at their disposal.
The most well known botanical medical groups were the Shakers, the Thomsonians, the Homeopaths, the Physico-medicalists, and the Eclectics. These groups were medical reformers who used botanical drugs, but there the similarities end. Each group used botanical remedies in their own way. A closer examination of these movements makes this clear.
The Shakers
The founder of the Shakers, Ann Lee (1736-1784), was born in Manchester, England. Raised in the slums of working class England, she was profoundly affected by the rampant poverty and disease there. She founded a religious cult that embraced physical as well as spiritual health. Lee moved the movement to America where the “Shakers” became involved in healing and the production of medicines, specifically medicines made from Native American plants. They learned of these plants from the Indians and settlers living near their Connecticut colonies. (65) The Shakers’ medical practice mirrored their spiritual practice, which included purification (purgatives), a dismissal of remedies solely used for beautification purposes, and the stimulation of internal organs responsible for physical purity (tonics). (66)
Thomsonian Movement
The movement was founded by Samuel Thomson (1769-1843). In 1839, Thomson had 3 million followers and according to Boyle, the movement “reached dimensions much exceeding those of any later cult.” Thomson’s goal was to “seize medicine from what he considered the monopolistic hold of educated professionals and return it to the common people.” (67)
As a child, Thomson learned from a female “country doctor,” Dr.Benson. Benson taught him how to heal using the Native American technique of sweat (steam) and puke (purgatives). He had success with healing family and friends and took up full time doctoring in 1805. He created a line of proprietary, patented botanical medications, and a book guiding their use, “New Guide to Health: Or Botanic Family Physician” (1825). For the sum of twenty dollars, anyone could become an authorized agent, or “doctor.”
Medically speaking, Thomson practiced botanical Galenic humoralism. He believed that disease was caused by “cold” and by poor digestive “fire”. By heating the body up (steam) and activating the digestive tract (puke), health could be achieved. He distinguished himself from the medical establishment in that he rejected bleeding and mercury, and used botanical medicines in their stead. (68)
Physio-Medicalism
Founded by Alva Curtis(1797-1881), this sect was known as neo-Thomsonianism, independent Thomsonianism, and Botanico-medicalism. The founder had been a Thomsonian, and indeed, one of Thomson’s deputies. The movement varied from the Thomsonians in “having a larger materia medica, in believing in scientific education for its practitioners and in not recognizing the absolute infallible authority of Samuel Thomson.” Curtis opened a school and clinic in Cincinnati, in direct competition with the Eclectic Institute. It was never a significant force in the reform movement and at its peak it had somewhere between 1500 and 2500 practitioners. The movement died when Curtis passed away in 1881. (69)
Homeopathy
The movement was founded in Germany by Samuel Hahneman(1755-1843). Hahneman developed the theory of treating like with like or similia similibus curentur. If a person suffered from runny eyes, he would treat them with an extract of onion. In addition, he experimented with using the smallest possible doses, ultimately working with almost microscopic doses.
Homeopathy was introduced into the US in 1825 by Hans Burch Gram. Initially, the number of homeopathic practitioners grew with immigration from Germany. Later, the first homeopathic school was opened in Allentown (1835). The American Institute of Homeopathy (1844) was founded to further the cause of Homeopathy in the US. The American Homeopaths made use of American herbal remedies, but they used “like to treat like,” and they used those in very small doses. (70)
The Eclectic Movement
The Eclectic Medical Movement existed, in various forms, from 1825 and until 1939. Like the other botanical reformers, the Eclectics started with the botanical data amassed in the first 200 years of American history. They spent the next 114 years re-studying American medicinal plants from their own perspective.
Michael Flannery, former Library director of the Lloyd Library and adjunct professor at Northern Kentucky University, has studied the Eclectics extensively and had this to say of the Eclectic movement: “Eclecticism can be briefly described as a nineteenth-century sectarian medical movement emerging out of Americans dissatisfaction with the harsh heroic therapies characteristic of regular (also referred to as allopathic) practitioners. Distrustful of European ideas and institutions, Eclectics promoted botanical remedies drawn primarily from America’s fields and forests rather than the chemical and mineral concoctions that formed much of the allopath’s armamentarium.” (71)
Significant Eclectics
The founder of the Eclectic movement was Wooster Beach (1794-1868). He was succeeded in leadership by John King (1813-1893) and John Milton Scudder (1829-1894). These men wrote the Eclectic textbooks and taught the Eclectic medical students. Their thoughts became Eclectic canon and guided the doctors who called themselves Eclectics.
Wooster Beach, MD
Wooster Beach (1794-1868) was born in Trumbull, Connecticut. At an early age he displayed an interest in medicine and theology. First and foremost, Beach was passionate about medical reform. In his early writings, he makes his desire for medical reform clear: “It is time that the reign of medical tyranny should cease; it has ruled the world with an iron grasp. Thousands have been the victims sacrificed at its shrine. Let revolution-revolution be the cry through mountain and glen, valley and plain, until this hydra of medical aristocracy be shorn of its fangs-until the tears shed by suffering humanity shall cease to flow!” (72)
Beach’s passion empowered a long and productive career in medical reform, spanning 1818 until the time of his death in 1868. Harvey Wickes Felter, an Eclectic medical Historian, said this of Beach: “Thoroughly dissatisfied with the current medical methods as practiced at that time so vigorously and viciously, he labored diligently and earnestly to bring about reform and establish a new school or system of medicine.” (73)
Beach investigated any and all modalities in an effort to find effective medical techniques. (74) He then wove these medical techniques into what a reform brand of medicine called “The American Practice.” “My primary object, in my labors in the field of medical reform, is now, and has ever been, to clear away the rubbish of former, as well as of present, medical theories, and amide their wreck to collect whatever materials might be found, from all proper sources, for the construction of a new edifice, resting on broader and more durable foundation.” (75)
Influences
Conviction
One of Beach’s primary influences was conviction, conviction that developed from seeing the realities of heroic medicine. Beach said, “With such facts staring me in the face, my soul was filled with indignation at these instruments of cruelty and misery, administered under the specious pretext of removing disease. I felt a deep solicitude to effect a reformation.” (76)
Botanical Physicians
Through a relative, Beach heard about a doctor named Tidd who had rejected heroic medicine and relied primarily upon botanical medicines. (77) Beach found Tidd living in rural Amwell, New Jersey, and studied with him until the doctor passed away at the age of 74. (78)
According to Porter, Tidd “obtained his medical knowledge of a German Physician of high standing; and afterward obtained much valuable information from a relative who had been taken prisoner among the Indians during the war .” (79) The “German Physician” that trained Tidd was the botanical doctor George Andrew Viesselius, also of Amwell. Viesselius focused on native botanical remedies for two reasons. Firstly, the Townsend Acts of 1767 and other non-importation agreements restricted physicians’ access to European herbs. (80) Secondly, he believed in these native remedies. Coulter writes, “The Hallmark of the Botanics was confidence in the folk medicine of the Indians and in the folk medicine of the common people generally.” (81)
Beach was influenced by other botanists and botanical physicians including Constantine Rafinesque and Elisha Smith. Elements of Rafinesques’ “Medical Flora” (1828-30) and Elisha Smith’s “The Botanic Physician” (1830) can be found in Beach’s “The American Practice.” (82) In Beach’s own words, “I have not thought it beneath me to converse with Root doctors and Indian doctors, and everyone who has professed any valuable remedy, or any improved method of treating any disease.” (81)
Medical Practice
Throughout his career, Beach was a busy practitioner. For example, between June 1827 and June 1828, he saw 2100 patients at his infirmary in New York City. In 1832, he treated 1000 victims of a cholera epidemic in the span of three months. And, according to Porter, “In the treatment of disease he became so skillful and successful that his fame spread far and wide, and he was sent for from various sections of the country to consult with distinguished surgeons and physicians in every variety of complaint.” (83)
Medical Establishment
After his apprenticeship to Tidd, Beach returned to New York. However, to practice medicine in New York required a medical license and that in turn required a diploma from an “old school” medical school. (80) “I attended a course of lectures in the University of the State of New York, during the time Dr.Post, Hossack, and Mott and others, were professors. I concluded this was best, were it only to detect the errors of the modern practice.” (84-85)
Homeopathy
Beach studied homeopathy. He was impressed with the idea of using the smallest dose possible but disapproved of the homeopathic use of mercury and arsenic, albeit in small doses. In conclusion, Beach said, “I have to state that I have very little confidence in its curative properties. It may answer as a kind of placebo to the mind where no medicine is required, or to amuse the patient while nature effects the cure; but in active diseases valuable time would be lost under it, which ought to be employed in administering efficacious remedies.” (86)
Thomsonian Medicine
Beach was well aware of Samuel Thomson and his “Puke and Steam” treatment. Beach did not hold Thomson, or his practice, in very high esteem, “The pure Thomsonians are rigid followers of Samuel Thomas, an illiterate, conceited, arbitrary, and selfish individual, who obtained a patent for curing all diseases by the use of some articles comprised in six numbers…. His theory is, that heat is life, and cold is death. And hence the more heat, the more life. Both the theory and the practice are erroneous… such a plan may cure one man, but may kill others; and such has actually been the fact.”(87)
Contribution
Beach’s contribution to the Eclectic medical movement was four-fold. He gave the movement a philosophy, a materia medica, a place to study both, and a vehicle to communicate findings to the medical public.
Beach’s Philosophy
Beach’s philosophy can be found in his book, “The American Practice of Medicine” (1833). First and foremost, Beach aimed for his system to “release the mind from the dogmas of creeds and systems, the philosophy of medical schools, as they were then taught, and to direct it to an unlimited field of inquiry.” (88) Beach’s basic philosophy was to maintain an open mind.
Beyond that, Beach’s core concepts can be found in “The American Practice” and include the following.
1. All medical sects and techniques should be studied and the effective techniques adopted.
2. All medicines are to be tested in the clinical setting and their efficacy determined there.
3. All life-endangering techniques are to be rejected, especially bleeding, purging, and the use of toxic compounds or plants.
4. Medicines should come from the plant world.
5. Medicine should work with nature and never against it and harness the bodies’ intrinsic healing capacity. (89)
These five concepts would become core beliefs of the Eclectic movement. (90)
Materia Medica
In Beach’s “American Practice,” we find the first Eclectic materia medica. It is 188 pages long and discusses the specific medical use of 116 botanical medicines. Beach lists an additional 131 botanical drugs which he suggests warrant further investigation and research.
The Physical School
Shortly after opening his Infirmary in New York (1825), Beach made plans for a clinic and a medical school. In 1827, he opened The United States Infirmary, and in 1829, the Reformed Medical Academy. (91) Beach then decided to move his school to a frontier town and secured a location in Worthington, Ohio. When the school relocated (1830) there, it became the Reformed Medical College of Ohio. The College in Worthington flourished for a number of years, enrolling and graduating students. (92)
Medical Reformer
Beach founded a journal to disseminate the findings of his movement. The Reformed Medical Journal was first published in 1832 and had the motto “The Science of medicine, like the Doric column, should stand simple, pure, and majestic, having fact as its basis, induction for its pillar, and truth for its capital.” In 1836, the Reformed Medical Journal gave rise to the Western Medical Reformer. (88)
Discussion
According to Felter, Beach’s greatest contribution was his popularization of reform medicine, which he accomplished through the publication “The American Practice” and the Reformed Medical Journal. The book, Felter said, “at once became the standard work on practice among the reformers, and received gold medals and other distinctions from foreign potentates and distinguished European physicians. It … had a large sale, and contributed greatly to the popularity of the reform movement.” (90) A contemporary historian, Wade Boyle, concurs with this earlier historian’s opinion. (93)
One of the ways Beach publicized his work was by sending examples of it to foreign dignitaries. As a consequence, he received 7 Medals of Honor from European heads of state. (126,127)
In addition, Wooster Beach routinely challenged the medical establishment and forced them to defend their practices. For example, in his inaugural address of the Worthington Academy (1831), he publicly attacked the “old school” use of mercury. The Boston Medical Journal, and old school publication, responded, “The inaugural address of the President is without exception the most weak, absurd, and contemptible affair of the kind we ever met with in print.” The editors go on to ridicule Beach for dismissing mercury, lead, and arsenic as medicines. (94) Undaunted, Beach continued his attacks on the old school’s use of mercury.
Alex Berman, a contemporary analyst of the Eclectic movement, was quite critical of Beach. “Generally speaking, one is forced to conclude, after reviewing Beach’s work on the plant materia medica, that his contribution was noteworthy mainly for its mediocrity and excessive borrowing. “ (95) Berman notes that Beach extracted parts of Elisha Smith’s The Botanic Physician, verbatim, without crediting the author, and copied engravings from the work of Bigelow, Barton, and Rafinesque.
On the other hand, Beach was very clear that “The American Practice” had been drawn from the ancient practices of medicine (Empiric, Galenic, Chemical, Botanical) and the modern practices of medicine (Allopathic, Mineral depletive, Thomsonian, Homeopathic, and Botanic) and from data gathered touring hospitals and colleges in America and Europe. (96) Beach did not allege his work to be original thinking but rather a collection of useful medical techniques gleaned from many sources.
Berman failed to mention what gave Beach’s work value. Beach chose the medicines and medical techniques that worked and rejected those that did not. Beach borrowed, but he borrowed with efficacy as his criterion, whereas the editors of the Boston Medical Journal chose to defend their use of heroic medicine and to continue using it after Louis had proven that it did not work. (36)
Transition to Eclectic
Having breathed life into a Reform Movement, given it a set of core values, built a school where the core values could be tested and studied, and created a mechanism to communicate the findings, Beach then turned his attention to his other interest, religious studies. (97) He passed the baton onto the next generation.
The Worthington Reform Medical College did not flourish for long. The town of Worthington did not grow as had been expected, and there were problems within the faculty. In time, it failed. However, the former students of Beach kept the idea of the college alive and aspired to move it to the then booming metropolis of Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1844, their dream was realized.
When the school reopened in Cincinnati, it reopened with a new name. The term Reform was replaced with Eclectic.(98) The manifesto of the new college read, “Our college will be strictly what its name indicates—Eclectic—excluding all such medicines and such remedies as, under the ordinary circumstances of their judicious use, are liable to produce evil consequences or endanger the future health of the patient.” (99)
Dr.T.V. Morrow (1804-1850), president of the new College, and former student of Beach, gave an opening address to the incoming students (November 7, 1846) that indicates Beach’s philosophy was still in place. He concluded his welcome with this statement: “No arbitrary restraints of thought and actions will be imposed on you here to paralyze future efforts for its improvement. We ask you to carefully scrutinize its doctrines, and reject them whenever they do not commend themselves to your minds as reasonable and true.” (100)
In 1848, at the National Convention of Reform Medical Practitioners, Beach’s disciples, also dropped reform and replaced it with “Eclectic.” (98) With the Eclectic Institute open in Cincinnati, the Eclectic movement moved into its next phase of development. At this time, another student of Beach, John King, stepped onto center stage.
John King MD (1813-1893)
King was born in New York City and early displayed a talent for the sciences. According to Felter, he was given a liberal education, spoke five languages, and was especially fond of French literature. On leaving college he decided upon medicine. At a time when medical heresy was dangerous, he chose to attend Beach’s Reformed Medical College. He graduated in 1838, at the age of 25, and began his clinical practice in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In 1846 he moved his practice to Sharpsburg, Kentucky, corresponded with the new school in Cincinnati, and began to contribute to the Western Medical Reformer. When the National Eclectic Medical Association was formed (1848), he was named secretary and ultimately became a member of the faculty at the Eclectic Institute (1851).
One of the most prolific Eclectic writers, he wrote “The American Dispensatory” in 1853. His book would become the Eclectic textbook for the second half of the 19th century and would go through 18 editions. He was the leading Eclectic educator, writer, and advocate at the Institute until his death from a stroke at age 80. (101)
Influences
Conviction
In a letter written to his teacher, Wooster Beach, dated June 28th 1842, King reveals one of the greatest influences in his life: conviction for reform medicine. “And what reformer, who has witnessed the success of this system, and the failure of the others, nay, not even failure, but the miseries produced, and has a mind of any feeling whatever of any love to his fellow creatures, or who possesses the smallest spark of humanity in his breast, would not devote his whole time and energy to the holy purpose of ameliorating the condition of his afflicted fellow beings, by placing before them , and forcing upon them, that system of practice which cures, and cures when all others fail?” (102)
The French School
King was influenced by the French School of medicine. His mother was the daughter of the Marquis La Porte, who came to the United States to aid the American Revolution, and was fully conversant in French. He could read the material produced by the Parisian doctors (98) and translated their medical notes and papers for American medical Journals. (103)
Wooster Beach
King was devoted to Beach and to Beach’s “American Practice.” He took on Beach’s philosophy, and it became his own. In a letter to Beach (June 28th, 1842), he expressed his adoration for both the man and the system: “the respect, the esteem, the admiration, the love of mankind, will always be with you, your system is destined to become the greatest and proudest ornament in the medical world.” (102)
Nature
King was strongly influenced by nature itself. Felter said this of him, “John King lived close to the heart of nature. Of her bounteous yield, he believed, could the world obtain the safest and best remedies for the cure or amelioration of the ills of the human kind. He saw wonderful possibilities in the living and life giving products of mosses and herbs, shrubs and trees.” (104)
Medical Practice
King practiced medicine throughout his career, first in Massachusetts, then in Kentucky, and then in Cincinnati. He was a popular practitioner and was reported to be quite effective. (104)
Contributions
While at the Eclectic helm, King kept Beach’s philosophy in place and refined the Eclectic materia medica. In short, he took Beach’s work and elaborated on it. Beach’s textbook, “The American Practice,” was 800 pages long. King’s updated version of his teachers’ text, “The American Dispensatory,” (1853) was more than 1300 pages long.
Maintaining Eclectic Philosophy
King was especially keen on the Eclectic philosophy of choice. Lloyd, in his biography of King, said, “His books form a library that would be difficult to duplicate, and show an endless amount of research and application.” (103) In the first page of “The American Dispensatory,” King lists 44 different books as influencing his work, books that came from every philosophical corner. (105)
In a lecture to incoming students, one can observe King passing this philosophy onto the next generation: “To be a physician in the true sense, the mind must be unrestrained and not warped by prejudice; there must be a freedom of choosing and selecting such medical views and such remedial agents, without regard to theory or devotedness to party, as have been fully demonstrated by facts and experience to be the most in accordance with nature, and the most effectual in restoring health.” (106)
He goes on to clearly define what being an Eclectic meant: “Eclecticism, unlike all sects in medicine, it admits free investigation upon all matters pertaining to the science; it does not hesitate to adopt whatever is found valuable, without regard to its origin; it combats error and supports truth and enslaves the mind to no one sided opinions.” (106)
Materia Medica
King inherited Beach’s materia medica and spent his career improving it. He had two aims: to add worthy new herbs to the materia medica and to increase knowledge regarding the existing herbs.
In regard to enlarging the materia medica, Lloyd said this of King’s effort: “No source of Knowledge was left untouched, and early in his professional career he traveled far and wide investigating the remedies employed by the laity in domestic medication. In this way he added greatly to the materia medica…. He searched “the field and forests” for untried drugs, for with Professor King it was ever a theory that America was destined to contribute largely to the medicinal agents of the world.” (107)
In regard to improving the knowledge of existing remedies, King did two things. First, he refined the clinical applications of the known remedies by encouraging physicians to write to him with their clinical findings regarding specific botanical drugs. Secondly, he worked to improve the pharmaceutical preparations of those remedies.
In regard to pharmacy, King devoted himself to improving the manners in which the herbs were prepared and delivered as medicine. The botanical or country doctors, from whom the Eclectics learned their materia medica, used botanical remedies in crude manners, teas or whiskey extractions. King championed a more sophisticated pharmacy and pioneered the production of both tinctures and extracts. (108)
Discussion
King took a rudimentary materia, and elaborated upon it, using the critical process of a French-influenced empiricist. He asked his colleagues to observe the clinical effects of remedies and report those findings to him. He then incorporated their findings in his dispensatory. By all accounts, he was a pleasant man and he, and his work, were well liked. (109)
William Procter, Jr. (1817-1874), a famous 19th century American pharmacists, reviewed King’s American Dispensatory and said, “[It] is certainly a phenomenon in the medical history of the United States of no ordinary interest” and that it “may be esteemed a remarkable episode in the history of American medicine and pharmacy.” (110)
According to Berman, Procter’s commentary was significant in that it represented “not only a valuable critique of Botanicism and Eclecticism as seen through the eyes of one of the most distinguished pharmacists of the time, but are also among the very few dispassionate critical analyses of Botanicism to appear in nineteenth century literature.”
Boyle said of him, “King’s major contributions to botanical medicine were his pioneering work in botanical pharmacology, his landmark writings on botanical materia medica, and his distinguished service in training Eclectic physicians at the Eclectic Institute.” Boyle made the point that King’s efforts to improve the pharmacy and pharmacology of botanical drugs extended beyond the Eclectic world and into the world of “old school” practice. (111)
Berman believes that King’s motivation for improving the materia medica was practical. “The neo-Thomsonians and the Eclectics vied with regular physicians for social acceptance and public approval through scientific respectability. The development of a distinctive pharmacy of indigenous plants offered the Eclectics their strongest bid for scientific recognition.” (112)
King improved the Eclectic materia medica, and his book, “The American Dispensatory,” became the textbook of the next generation of Eclectic physicians. One such student was John Milton Scudder.
John Milton Scudder (1829-1894)
The next significant Eclectic, John Milton Scudder, was born in Hamilton, Ohio. Left fatherless, he went to work at age eight and ultimately put himself through college (Miami University). A graduate of the Eclectic Institute, he represented a new generation of Eclectic-trained Eclectics. In this new generation, Scudder stood ahead of the crowd. Felter said, “John Milton Scudder was the most conspicuous man in modern Eclecticism.” (113)
Like all Eclectics, his influences were many.
Conviction
Scudder was passionate about reform medicine. His conviction was in part due to the fact heroic medicine had killed three of his young children. (114) Scudder said of heroic medicine, “The results of this practice, and the theory upon which it was based, were very unsatisfactory, especially to the people who had to suffer the penalty-in many cases loss of useful lives… I make the assertion that the lancet has murdered thousands, and can prove it from the best authorities of old school medicine.” (115)
Eclectic Physicians and Eclectic Medicine
Following the death of his children, Scudder sought out Dr. M.L. Thomas, an Eclectic physician, as his mentor and preceptor. Scudder attended an Eclectic medical school and studied Eclectic medical books. He graduated valedictorian of his class in 1856 and was strongly influenced by King. (111)
Homeopathy
When Scudder was studying at the Eclectic Institute (1850s), homeopathy was viewed favorably. In fact, the Eclectic Institute added a chair of homeopathy and graduated the first homeopathic physicians in the west. The chair was abolished, but Scudder was exposed to homeopathy during his student years. (111)
Medical Practice
Upon graduating from the Eclectic Institute, Scudder immediately began practicing medicine in Fulton, a neighborhood in Cincinnati. Said Lloyd, “His success, both as a practitioner and money maker, was phenomenal. He formed partnerships in order to handle the immense business. At one time his office was crowded with patients and the income from practice ran into the three tens.” (112)
Contribution
The faculty of the Eclectic Institute was impressed with Scudder’s acumen, and upon graduation, he was immediately appointed Professor of Anatomy. He maintained a position there until 1894. He wrote numerous books, delivered regular lectures, and contributed to the Eclectic journal. (113) He kept the Eclectic principles alive and contributed to the evolution of the materia medica.
Maintenance of the Eclectic principles
According to Scudder, Eclectics called themselves Eclectics because they chose what they believed. They did not accept the words and ideas of others without contemplation. “The term Eclectic is derived from a Greek word which signifies to chose; we use it, however, in both the past and present tense-we have chosen, we are constantly choosing.” (114)
Benign medicine
It was an abiding Eclectic principle that the physician was to do no harm. Scudder communicated this. “It is a cardinal principle of the Eclectic system, that no medical treatment should be allowed which permanently impairs or injures the vital powers; that no such treatment is, in any case, necessary or proper, and that in the choice of remedies, we should prefer those which are safest, and calculated to act most nearly in accordance with the laws of health.” (115)
Research
Scudder, in all of his works, encouraged his readers to conduct research and characteristically gave direction for that research. After stating what was known about an herb, Scudder would end the discussion with a call to action: “I have employed it in secondary syphilis and atonic chronic inflammations with marked advantage, but have not used it for other purposes. Will some of our readers test it in the treatment of fever and inflammation to determine its analogy to the sedatives?” (116-118)
Evolution of the Materia Medica
Scudder advanced the Eclectic materia medica through the exploration of two pre-existing Eclectic concepts. Firstly, King worked to fine tune the applications of botanical remedies. Scudder went one step further and made specific medication a spoken direction of Eclecticism. Secondly, the Eclectics believed in working with the body’s own healing capacity. Scudder expanded upon this idea.
Specific Medication
While working at the Institute, Scudder conceived the doctrines and practice of “specific medication.” He began work on the concept in 1859 and published a book on the subject in 1869. The book, “Specific Medication and Specific Medicines,” was reprinted many times; its ideas become dominant doctrines of the Eclectic movement.
Scudder’s basic concept was that there were specific medicines that treated specific diseases and that it was the physician’s job to find the specific medicine for the case at hand. This went contrary to the “old school” approach that treated states of the humors and disavowed treating specific diseases. (119) Basic tenets of Specific Medication included the following.
1. There exist specific remedies that undermine specific diseases.
2. To prescribe specific medications, specific diagnosis is required.
3. Specific diagnosis first demands an understanding of health and departures from it. (120-121)
Intrinsic Healing Capacity
Scudder believed that the human body had an intrinsic healing capacity and that this capacity was powered by a force he called the “Vis conservatrix.” Disease, in his estimation, occurred when this force was inadequate. (122) Scudder also believed that there were botanical remedies that augmented this force, remedies he called tonics. Incidentally, both ideas can be tracked back to the works of Hippocrates. (123)
Scudder believed that tonics had an almost universal applicability—whenever the healing capacity of the body was needed, tonics could be used to stimulate the process. He championed their use and research into them. The tonic became an Eclectic weapon in the war against disease. By the end of the movement, the Eclectics had identified and studied 203 different botanical remedies which they asserted had this capacity.
Discussion
Contemporary historian Wade Boyle said this of Scudder, “Botanical Medicine, perhaps medicine in general, reached one of its highest points in the 19th century in the life and practice of John Scudder. Medical historians who are generally hostile to, even shamefully prejudiced against, Eclecticism speak of him respectfully as a man of marked ability, both medical and executive.” The historian goes on to say that his work with specific medication “lifted botanical medicine to a level of scientific exactness.” (124)
Berman points out that Scudder’s “Specific Medication” shared certain elements with homeopathy and that “the adversaries of the Eclectics were to cry plagiarism” when he released his book. There were similarities. The homeopaths became very specific in their applications of medicines, and Scudder advocated the same specificity. The homeopaths used much diluted preparations, and Scudder advocated the use of the smallest possible dose. However, the homeopaths treated like with like, and Scudder used medicines to harness the body’s own healing mechanisms. (125)
Whether Scudder’s specific medication was inspired by the homeopaths cannot be known for certain. But the Eclectic application of botanical remedies became more specific under Scudder’s watch. In addition, as a consequence of his specific interest in remedies that stimulated the body to heal itself, the Eclectic materia medica contained more tonics than when he took the helm.
Scudder’s revised materia medica was passed onto the last generation of Eclectics and was in active use well into the first part of the 20th-century.
In Conclusion
The Eclectic philosophy of choosing the effective and rejecting the ineffective, when combined with their interest in botanical remedies, made them unique. Their study of botanical remedies undaunted by dogma resulted in a well-tested materia medica. Authorities, then and now, have acknowledged the results of their efforts.
William Procter, a leading pharmacist at the end of the 19th century, criticized the Eclectic movement for not conducting enough phytochemical tests, but commended their efforts with their materia medica. According to Procter, “there were aspects of Eclectic activity which deserved to be carefully investigated and should not be contemptuously dismissed.” (128) Coulter said of the Eclectics, “the Eclectic school issued a number of botanical works of high scientific and scholarly value” (129) According to Berman, the Eclectics “made a strong, conscious effort to synthesize the work of their less educated colleagues, to influence the growth of the plant materia medica, and to subject their plant medicinals to scientific verification.” (130) History reveals many Eclectic remedies made their way into the United States Pharmacopoeia and the National Formulary. (128)
That being said, the Eclectic Institute closed its doors in 1939, and with its closing, the movement passed into obscurity. They had waged a 114-year war against the medical establishment, and, in the end, lost.
They lost the war in part due to their refusal to fixate on any one doctrine or dogma. According to Coulter, the Eclectic movement did not stand the test of time “because of its failure to formulate a coherent therapeutic doctrine.” (135) The doctrine of choosing made them good researchers, but it did not give the movement a clear enough identity to stand the test of time.
Further, Dr. King’s adherence to the high road was not an efficient attack against the old school. Said King in a lecture to his students:
Eclecticism widely differs from other systems, and especially Allopathy, in its liberality and forbearance towards all who entertain opposite views and opinions. Eclectic students, instead of being taught to limit their thoughts and investigations within circumscribed bounds or rules, regardless of their correctness or falsity-the usual course pursued in medical teachings-are trained to cultivate and maintain the utmost freedom of mental action; to listen with patience and respect to the views and opinions of others, no matter how seriously they may conflict with their own; to test their truthfulness, and adopt them if good; or, if bad, to pass them by without regard to theories, preconceptions, sects, interests, popular favor, or anything, save a knowledge for the truth, and truth alone.” (105) Eclectics carried their leader’s sentiment, and it did not serve them in the brutal turf war of 19th-century medicine.
Gevitz made the following remark about the natural life cycle of medical sects, “They are conceived by a crisis in medical care; their youth is marked by a broadening of their ideas; and their decline occurs when whatever distinctive notions they have as to patient management are allowed to wither. At this point, no longer having a competent raison d’etre, they die.” (136)
The Eclectics gained popularity because they provided treatments which did not kill the patients. People liked them because they did not use the lancet or mercury. When the medical establishment abandoned these practices, part of their raison d’etre ceased to exist. They helped force the medical establishment to abandon heroic medicine, and in so doing, made themselves obsolete.
The object of this thesis is to identify botanical medicines that might be useful in maintaining health. Health depends upon the body’s intrinsic healing capacity and botanical tonics allegedly contain qualities that stimulate this activity. A search for effective disease preventing botanical drugs must logically begin with the Eclectic Materia Medica. It represents 114 years of research into the subject and as Procter claimed, “there are elements in the work of the Eclectics that warrant further investigation.”
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65. Miller, Amy Bess. Shaker Herbs. A History and A Compendium. Clarkson N. Potter, New York, 1976. P.1-9
66. Idler, Ellen L. Moral Medicine: Symbolic Content in 19th Century Shaker Therapeutics. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 13(1989)19-20
67. Boyle, Wade. Herb Doctors: Pioneers in 19th Century American Botanical Medicine and A history of the Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati. Buckeye Naturopathic Press, Ohio, 1988. P. 11
68. Waters, E. The Herbal Medicines of the mid-19th Century Botanical Societies. Pharm.Hist(London) 2000 June; 30(2): 34-36
69. Haller, John. Kindly Medicines. A History of the physio-medicals in American Medicine. New York State Journal of Medicine. Feb; 1993: P.140
70. Thomas, P. Homeopathy in the USA. British Homeopathic Journal (2001)90, 99-103.
71. Flannery, Michael A. John Uri Lloyd. The Great American Eclectic. Southern Illinois University Press. Carbondale. 1998. P.xiii
72. Beach, Wooster. Ibid. P. XX
73. Felter, Harvey Wickes. History of the Eclectic Medical Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1845-1902. Alumnal Association of the Eclectic Institute. Cincinnati. 1902. P 5
74. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P.81
75. Beach, Wooster. Ibid. P.V.
76. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P.81 Quoted from Beach, Wooster, “The Rise, Progress, and Present State of the New York Medical Institution and Reformed Medical society of the United States”, published by the author, 1830.
77. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P.81 Quoted from Beach, Wooster. “The Rise, Progress, and Present State of the New York Medical Institution and Reformed Medical society of the United States”, published by the author, 1830.
78. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P.82
79. Porter, A.H. quoted in Beach, Wooster. Ibid. P.IX.
80. Haller, John S. Ibid. P. 69.
81. Coulter, Harris L. Divided Legacy: A History of the Schism in Medical Thought. Volume III, Science and Ethics in American Medicine” 1800-1914, Three Volumes, Wehawken Book Company, Washington DC, 1973. P.88.
82. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P.5
83. Beach, Wooster. Ibid. P.XII. (Quoting Porter, A.H.)
84. Beach, Wooster. Ibid. (Quoting Porter, A.H.)
85. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P.83
86. Beach, Wooster. Ibid. P. XIII
87. Beach, Wooster. Ibid. P.IX
88. Beach, Wooster. (Quoted in Haller, John S. Ibid. P. 71 quoted in Firth, The Origin of the American Eclectic Practice of medicine, and Its Early History in the State of New York, Transaction, Eclectic Medical Society of New York, X(1878) 171.)
89. Beach, Wooster. Ibid. P.X
90. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P. 83
91. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P. 82 Quoting Wilder, Alexander. “Wooster Beach”. Eclectic Medical Journal, 1893, P.113-121.
.
92. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P. 83
93. Boyle, Wade. Herb Doctors: Pioneers in 19th Century American Botanical Medicine and A history of the Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati. East Palestine, Ohio. Buckeye Naturopathic Press. 1988. P. 7-9
94. Coulter, Harris. Divided Legacy: The Conflict Between Homeopathy and the American Medical Association: Science and Ethics in American Medicine 1800-1914 North Atlantic Books, Richmond, California, 1982. P.90-91
95. Berman, Alex. . A Striving for Scientific Respectability: Some American Botanics and the 19th Century Plant Materia Medica, Madison, American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, Contributions from the History of Pharmacy Department of the School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin, Number 4. 1956. P 7.
96. Beach, Wooster. Ibid. P.V-XX
97. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P. 83
98. Lloyd, John Uri. Biographies of John King, Andew Jackson Howe, John Milton Scudder. Bulletin of the Lloyd Library of Botany, Pharmacy, and Materia Medica. Cincinatti, 1912. P.4
99. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P. 21
100. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. P.26
101. Felter, Harvey Wickes. P. 13-115
102. Lloyd, John Uri. Ibid. P. 11
103. Lloyd, John Uri. Ibid. P.6
104. Lloyd, John Uri. Ibid. P.11
105. King, John. The American Eclectic Dispensatory. Moore, Wilstach, and Keys. Cincinnati, 1854. P.X
106. Lloyd, John Uri. Ibid. P.48. (Quoting King, John. “Lecture to incoming students at the Eclectic Institute”. )
107. Lloyd, John Uri. Ibid. Page 11
108. King, John. Ibid. P.VIII
109. Lloyd, John Uri. Ibid. P. 49 (Quoting lecture of John King).
110. Berman, Alex. . A Striving for Scientific Respectability: Some American Botanics and the 19th Century Plant Materia Medica, Madison, American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, Contributions from the History of Pharmacy Department of the School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin, Number 4. 1956. P. 11-13.
111. Boyle, Wade. Herb Doctors: Pioneers in 19th Century American Botanical Medicine and A history of the Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati. Buckeye Naturopathic Press. 1988. P. 24
112. Berman, Alex. The Eclectic Concentrations and American Pharmacy (1847-1861). Pharmacy in History. Vol.XXII, No.3, 1980. P.91-103
113. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. Page 118
114. Felter, Harvey Wickes. Ibid. Page 118
115. John Milton Scudder. The Eclectic Physician. Twenty First Edition, Fifth Revision. Cincinnati. John K.Scudder. 1887. P.28-32
116. Scudder, John Milton. Specific Medication and Specific Medicines. Fifth Edition. Cincinnati. Wilstach, Baldwin, and Co. Cincinnati. 1874. P.vii.
117. Scudder, John Milton. Ibid. P.106
118. Scudder, John Milton. Ibid. P. 165
119. Haller, John S. Ibid. P. 16
120. Scudder, John Milton. Ibid. P.10
121. Scudder, John Milton. Ibid. P.15
122. Scudder, John Milton. The American Eclectic Materia Medica and Therapeutics. Tenth Edition, revised and rewritten. Published by the author. Cincinnati. 1883. P. 48
123. Scudder, John Milton. Ibid. P. 25
124. Boyle, Wade. Ibid. P. 28-29
125. Berman, A. Wooster Beach and the Early Eclectics. Med Bull (Ann Arbor) 1958 July; 24(7): 282
126. Haller, John S. Ibid. P. 72.
127. Berman, Alex. A Striving for Scientific Respectability: Some American Botanics and the 19th Century Plant Materia Medica, Madison, American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, Contributions from the History of Pharmacy Department of the School of Pharmacy, University of Winsconsin, Number 4. 1956. P. 13. (Quoting from “Comments, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal” XXVIII (1843) 304
128. Berman, Alex. The Eclectic Concentrations and American Pharmacy(1847-1861). Pharmacy in History. Vol.XXII, No.3, 1980. P.100.
129. Coulter, Harris. Divided Legacy: The Conflict Between Homeopathy and the American Medical Association: Science and Ethics in American Medicine 1800-1914 North Atlantic Books, Richmond, California, 1982. P.93
130. Berman, Alex. . A Striving for Scientific Respectability: Some American Botanics and the 19th Century Plant Materia Medica, Madison, American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, Contributions from the History of Pharmacy Department of the School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin, Number 4. 1956. P 7.
131. Berman, Alex. The Thomsonian Movement and Its Relation to American Pharmacy and Medicine. Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Vol XXV; Number 5, Sept-Oct, 1951, P. 406
132. Linceum, Jerry Bryan. Medical Controversy in the Nineteenth-Century America South: Botanics vs.Allopaths. Caduceus 1994 Winter; 10(3):131-44.
133. Coulter, Harris. Divided Legacy: The Conflict Between Homeopathy and the American Medical Association: Science and Ethics in American Medicine 1800-1914 North Atlantic Books, Richmond, California, 1982. P.93
134. Lloyd, John Uri. Ibid. P.48. (Quoting King, John. “Lecture to incoming students at the Eclectic Institute”. )
135. Green, Barton. Gloom or Boom for Chiropractic in its Second Century. A comparison of the demise of Alternative Healing Professions. Chiropractic History Volume 14, No.2.1994: 25
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Posted in Archives, Medicine, Scientific Name, Scientific Name, Scientific Name | Leave a commentFeatured Article: Sweet Sorghum
November 14, 2010
Sorghum Syrup Story:
My introduction to sorghum syrup came about in a very roundabout way. I was living in Washington, DC. and converted four lots and two houses into an urban farm. As a result, I was always falling afoul of the law…… I had Illegal chickens, contra-band bees, renegade greenhouses, concealed pigeon coops, and worse. At a point, I realized that I either moved to a farm, or risked jail time on some poultry offense. So, I found a small farm 14 miles from town, bought it, and like a reverse Beverly Hills Hillbillies story, packed my truck with plants and animals, and moved to the “country”.
Once situated on my mini-farm, I had all this repressed farm energy that burst forth ….and decided to grow and raise everything. I quickly found this online source of exotic poultry eggs, my chicken porn site ( www.eggbid.com) . On that fabulous website, you can buy all kinds of rare heirloom poultry, and have them sent to yourself via the US mail! Birds of a feather flock together and I quickly made friends. Indeed, I met this one really cool woman, a duck breeder, who was a wealth of good ideas….or trouble, depending upon your perspective.
My duck breeder friend asked me if I was making my own sugar. I said no, that sugar cane did not grow this far north. She then informed me that sorghum, a big annual sugar cane like grass would grow in my area, and that I could make sugar! This “sugar” was called Sorghum syrup. It had never occurred to me that I could produce my own sugar and I was electric with excitement. Party time. As a person who loves to make his own stuff, this was very big news. I already made my own jams, but, the fact that I could make my own sugar to sweeten them, that was a whole new level of self sufficiency!
Sorghum canes are so rich in sugar, chewing one a chunk like eating
candy.
Any who, my online friend sent me a little packet of sweet sorghum seeds. The next spring I planted them and up sprang this huge corn like grass, twice my height. It just sort of stood there, looking big, and once it reached what I thought was its maximum hugeness, I decided to sample it. I cut down a stalk, peeled back the green skin of the cane, and chewed on the stick like a dog does a dried pig ear. Sure enough, as I chewed, the taste of pure sweet rolled down my happy throat. I peeled more, chewed more, peeled more, and proceeded to get a very clean sugar high. Having tasted the delicious sweet, I vowed to plant a crop of sorghum the next year and actually make my own sugar.
Being an impatient soul, I did not want to wait a whole year to sample the sorghum syrup I would be making. So, like any obsessive person, I found this really cool online supplier of sorghum syrup and ordered some. In a few days a jar of sorghum syrup arrived. It looked like light colored molasses but tasted like fruity honey with a touch of molasses. I began using sorghum syrup in all kinds of recipes in place of store bought sugar and had amazing results. Having tasted this brand of sweet, I was really excited to make my own the following season. Later we will get to my own personal adventure with sugar making, but first, let’s talk more about sorghum syrup in general.
To start the sweet sorghum story, and for it to make any sense at all, we have to turn back the sweet time machine 160 years. In 1850, the average American had access to sugar cane syrup or molasses. Only the super rich could afford white refined sugar. Sugar cane syrup was made by pressing sugar cane for its sweet juice, and cooking that juice down into a thick, heavy, sweet syrup. Molasses, on the other hand, was the byproduct of the sugar refining process. When cane sugar was refined, the pure white sugar got pulled out, what was left in the pot was molasses. Sugar cane syrup did not take much work to make, and molasses was an industrial by product. Both sugar cane syrup and molasses were the cheapest sugars available and what 90% of the population used as sugar.
All that to say, in 1850, most people got their sweet in the form of a thick, heavy sugar syrup.
The Sorghum syrup Story
North America boasts two unique additions to the menu of healthy sugars; maple syrup and sorghum syrup. Most have tasted maple syrup, but, sorghum is something new to many. Like Maple syrup, sorghum syrup is made on this continent and on this continent alone. More specifically, it is produced in America. So in fact, it is a sugar unique to America. It is a bit odd that America’s most American sweetener is unknown to many Americans, but, with a little luck that will be changing. Because, sorghum syrup is as interesting in flavor and use as “the other” North American sweetener, Maple syrup.
It is made from the pressed juice of a very large grass, scientifically known as Sorghum bicolor, and in particular, a variety known as sweet sorghum. Sweet sorghum is a very tall, statuesque grass that stands many feet higher than the average man, and its seed head makes it even stand taller. If you were not told otherwise, you might mistake it for corn on steroids. It is a close relative of sugar cane, though it differs from its relation in two main regards. Firstly, it is an annual grass, whereas sugar cane is a perennial; secondly, it grows in places too cold to support sugar cane production.
Its wide, corn like leaves extend into the sunlight, where they practice the ultimate plant miracle, using sun energy and water they create sugar. The sugar produced in leaf is then shipped to its thick, succulent stem. If you break off a piece of sorghum cane, and chew it, the sugar concentration makes its self known. The sugar content in the cane ranges between 10% and 20%, and, when you chew a length of stem, you taste the sweet. It stores as much or more sugar in its cane than its relative sugar cane, as sugar cane stores on average 10% sugar! Its large canes are pressed, the juice collected, and cooked down to remove excess water, concentrate the sugars and vitamins and minerals. The result is a rich, fruity, complex sugar syrup with endless uses and endless appeal.
The sweet sorghum syrup story is a complex as the flavor of the syrup itself, and like the flavor, the history is worth knowing. But, first a short informational detour.
It is really fascinating how different cultures will breed the same plant or animal for different purposes and end up with an almost entirely different plant or animal. Take dogs. The Mexicans bred the wild dog into the tea cup sized Chihuahua and the Danish took the same wild dog and developed the horse sized Great Dane! Here is an example from the plant world. American’s bred watermelons to be seedless because we like watermelon’s sweet flesh. As a result of years of breeding, our watermelons are now seedless or virtually seedless. On the other hand, the Chinese love eating watermelon seeds and have bred watermelons that have little meat and are mostly seed. The same plant or animal, in the hands of a different culture, with different needs or tastes, over generations, can end up looking very different! This is the case with sweet sorghum.
Sorghum bicolor, as a plant, has four potential uses. Its leaves and stems can be used as a food for grazing animals(silage sorghum); its seeds can be used like wheat or rice(grain sorghum); its dried seed head can be used to make brooms(broom sorghum); and lastly, its sweet canes can be used to make sugar. Some cultures bred it for use as green fodder for animals, other for grain production, others for broom making, and in America, we alone bred it for sugar making. As I said, America is the only country that makes sugar out of sorghum. If you want to sample sorghum sugars deliciousness, you will have to do it in America! And, as you will see, we bred up its sugar making potential as a result of our unique history.
Though an American product, the sweet sorghum story starts in foreign lands. Research reveals that sweet sorghum bicolor is originally from Sudan and Chad and spread from northern East Africa to southern East Africa thousands of years ago. Villages between those two points grew the plant for the grain it produced and for the sweet cane that could be chewed both for pleasure and nutrition. From East Africa, sweet sorghum spread to China, Korea, Burma, and India. Early in history, sweet sorghum made its way to Europe, via Asia. The plant appears in European botanical literature in 1542 and is referred to as Sorghi, the name used for it in India.
A sorghum grower with his sorghum crop during the heyday of
sorghum production.
Mid 19th century Europeans experimented with squeezing the sweet canes and making sugar with the resulting juice, but, it did not really catch on. Europe had sugar cane sugar rolling in from the Caribbean Islands and they really did not need another source. Let us just say that they were not very motivated to find another source of the sweet. But they did briefly fool around with it, and, that happened in the year 1851.
In 1851, the French consul in Shanghai sent a collection of “the sugar cane of the North of China”, sweet sorghum, to the Geographical Society of Paris. The seed was planted in the garden of Toulon where a single seed germinated. However, that single seed produced enough seed for a second generation.
In 1853, William Prince, a Flushing New York nurseryman received some seed from the Toulon garden and produced a crop of sorghum in New York. He sold the seed to farmers around Northern America to trial as a potential new sugar crop.
Independent of that, J.D. Browne, a US patent office agent, travelled to France where he observed sweet sorghum growing and experiments being conducted making those sweet canes into sugar. He noted that this potential sugar producing crop was growing in places and climates where corn flourished, and, suspected it would grow in America’s corn belt as well. We are speaking, of course, of the American North and Midwest, places that had to buy sugar. Browne collected seed and sent them back to the US Patent office. The patent office in turn grew the seed and produced a sufficient supply to distribute seed packets, in 1857 and 1858. Farmers were made aware of the seed through the help of several northern congressmen and the magazine “American Agriculturist”.
The varieties of Sweet Sorghum introduced by William Prince, and JD Browne, were to be known as Chinese Cane, as they made their way to America by way of France by way of China. Chinese Sugar Cane was also known as Eusorghum.
In a separate universe, A Calcutta, India sugar planter, Leonard Wray, visited eastern South Africa and collected several varieties of Sweet Sorghum growing along the coast. Wray developed sixteen varieties and introduced them to Europe under the name Imphee, or sweet reed. Once again, sweet sorghum did not catch on in Europe. But, in 1857, Wray, working with South Carolina governor Hammond and Mr. Redmond, publisher of the magazine Southern Cultivator, introduced the African sweet Sorghum to farmers in the Southern United States. In 1859, some African sweet sorghum seed was given to the US patent office, or stolen by the US patent office, depending upon who tells the story. The US Patent Office in turn propagated the African variety and distributed its seed to farmers in Northern America.
The African sweet sorghum was called Imphee, and was thought to be a stronger cane, better able to withstand strong hot prairie winds. Chinese sugar cane was thought to be more fragile, but better able to thrive in cooler climates and produced a superior syrup.
Books were written and distributed to the northern farmer teaching
them how to plant sorghum and convert it into table sugar.
One might ask the question, why was the US Patent office so involved with the identification of sugar producing plants, their study, and their distribution to Northern farmers. The answer is simple. The North was dependent on sugar and molasses made on southern plantations run on slave labor. War between the north and the south was looming and it was possible that the southern sugar supply would stop flowing north. The United States government wanted to create a sugar industry in the north to reduce dependence on southern sugar, and, sorghum was one of the candidates.
Moreover, Cane sugar was a cash crop for the South. Sugar was valuable, whether sold to the north or to Europe. The southern sugar industry added money to the southern economy and in turn money to their war budget. By stimulating northern sugar production, southern sugar plantations incomes would e reduced. Today we talk about developing alternate fuels to end our dependence on Arab oil; in those days, people spoke of reducing dependence on southern sugar.
And, in addition to this, the abolitionists were encouraging consumers to boycott slave made sugar. more specifically, consumers were made to feel guilty about buying slave made sugar. Here is a good quote from Sugar expert Elizabeth Abbott, ” Abolitionists urged all Christians to shun the sugar and rum that orphaned slave children by murdering their parents through excessive labor and cruel treatment”. As Abbott says, cane sugar “was literally polluted with slaves blood and sweat, clearly no reasonable person could eat it.” In fact, grocers started looking for sources of sugar not made with slave labor and that had “not produced by slaves” on the product!
With the full support of the federal government, and abolition inspired consumer interest, Sorghum caught on in the north, indeed, by 1858 it was being planted in every state in the Union. By 1860, nearly 6.75 million gallons of syrup were produced in twenty five states. Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri produced over half of that syrup. The product sold for fifty to sixty cents a gallon. Bear in mind that was 150 years ago, the equivalent in today’s money would be $14 a gallon.
So, the US government’s motivation for distributing and encouraging sorghum syrup production was political; they wanted to stick it to the southern sugar producers. But, the early American farmer was equally interested for their own reasons. Firstly, there was the moral issue of slave made sugar. Secondly, cane sugar was the only sugar readily available to the average American, and, it cost money. Sorghum, on the other hand, grew just about everywhere, and, pressing it and creating sugar was something you could do at home, with a minimum amount of equipment. The money usually spent on buying sugar could be used to buy sorghum sugar making equipment, and the homesteader could then make their own sugar for the rest of their life. Bearing in mind sugar was one of the most expensive items a homesteader bought, the idea that they could make their own sugar, and maybe even produce a little extra to sell made it an exciting crop.
An 1859 book, “Experiments with Sorghum Sugar Cane”, was written to encourage the northern farmer to think they could be sugar independent almost immediately. Here are some interesting quotes from that “inspiring” little book,
Sorghum syrup was money in a jar. It could save the farmer from
buying sugar and besold for extra cash.
“The profound interest awakened, not many months since, on the subject of the introduction among us of a new sugar producing plant, the Chinese Sorgho and African Imphee canes, seems destined to ripple yet further the current public sentiment. No event of modern times has produced a sensation more intense amongst agriculturists, and judging from the success which has attended the experiments of the past season, crude and imperfect as they necessarily were, nothing has fallen under public observation which has yet, or is likely to confer such permanent benefit upon the community at large.
Sugar, once a rare and costly luxury, has in these latter times become a sort of general necessity, although the short crops of year or two past, together with inordinate speculations in that which was produced, have made men of moderate and restricted means feel as if it was receding again to its old place amongst the luxuries.
Our object here, however, is not to indulge in general speculation, but to lay before the public, in the plainest manner possible, such facts as have fallen under our observation, or have been brought to our attention, and which bear upon the subject of growing this new sugar cane, expressing the juice there from, and boiling the same into sugar and molasses, We will therefore as a proper preface, consider the general success of the past season, to show the base upon which we build our hopes of still more flattering results in the future.”
The results of the year are flattering in the highest degree. Sirup, of a beauty and flavor and consistency equal to the finest sugar house molasses, has been made to a considerable extent in nearly every Northern State, and in quantity sufficient yield a good profit at the lowest price New Orleans has ever sold for in our markets. Samples have been shown us by various parties, which were as transparent and pleasant almost as honey, though there had, doubtless been unusual care exercised in their manufacture. They show, however, that these results were not impossibilities, and go far to prove the cane a success. But, in addition, to all this, and still better, SUGAR, of various grades, from the darkest brown to the finest loaf, has been produced by various parties and at various points, sufficient to prove conclusively that the manufacture of sugar in this latitude is not only possible, but easy of accomplishment.”
With a small horse drawn sorghum cane press, the northern farmer
could produce his or her own supply of the sugar for the rest of their
life. This meant sugar independence for the small scale farmer.
With a bag of free sweet sorghum seeds from the US patent office, a copy of this book, and a small amount of equipment, the 1850′s northern farmer has sugar stars in his or her eyes. No more trips to the general store to buy expensive slave made cane sugar. This appealed to the cost conscious early American and worked for US government too.
But, there was still another factor. Self reliance was a core value amongst the American pioneer. They liked being able to take care of their own and produce their own necessities. Part of this was practical; many lived in locations far removed from a general store. But, the bigger part was the value of self reliance itself. They liked being able to fend for themselves. Making their own sugar made them more independent.
For all these reasons, sweet sorghum planting, and sorghum syrup manufacture, throughout the North, caught on like wild fire.
Though the US patent office had sowed the seeds of northern sugar independence, and authors such as the one just quoted helped stir the so called sugar pot, the Civil War did its part to stimulate northern sugar production. Let’s just say the war, which specifically targeted sugar plantations, resulted in a disruption in the production and distribution of southern cane sugar. As the war raged on, the sugar flow slowed to a trickle. The northern states did not have access to southern sugar they had before. If you wanted to get your sweet on , planting and producing sorghum syrup was the answer.
At that crazy time in US history, an Iowa agriculturist, Wayne Rasmussen, made this statement, “It is fair to conclude that if a king providence should bless us with a favourable season, another year we will not be compelled, as a State, to contribute to the expenses of the war in the shape of high prices for sugar and molasses.” In other words, northern sugar production meant less money for the south to fight their side of the civil war.
The Union Commissioner of Agriculture said this in his report of 1862, “The new product of sorghum cane has established itself as one of the permanent crops of the country and it enabled the interior states to supply themselves with a home article of molasses, thereby keeping down the prices of other molasses from any great advance over former rates which otherwise would have been a result of war.” The sugar shortage, that would otherwise have been the practical result of war with the south, was averted with northern sorghum syrup production . Northern farmers were now making their own sugar and had their own supply. And, often, they had enough to sell to their neighbors and city dwellers.
Sorghum production increased with each passing year of the war. However, its production stabilized in the 1870′s. Basically, with the end of the war, and with the renewed access to southern sugar, Sorghum had to stand toe to toe with southern cane sugar. Though Sorghum got northern folks through the war years, it was not without its problems. In the very northern states it did not always set seed. Where ever it was planted, it was labor intensive to convert the cane into sugar syrup. However thrifty, making sugar was time consuming, and if you had money to buy sugar, you did.
So, 1870′s saw a reduction of sorghum production in the north, but as production in the north declined, it increased in the northern parts of the south. The parts that were too cold for sugar cane to grow, but, still plenty warm for sorghum. This increase in southern sorghum syrup production might also have had something to do with labor. Though slavery was over, the south had a large number of former slaves accustomed to labor intensive agriculture, cotton, cane, and tobacco included, in need of work. Though freed, former slaves were available for the manual labor associated with making sorghum syrup.
As has been said, there are different sorghum varieties grown for different purposes, silage, grain, broom, and sugar respectively. Apparently the US Department of Agriculture decided this confused the American consumer. In one of the earliest cases of re-branding by the USDA, the USDA announced that hence forth, sweet sorghum would be called Sorgo and sorghum syrup would be called sorgo syrup. Here is a humorous quote from one of their publications announcing “their” name change,
“Sorgo is called sorghum in many parts of the country, and until recently the sirup from sorgo was generally known as sorghum syrup. Sorgo is the name now preferred by the United States Department of Agriculture for the varieties of sorghum that have abundant sweet juice, as distinguished from the grain producing varieties”. Sadly for the USDA, no one was interested in changing sorghum syrups name, and, their effort failed. Then and now, sorghum syrup is called sorghum syrup and sometimes just plain old sorghum.
Sorghum syrup production reached one its peak in the 1880′s where states, southern and northern included, produced a total of 30 million gallons of syrup. At this time, there were over two hundred different varieties of sorghum planted in North America. Each location tended to have its own variety that performed best in that locale.
American desire to produce sugar in the north led to the development
of high sugar content sorghum varieties.
But of all those local varieties, four varieties dominated the scene due to their high sugar contents and those included early amber, Orange, Sumac, and gooseneck. The different varieties produced juice with different sugar contents; as an example, in Biloxi, these varieties had the following sugar contents; sumac 11.44%, Gooseneck 13.09, early amber 14.55% , and Orange 14.20. Through selective breeding, Americans were breeding higher and higher sugar content sweet sorghum varieties, varieties much higher than those that arrived in America from Africa and China. Americans had taken this particular wild dog and turned it into the sorghum version of a Great Dane.
By 1890, nine southern states were responsible for over half the sorghum syrup produced in America. This would be a complete reversal from the statistics of 1860 when half the US crop was produced in northern states.
At this time, there was hope that sorghum syrup could be refined into a white, solid sugar. Because, refined white sugar, the former luxury of the super rich, had caught on with the average man, and, everybody wanted the pure white solid sweet.
However, this was not to be. A USDA bulletin had this to say on the subject, ” At one time it was believed that sorgo had value in the production of sugar(solid) and from 1860-1890 much experimental work, both on a small scale and a factory scale, was one in the attempt to develop this industry. As compared with sugarcane and sugar beets, however the yield of sorgo and sugar per acre is low in most localities the sugar making season would be short; and the crop is relatively unreliable and perishable from the standpoint of sugar production. Sorgo juice, moreover, contains gummy materials, starch, and comparatively large quantities of sugars other than the ordinary sugar of commerce(sucrose), which retard and sometimes prevent crystallization. Although improved methods of clarification have been developed , the yields of crystallized sugar have usually been found too small to justify establishing this as a separate and independent sugar industry.”
The taste of the nation was heading towards solid purified, white sugar and the difficulty in converting sorghum syrup into a simple, albeit dangerous chemical, was a major factor in its disappearance from the American table.
The simple technology required to produce sorghum sugar, a mill, a horse, and a cooking cauldron, kept sorghum
production alive amongst American subsistence farmers. If they wanted sugar, they had to produce it themselves.
Sorghum gave the poorest American farmer the opportunity to take part in the joy of sugar!
But, the death nail in the coffin of commercial sorghum syrup production came in the 1890′s. Round about then, the USD experimented with extracting solid white sugar from sugar beets and had excellent results. Sugar beets, like sorghum, grew in the north, but, acre per acre, produced more of the white stuff than sorghum and produced it more easily. Even more significant, there was a commercial production issue. Sorghum had to be cut and processed into sugar immediately. The sugar in its canes, once cut, quickly converts to starch. It is a perishable product. Sugar beets, on the other hand, could be harvested and stored, and processed into sugar whenever it was convenient. Weeks, even months, after they were harvested.
To make matters even worse, technologies developed that could extract glucose syrups from corn. Corn syrup, though another unhealthy substance, was cheaper to produce than sorghum syrup. Sorghum could not compete with cheap beet or the cheap corn syrup, and, its commercial production went into a steady decline. A rich, complex, healthy sugar was sidelined by two very simple, and not so healthy purified sugars.
Here are some US census figures that show the rise and fall of sorghum syrup in America. The figures shown are in gallons.
So, you are probably thinking it was straight down hill for sorghum to the present, when we find sorghum syrup almost obscure. Almost but not exactly. Interestingly, there was a surge of production of sorghum syrup between 1920 and 1933. What explains this bump in production? Prohibition! It seems that during the first part of the “dry years” , sorghum syrup was used to make alcohol. Apparently it was fairly easy to make sorghum booze and as such, it regained popularity amongst the American farmer. The honky- tonks, speakeasies, and moonshine parlors popping up all over the country needed something to serve, and, sorghum derived booze was one such beverage. When the depression hit in 1929, production plummeted to 9,256,000. Nobody had any money for food let alone booze, and, Sorghum syrups revival went down the tubes along with the wealth of the nation.
After this temporary upswing, sorghum syrup resumed its slow descent to the bottom of the sugar list. After the second world war, more and more people moved away from the land, and, from country ways. Sorghum production suffered along with all the other country traditions lost in the movement from country to town. Moreover, it was always a labor intensive crop, and following the end of the second world war, a lot of the American men were dead. Let’s just say there was a war caused shortage of farm labor and this took its toll on sorghum syrup production.
Sorghum: Alive and Kicking
Though Sorghum lost the commercial war with corn and beets, its cultivation and manufacture did not stop all together. From the 1930′s to the 1970′s, its production continued on family farms and homesteads on a non-commercial basis. And the reason for this is hard for the modern reader to comprehend. Finances.
Many American farmers during this period barely earned enough money to cloth their families, and for them, store bought sugar was a real luxury. Buying sugar was buying sugar and these farmers did not buy that much of anything. Simply put, subsistence farmers could not afford to buy sugar. But, like when it was first introduced, Sorghum gave the small scale farmer the opportunity to produce a sufficient quantity of sugar the keep them the sweet for the year, at no cost apart from the labor it took to produce the syrup. An acre of sorghum produced between 60 and 400 gallons of sugar rich syrup, and most farmers had an acre to spare and a weekend to cook down the cane juice to rich sugar syrup! The art of sorghum syrup production was kept alive due to the economic necessity of poor American farmers.
In some cases, families had their own sorghum press and pressed and cooked down their own syrup. In some communities, one member of the community would build and maintain a press, and local farmers would drive their sorghum to be pressed at the “community” press. The press operator did his work in exchange for a certain percentage of the resulting juice or syrup.
A 1975 survey revealed that only 2400 acres of sorghum were planted on 165 farms. That is a far cry from the amount of sorghum planted in the height of the sorghum sugar days…..in excess of 500,000 acres in 1880! That was a real low point.
The good news is that things are looking a bit better. At present, an estimated 30,000 acres of sweet sorghum are planted annually, and those acres produce 1 million gallons of syrup. The biggest portion of the syrup being produced in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee. And, the really good news is that there are some producers that produce sorghum commercially! You can buy sorghum syrup over the phone and over the internet! The production may be down, but, the product is still available!
Making Sorghum Syrup
Sorghum is ready to harvest when the seeds are fully developed yet
not hard. At this moment, the sugar content in the cane is at its peak.
The reason that sorghum took off in the first place, and the reason that its production has continued on a homestead basis thereafter, is twofold. Firstly, it’s delicious. Secondly, its relatively easy to make. Yes, its labor intensive, but, with a press of some sort, and a large kettle, you can make sugar. With a little equipment, and some free time, you can be in the sweet.
So, how is sorghum syrup made? Well, the process is always the same. First, the canes are cut and striped of leaves. Next, the canes are passed through a mill that flattens the cane and squeezes out the sweet green juice. The cutting and the pressing needs to happen as quickly as possible, as otherwise the sugar trapped in the cane begins to convert to starch. The pressed green juice, which is by the way as sweet or sweeter than apple cider, is then placed in large pots or kettles, and boiled. As the juice boils, proteins, starches, and chlorophyll molecules float to the top of the pot and form a foam. Someone leans over the pot and continuously scoops off the foam. For some hours, the boiling and the scooping proceeds. But, more or less, when the pot stops producing foam, the syrup is done. 7 gallons of juice has been reduced to 1 gallon of amber colored sorghum syrup.
My adventure with Sorghum Syrup
As proof positive that anyone with a small plot of land can make sorghum syrup, I will dive into my personal sorghum story.
I mentioned earlier that I first heard about sorghum syrup from an online friend and according to her I could make sugar at home. However, I needed a source of seed to plant my acre of sorghum, and, I went online to find a supply. Looking for seed, I came across a wonderful organization, The National Sweet Sorghum Producers and Processors Association. Spear headed by the Sorghum Saint, Morris Bitzer, I was able to obtain seed and planting instructions for a type of sorghum recommended for my area.
So, I planted an acre of sorghum and, within days the little corn like plants appeared. Within two weeks the little plants were flying towards the sky at kind of an alarming rate. The plant is vigorous and strong and just grows by the minute. In fact, the vitality of the plant is almost breath taking. I did not water it, treat it with fertilizer, or weed it. It just blasted out of the ground like a rocket, all on its own.
Honestly, while it was growing, I did not give a lot of thought to what would come next. Like, how would I actually turn the canes into sorghum syrup. I had been informed that once the plant set seeds, and the seeds were slightly hard but not entirely hard, the sugar content in the cane would be at its maximum, and it was time to harvest the cane. After that point, sugar content would begin to disappear.
Well, I got busy with this and that, and before I knew it, I had semi-hard seeds hanging off my 14 foot sorghum plants. I did the only sensible thing. I panicked. How was I going to get the juice out of the canes? How was I going to press it? I went online and I looked at old designs for simple sorghum presses and they all involved a horse. Problem one. I did not have or want a horse. I did find some designs that could be modified to work without a horse but I did not have time to get one of those built. My sugar content was dropping by the minute.
But, then I remembered something. I remembered that Cuban restaurants in Miami had mini-sugar cane presses right in the restaurants. They used them to press fresh sugar cane juice, or Gurapa, as it is known in Cuba, to be served as a refreshing beverage. As an aside, where ever sugar cane grows, the people press and drink the fresh juice for health and pleasure. , My sorghum was about the same size as sugar cane, just a little softer, and, I decided that if I could get my hands on one of these portable sugar cane presses, I could press my sorghum cane. I called restaurant supply companies in Miami in search of one of those portable sugar cane presses, and found one. Shortly thereafter, a portable 2 horse power sugar cane press arrived at my door. Miraculously, I plugged it in, fed a sorghum cane through it, and out flew sweet green juice. What a relief. I could get the juice out of the cane!
About the juice. It is bright green like wheat grass juice served at juice bars. Like wheat grass juice, it provides a blast of b vitamins with the added benefit of super fresh natural sugar. All I can say is that if you drink a cup of fresh sorghum juice, you end up with a buzz you’ll not soon forget! It is tasty, in a deeply green kind of way, but wow does it get you moving! Good thing, because it was a lot of work chopping down the canes, pulling off the leaves, and shoving the canes through the juicing machine.
I have ridiculously large pots, like big enough to cook a couple of people in, and so I put the juice in the pots, and started cooking. True to the reports I had read, once the juice started boiling, foam came to the top of the pot, and my job was to keep scooping the foam off the boiling mass. It boiled, I scooped, it boiled, I scooped, and in two hours, 70 gallons of sweet green juice became 10 gallons of ultra tasty syrup.
And, I must say, pouring my sorghum syrup into mason jars, was one of my most satisfying moments. I had taken a plant, pressed out the sugary sap trapped within it, and converted that sap into sugar. An ancient practice, one that people around the world had practiced since the beginning of time, had been pulled off in my own home. I was officially sugar independent.
Ultimately, here was the most compelling part of the experience. I planted sorghum seeds and watched them grow with shocking vigor. I mean, the plant just looks healthy, exploding with strength and vitality. Then I pressed this vital plant and out came its essence, an electric, power packing green juice. A juice that just looks healthy. A Juice so packed with nutrition it makes a person, as in this person, buzz around like an energized insect. Then, I reduced this power packing punch, from 70 gallons, to 10 gallons, thereby concentrating all the goodness into a highly concentrated form. Looking at the jars of brown sorghum syrup, I knew on some primitive level, that I had before jars of concentrated power! And even better, it was beyond tasty.
I don’t say this in that, everyone thinks their kid is cute, no matter how butt ugly, kind of way. I have made more than one product on the farm and thrown it in the trash because it was nasty. This stuff is delicious.
Sorghum and Health
Like all whole, unrefined sugars, sorghum syrup is an incredibly complex substance. Its color alone lets you know that it is filled with different sugars, vitamins, minerals, and assorted phyto-chemicals. Remember, that sorghum syrup is highly concentrated nutrition rich sorghum cane juice.
There is a variation in sorghum syrup content, as with most naturally occurring substances, no two fields produce the same sorghum cane, juice, or syrup. But, generally speaking, sorghum syrup contains 40% sucrose, 30% invert sugar, 3% mineral matter, 24% water, and 3 % organic non-sugars.
Nutritionally speaking, sorghum syrup is a wealth of vitamins and minerals. One cup contains 957 calories, but these are not empty calories. These calories come packing with loads of nutrition and phytochemicals which all work towards improving health. The percentages presented here represent the USDA recommended amounts per day.
Seeing Red
Most people are aware of the health advantages of red wine. What they don’t often realize is that the important word here is red. Compounds known as anthocyanins make red wine red, and two primary physiological activities. They strengthen the circulatory system, arteries and heart included, and they act as anti-oxidants. Anti-oxidants neutralize free radicals that the body produces; free radicals cause aging, cancer, heart disease, and a whole long list of things you don’t want. Anthocyanins can be found in red raspberries, red grapes, tomatoes, strawberries, and a host of other red produce.
The sorghum produces a lot of anthocyanins, and these substances can be found (and seen) in the leaves, canes, and seeds. When the cane is pressed, and the juice concentrated into syrup, the syrup has a reddish caramel color…because it contains concentrated anthocyanins. Though the anthocyanins found sorghum have not been specifically studied, they should be. They may have more health benefits than those associated with anthocyanins.
Ginseng in sugar syrup?
Ginseng is a well known health stimulator, used for centuries by the Chinese to insure vigorous strength and vitality. The compounds, at least in part responsible to this verve boosting action are called saponins. In this case, they are specifically called ginsenosides. Interestingly, several members of the grass family have been proven to contain saponins very similar to those found in ginseng. Oats, fed to race horses to insure a win at the track, contain avenacosides. Wheat grass juice, the popular brain and body booster served up at health food stores contains saponins. Sugar cane, contains saponins and has been proven to be as effective a vitality stimulant as ginseng! And guess what? Our old American sweetener, Sorghum, is also rich in saponins. These may explain why sorghum syrup was a traditional treatment for people feeling run down. As someone that has grown sorghum, I can tell you it is one of the most vibrant plants on the farm. It grows like a rocket and is the picture of vitality. It kind of makes sense that it would contain vitality compounds!
As a health care researcher, sorghum syrup has two clear cut benefits to the consumer.
Help…. I’m falling Apart Here!
The modern world works a person’s nerves. The simplest of chores, like getting the cable switched on or off, becomes a mental and nervous safari that can go on for weeks. Push 1 for this, push 2 for that, push nothing to get a real person on the phone. Nothing goes smoothly and we all have to be alert way too much of the time. The modern world is wearing peoples nerves out, and, to see this, just look around. Peoples’ nervous systems are worn out.
To make things worse, B vitamins are essential for proper nervous system functioning. People who don’t get enough of these vitamins end up with nervous and nerve problems. And, the processed food most people survive on has been stripped of most everything, including B vitamins. Oops. Our life is a nervous system work out and our food does not have the nutrients our nervous systems need. Let’s just say, bad combination. Here is the good news. Sorghum syrup is incredibly rich in B vitamins and a great way to boost your B vitamin levels. A tablespoon a day will give those fried nerves a dose of what they need.
Stop the Destruction
Free radicals are chemical remnants that travel around the body damaging cells, skin, blood vessels, and more. Simply put, free radicals age the body and cause disease. Good news. Sorghum syrup is loaded with anti-oxidants, substances that sweep up these body damaging free radicals. Like red wine which packs anti-oxidant action, sorghum comes packing with a big dose of anti-oxidants. A regular dose of sorghum syrup may help retard aging and age related conditions.
So what does it taste like?
What does sorghum syrup taste like? I would describe it as being a mix of honey, apple juice concentrate, and light corn syrup with a touch of molasses. I would definitely use the term fruity to describe it, and, apart from tasting very sweet, it carries a rich caramel flavor that is unique to sorghum. As devotees of whole sugars will tell you, each sugar is unique and unlike any other. Maple syrup tastes like maple syrup, and molasses tastes like molasses. This one is no different. The only way to know what sorghum syrup tastes like is get you a jar and dip in!
Getting Some!
So, what we can derive from this sugar story? First of all, if you have some land to spare, you can make your own sorghum syrup. All you need is some seed, a press, and a pot.
That said, not everyone is willing to go to the bother, however satisfying as it might be! And, the good news is that a few people still make sorghum syrup and you can buy it from them! You can go to the National Sweet Sorghum Producers and Processors Association website to find a supplier (nssppa.org). That said, here are two suppliers I like. www.maasdamsorghum.com and www.muddypondsorghum.com .
Not only should you order some sorghum syrup for your taste buds and your health, but, there is yet another good reason. It is really important for us to support the sorghum syrup industry. Bless the folks who are continuing this truly American sweet tradition. They will only continue doing it if we buy their product. Do your part to keep this American tradition alive, and, this is one good deed that actually tastes good.
Using Sorghum
Sorghum syrup is light enough in flavor to be useful in just about any recipe that calls for sugar. Unlike, molasses, which has such a strong flavor it blocks out other flavore in the mix, sorghum sweetens food, and contributes to flavor, without overtaking the food item in question. When thinking about using it, think that in the flavor department, its somewhere between light brown sugar and light Corn syrup.
When it comes to using sorghum in recipes, here is what you need to know. In recipes calling for honey, you can substitute one cup of honey for one cup of sorghum syrup. In recipes calling for molasses, you can substitute one cup of molasses for one cup of sorghum. That said, sorghum is sweeter than molasses so you may need to reduce the amount of sugar called for in the recipe by one third. When using it to substitute sugar, increase the amount of sorghum syrup by one third over the amount of sugar specified. Because sorghum syrup is a liquid, you will need to reduce the amount of liquid called for in the recipe by the same amount.
The following usage information comes to us from the National Sweet Sorghum Producers and Processors Association, “When replacing sorghum for sugar in baking recipes, some experience will be required. The exact ratios of substitutions may vary somewhat between different recipes. Also, it is not recommended that all sugar be replaced under most circumstances. Best results are obtained by replacing 50% to 75% of the sugar with the required amount of sorghum.”
Consumer Beware
Sorghum syrup is sometimes incorrectly called sorghum molasses. We need to clear this up. Syrups are made by cooking down plant sap to reduce the water content and increase the sugar content. You take 7 gallons of sorghum and boil it down to 1 gallon of syrup. No sugar is taken out, just water. It is a simple reduction process. Molasses, on the other hand, is the residue of refined cane sugar production. Cane sugar juice is cooked down, the sugar is scooped out, and what is left in the pot is “molasses”. So, sorghum syrup is concentrated sorghum juice. Molasses is the residue of cane sugar refinement.
Most importantly, Sorghum is a commodity, hard to produce, and valuable. Some less than honest merchants mix cheaper sugar syrups with a little sorghum syrup and call it “sorghum syrup”. To make certain you are getting the real deal, the National Sweet Sorghum Producers and Processors Association has come up with a logo which can be found on certified Sorghum syrup. Look for this logo and you will know you are buying the real deal. Beyond that, when you pick up a bottle of sorghum syrup, read the ingredients. If it contains anything other than sorghum syrup, put the product down!
In Closing Sorghum syrup is a uniquely American sugar, and though its production had been in decline, this is beginning to change. This upward trend needs to continue, and, this whole, unrefined sugar really needs every bodies support. And, in this case, supporting a good cause will not involve you going on some stupid walk. All you have to do is order some and enjoy it. Sorghum syrup is a national treasure and we need to make sure its always around.
But that said, it is a sugar we need to support because it is good for us and good for the planet on many, many levels. First of all, the Sorghum plant produces its own natural herbicide to keep competing weeds at bay. Its production does not require herbicide. It grows in all kinds of soil and as such and does not require chemical fertilizer. It grows so quickly and strongly, insects don’t effect it very much. It does not require the use of insecticides. And lastly, because of its drought resistance nature, it does not require irrigation. It uses less water! This is a very earth friendly sugar, and, the same cannot be said for the other sugars!
Posted in Features | Leave a commentFeatured Article: Japanese Quince
October 31, 2010
I think I might have been a strange little child. When most kids were watching the Flintstones, I was digging plants out of the woods and rooting around abandoned farm houses for interesting plants. I first spotted the Japanese quince on one of my many unsupervised plant field trips. It was growing on the side of a falling down farmhouse and was in full bloom when I first spied it. Later that year, I went back and noticed the bush was loaded with a bumper crop of golf ball sized, harder than hell, and very fragrant fruit. I did the only sensible thing, I picked all the fruit and headed home with them. I had an older gardener friend and I asked her if anything could be done with the fruit. She told me you could make jelly out of the fruits, which of course I did. I think I was about 7, which does suggest I was an odd child.
So, I began experimenting with making stuff with Japanese quince fruits 39 years ago and I am still at it. Some toys never get old. As I sit down to write this, I have a big bowl of Japanese quinces on my table, waiting to be canned. The entire room is fragrances with a powerful and beguiling scent that is a mix of apple and really strong pineapple……these little golf balls of flavor crank out scent like a plug in air freshener. That is one of the really unique attributes of this fruit, it has an incredible perfume. Everything has something that sets it apart, and in this case, quince has scent and flavor going on. They smell great and you can make a lot of really wonderful things with them. I suggest everyone plant on in their garden because they are really easy to grow and their fruit is very useful.
In America, the Japanese quince is seen as an ornamental bush. It produces drop dead beautiful flowers in early spring and does so, year after year, with no help from the gardener. Here is a good example of its maintenance free nature. Near my farm there is an old Japanese quince bush growing on the side of a major highway, bathed in car fumes, mulched with Big Mac boxes, cigarette butts, empty beer bottles, and the occasional shoe or panty. Under those less than ideal conditions, it’s been blooming for the last 30 years. I know because I have been driving by it for three decades, and every year it brightens the highway with its pretty pink blooms. It even survived an overpass installation. The Japanese quince is a keeper those seeking that allusive maintenance free garden! The plants bloom in the red, pink, white, orange, and all the colors in between. The best part is they provide a bit of color just when you need something to shake off those end of winter “I hate the world” blues.
The truth be told, I hate orange flowers. When I see an orange flower, it makes me want to spray Round Up. It’s a spontaneous reaction that comes from deep within. I would like to start a campaign to eradicate all orange flowers, perhaps an action committee. Hate orange flowers. Sadly, many of the commonly available
Japanese quinces produce a disgusting orange flower. And, if you have only ever seen the vile nasty orange variety, you may think you hate Japanese quinces. But, forget about that hateful orange variety. Dig deeper and you will discover this soldier of a plant has varieties in the most beautiful shades of red and pink. My personal favorite is Toyo Nishihi which produces the most magnificent white and pink flowers all on the same branch. If you are looking for an excellent, “NOT ORANGE” Japanese quince variety, I would suggest you visit www.raintreenursery.com. Raintree Nursery has a fab collection Japanese quinces and you are bound to find one that strikes your fancy.
Anyhow, following the lovely flowers comes a load edible, but rarely eaten, quinces. Some varieties produce a quince the size of a golf ball, others, a fruit the size of an apple. One of the reasons I adore the variety Toyo Nishiki is because it produces a mammoth apple sized fruit, and in great numbers. The quince bush produces its fruit without the aid of fertilizer, insecticide, or thinning. Just leave that bad boy alone and come early fall you will be rewarded with a basket full of fruit. Some of the fruits are small, some are big, but all are incredibly fragrant and delicious. Even the ugly orange flowering varieties produce useful fruit! (Which is hard for me to say, considering how I feel about orange flowers.) But, its true.
Let’s talk about this fruit. As I sit, enveloped in the luscious scent pumped out by my bowel of quinces, I am once again shocked by the fact most Americans don’t know the fruit is edible, let alone really, really worth eating. This is largely due to the fact the plant was introduced to Americans as an ornamental flower producer and not as a source of food.
It is also due to another practical reality. The fruit is hard as a rock. You could not bite into a Japanese quince if you had a pit bulls jaw and teeth. So, even if the smell lured you into giving it a bite, most would quickly be put off by the breaking of the front teeth. And, that’s the thing about the Japanese quince. It’s not edible until you cook it. I know that is a dirty word in many American homes, but, sometimes taking the time to cook is worth it. If you want to know the deliciousness of the Japanese quince, you will have to cook it.
The plant is called Japanese quince so we might travel to Japan to learn a little more about it. The Japanese call this fruit Karin. They grow three types of Japanese quince, and that list would include Chaenomeles japonica, Chaenomeles speciosum, and Chaenomeles sinica. The first two are indigenous to Japan, the third is indigenous to China and was introduced to Japan in ancient times. The Japanese quince is commercially cultivated mostly in the northeast and middle districts of Japan and the resulting fruit is used it to produce popular medicine, food, and booze.
Japanese Quince as Medicine
In Japan, this quince finds its way into several forms of medicine for several maladies. In some cases, the ripe fruits are harvested in autumn, dried in the sun, and used in teas. Sometimes, the fruit is cooked in honey, and a richly medicinal and delicious syrup results. Lastly, the fruits are soaked in strong alcohol to create an medicinal liquor.
Our rock hard fruit has three primary medicinal uses. The first is as a anti-inflammatory in joint and muscle problems; the second is to treat and cure seasonal respiratory illness; the third is as a general tonic to stimulate health or recovery from illness. The famous Japanese illustrated encyclopedia ‘Wakansansaizue’ published three hundred years ago mentions using Japanese quince to treat coughs and phlegm. The recipe suggests the juice of Japanese quince and the root of ginger be made into a paste and sweetened with sugar. This ancient cough remedy is still made and used in Japan today. Pleasantly, contemporary research has confirmed many of these traditional uses. Organic acids ( malic acid, citric acid), Saponins (2%), Tannins, Flavones, Volatile oils, and Triterpenes, contained in the fruit, are largely responsible for the fruits action on the body. Here is a sampling of traditional uses of the Japanese quince.
Cough and cold Cure
Triterpenes and sterols found in Japanese quince inhibit Streptococcus pyogenes, the bug that causes strep throat and the more dangerous follow on, rheumatic fever. In addition, it has a proven anti-inflammatory effect which reduces the swelling and tenderness associated with a sore throat, and the swollen shut airways associated with a common cold and influenza. The fruit was also found to inhibit bacteria caused sore throats on another level. Quince tannins inhibited hyaluronidase, an enzyme produced by bacteria that causes painful swelling in the throat and nasal passages.
Immune stimulant
In an experiment with mice, Japanese quince was found to stimulate immune function, even when the mice were given immune system destroying chemotherapy drugs.
Joint Pain
Joint and muscle pain, anyone? Well, Japanese quince has been shown to reduce inflammation and this explains why it’s a traditional Japanese cure for joint pain and arthritis. One study showed that a tea of Japanese quince decreased swelling in artificially induced arthritis in mice! Ok, it might be mice proof, but, it backs up a long held traditional use of the fruit.
Another study found that Japanese quince had a potent anti-inflammatory effect and it occurred on cellular level. The research found that quince polyphenols(tannins) inhibited histamine release from mast cells…the cells at the root of much joint inflammation.
A third study with laboratory animals revealed that syrup made with 10% alcohol was the most effective at reducing joint pain. The researchers concluded Japanese quince s use in rheumatoid arthritis, prosopalgia, and hepatitis, all three inflammatory conditions, was justified.
In Rheumatoid Arthritis, long term joint inflammation causes joint damage. Two additional groups of researchers found that Japanese quince could be used to reduce this long term inflammation and in turn, reduce the joint damage that occurs over time.
Inflammation
If inflammation is a problem, Japanese quince may be the solution. There are two types of inflammation, temporary and chronic. Temporary inflammation would be like that associated with a cough or cold, a sun burn, or over exertion caused sore muscles. Examples of chronic inflammation would be things like rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis, and eczema. In both types of inflammation, tradition and research supports the use of Japanese quince.
Diarrhea Cure
In traditional Chinese medicine, Japanese quince is used to treat bacteria caused diarrhea. Researchers found that the modest little fruit was active against E. Coli caused diarrhea, and three compounds found in the fruit were at least partly responsible. (Oleanolic acid, ursolic acid, and betulinic acid.)
New Parkinson Medication?
Japanese quince is traditionally used a wide variety of nervous disorders, including migraine, depression, and chronic pain. Researchers found that it had an effect, on a cellular level, on the big mother of nervous disorders, Parkinson’s Disease. Who knows, there may be a new and useful Parkinson medication locked in the Japanese quince.
Health Booster
In traditional Chinese and Japanese medicine, it is considered a tonic, a medicine which stimulates strength, vigor in health. Most importantly, it is thought to increase the bodies’ own capacity to heal itself. This traditional use in China and Japan is something the scientific community is beginning to prove. The conventional wisdom on this one is that if you are feeling run down, or are recovering from an illness, a boost from the quince may be exactly what you need.
As a medicine, quince syrup is probably the best way to go. Use the syrup that results from canning the quinces for a sore throat, a sore joint, or any other form of inflammation. Especially if it is as a result of a cough or a cold. Lastly, the Japanese say it is good to stimulate general health, so, if you are feeling run down, you may want to add Japanese quince syrup to your health regimen. The recommended amount, for medicinal uses, is a tablespoon of the syrup, three or four times a day.
Japanese Quince As A Food
Now that we know we should be eating those odd little fruits the question becomes how? As I said earlier, this is not a fruit you pick and eat. It has to be cooked. The good news is that the process could not be easier.
Here is what I do. I pick the fruit in the fall, when it begins to turn yellow and put off its characteristic fragrance. Just get down on the ground and smell your quinces. When they smell, it’s time to pick them.
Once picked, I wash the fruit. Next, I fill canning jars with the fruit. I then fill the jars with honey. (If you prefer, any heavy sugar syrup of your liking will work.) Then, I put canning lids on the jars, and put the jars in a pot with a tight fitting lid. Then, I add water to the pot so the jars are half covered with water, pop on the lid and turn the heat to high. Once the water starts boiling, reduce the heat to medium, and let the water boil for half an hour. Keep the lid on the pot. Once the half hour is up, turn off the heat. When the pot cools completely (usually four or five hours later), I remove the jars and wipe them off. Presto magic…canned quinces in heavy syrup.
If you want to do something simpler, try this. Put the quinces in a pot large enough to hold your load of quinces and cover with honey. Bring the honey quince combo to a slow boil, and cook covered for half an hour. Stir occasionally so the quinces don’t stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. After half an hour of cooking, turn the heat off. Once the pot has cooled, put the quinces and the syrup in an airtight jar and store in the refrigerator. They will hold in the fridge for about two weeks. You can freeze the remaining syrup to keep on hand for its many applications.
Canned quinces will last for years, and, to have an interesting desert, just pop the lid of the jar! You can serve the quinces in a bowl with a touch of cream, or dump them and some syrup on top of a nice scoop of ice cream.
Whether you can the quinces, or make a fresh pot of stewed quinces, you will have a load of delectable syrup. This syrup can be added to seltzer water or just regular tap water to create a sweet and healthy beverage. You can also add it to hot tea for a warming beverage. It can be used on pancakes instead of the usual maple syrup, and, can be used in recipes that call for corn syrup.
If you are really detail oriented, and what more complete canning instructions, you can use any recipe for canning pears in heavy syrup. In this case, just substitute the pears for your crop of Japanese quinces.
Japanese Quince as a Booze
The Japanese love to mix quinces, sugar, and alcohol to make a liquor that is well loved. It is a combination that goes over big in its homeland so it is probably worth a try! And, it could not be easier to make. Take your quinces and cut them in quarters. Fill a quart mason jar to the top with the quartered quinces. Add half a cup of honey or sugar to the quinces, fill the jar with vodka of any variety, and screw on the lid. Let the vodka infuse for three or four months, and, you will end up with a tasty, fruity vodka that is really good for you. Perhaps try making Quince-tini’s. For a more official process, check out this website. http://kyotofoodie.com/karinshu-japanese-quince-liqueur/
Wrapping it all Up
So, who knew that the fruit hanging off your flowering quince vine had so many possible uses? Probably not many. If you have a flowering quince, start using the fruit. If you don’t have one, this is a really great addition to the garden. And, even if you don’t have a Japanese quince bush, chances are one of your neighbors does, and, would not mind donating the fruit they produce! Just don’t tell them how useful they are.
Sadly, apart from growing your own, you have limited opportunities to sample this tasty pleasure. They are not grown commercially in this country and cannot be had fresh at the market. But, if you are lucky enough to have an Asian market near you, with a Japanese food section, you might find karin syrup. You will have to ask for it as the packaging may be in Japanese!
- Easy to Grow
- Produces beautiful flowers in the early spring
- Produces heaps of delicious fruits without pesticides or dangerous sprays
- Produces delicious canned fruit
- Acts as a powerful vitality stimulant
- Acts as a powerful anti-inflammatory in joint conditions
- Acts as a sore throat cure with anti-strep throat activity
Featured Article – Common Name: Muscadine Grapes | Scientific Name: Vitis Rotundifolia
October 24, 2010
Muscadines in the pot and ready to be cooked down for juice.
Muscadines cooking in the pot.
Cooked muscadines in the food mill….the mill will remove the hulls and seeds and deposit the juice in the pot.
Chunky Muscadine juice ready to drink.
The first time I ran into Muscadine grapes, I was visiting Fayetteville, North Carolina, and it was an accidental run in. I had heard about them from friends who grew up in the south, but never had the pleasure of sampling one myself. When I say accidental run in, I mean accidental run in. I was travelling the wilds of North Carolina in search of the delicacy known as the “pig ear biscuit” and ended with the discovery the coolest grape on the planet.
A little explanation. My very old friend Lynn Baucom and I met in DC when we were 19. Though we met in DC, much of our friendship has taken place on foreign soils. This is due to the fact we have both lived overseas much of our adult lives. I mostly lived in London and Lynn would visit me there. On his visitations, he would tell me hysterical stories about his little town in North Carolina. Broadway, the place of his birth and escape. The stories included tales of a local specialty….the “pig ear biscuit”. My feeling was that any town that made a sandwich out of what most considered a dog’s chew toy, was the kind of American city I had to visit. As neither of us lived in America, it took a long time for the stars to collide and for this important field trip to occur. But, the opportunity to visit Broadway North Carolina and verify the tale of the “pig ear biscuit” did eventually happen. In 2007, and we journeyed from DC to the fabled Broadway, NC. We opted to stay in the nearby metropolis known as Fayetteville, NC.
True to his word, the whole experience was quite remarkable. Broadway lived up to its reputation. At more than one moment, I had to remind myself that I was still in America, not my America, but America. There was lots of good barbecue and lots of people smoking cigarettes. Sadly, no “pig ear biscuits” could be found.
I still blame Lynn for this. He should of known they were out of season.
But, the trip was not a total loss. I got up early one morning and was looking at the plants surrounding the Fayetteville holiday Inn Express. There I spied an interesting vine overtaking the fence securing the grounds of the hotel. Me being me, I took a closer look and discovered it was a huge wild muscadine grape vine, and, as total luck would have it, it was loaded with ripe fruit. And I mean loaded with sweet, tough skinned, blacker than black, grapes. I did what any sensible plant freak would do. I retrieved the plastic bag in the ice bucket in my hotel room and set to picking. Well, by the time Lynn dragged his sluggish butt out of bed, I had at least 10 pounds of sweet black muscadines in my plastic ice bucket liner.
It was a bit of a bitter sweet trip, no “pig ear biscuit” but I had encountered a really cool new plant, the muscadine! Even better, I had enough “muscadines” to make jelly and enough seed to start my muscadine vine.
I really wanted to add muscadines to my plant collection because…..the mother vine was living on a fence, in a holiday Inn Express parking lot, next to a highway and producing buckets of fruit. That’s not a low care grape, that’s a no care grape. I spent an hour and picked 10 pounds of delicious fruit, and what I harvested was a fraction of what was hanging on a huge grapes vine. Dream Plant. You do nothing and reap huge rewards for all your non-efforts. Oh yes, I was going to plant some of those seeds.
So, once back in DC, I carefully pulled the seeds out of the biggest grapes and planted them in my green house. Within weeks, I had lovely baby muscadine vines crawling out of their pots.
With the other 9.90 pounds of muscadine grapes, I made a batch of some of the blackest, most fragrant, grape jelly I had ever made or tasted. And, that’s the thing about muscadine grapes. They are packed with flavor and specifically a super strong grape taste. The grape taste survives cooking and stays strong in jam, jelly, juice, or wine. I gave my best food connosseur friends samples of my wild muscadine jelly and each and everyone was blown away by its incredible flavor. This jelly was electric in taste….unlike the dead tasting commercial grape jellies made with stale grapes and cheap beet sugar. This jelly packed such a flavor punch it about knocked your front teeth out.
Now, here comes the sadness. My seedlings never made it to adulthood. I had this idiot working for me and, for reasons that I will never understand, he decided the baby grape vines looked like weeds and pulled them out. Bye- bye muscadines dreams. After the senseless murder, I hatched plans to go back to Fayetteville the next summer, re-collect the seed, and start over. A long trip to collect some seeds, but, having seen that mother plant, it seemed worth the sacrifice.
Then it occurred to me, there might be an easier way. A little search on the internet resulted in me meeting one of my favorite mail order nursery suppliers, Jason Willis of Willis Orchards. (www.willisorchards.com) He had quite the collection of muscadines to choose from and Jason sent me 30 vines. I planted them in what has become my muscadine vineyard. Well, it was supposed to be a grape arbor, but 30 vines required four arbors, 100 foot long, and that is more of a vineyard than anything else. So, two years on, I have an endless supply or muscadines to make jelly and juice, though I mostly make juice.
The moral of the story is that when you go looking for a “pig ear biscuit” you never know what you will find.
Natural History of the Muscadine Grape
As for the plant and grape in general, there is much to know. To begin with, muscadines are grapes native to North America. It’s one of three really edible North American grapes, a list that includes Vitis labrusca(the concord grape), Vitis aestivalis(the Norton grape), and the muscadine grape( Vitis rotundifolia.) Muscadines scientific name, Vitis rotundifolia, means round leaf grape, and, indeed it does have a round leaf. This grape is most comfortable in the south, and, makes its home from Washington, DC. to southern Florida and west to Texas. It likes to live in locations that are hot, humid, and sunny.
The key WORD here is NATIVE grape, it did not come from Europe. Being a native plant, over millions of years, it developed resistance to American bugs and diseases…..pests that take a European grape to meet its maker. It developed resistance to these threats to well being a long time ago and just laughs them off. It produces its crop with little or no intervention on the part of the grower. The European grape, on the other hand, only survives here with lots of fungicide, pesticide, and more. Because the muscadine does not need chemical intervention to do its thing, it’s both earth and people friendly.
This is one productive grape. One acre of muscadines will produce between 8-18 tons of grapes! And, like I said, without the help of insecticides or fungicides. And these grapes can be sweet. They contain as much as 16-20% sugar which makes them more or less a sugar cube passing as a grape.
Any who, this grape is a different than the European grapes you see at the supermarket. First of all, they do not grow in bunches. They produce their marble sized grapes in groups of one, two, or three at a time. For this reason, they are sometimes called non-bunching grapes. And, though you get a volume of grapes, you don’t get them in that big fat bunch you are accustomed to seeing at the market. You have to pick them one at a time, or a few at a time.
The difference does not stop there. Muscadines are different than the other native American grapes and indeed European grapes on a very fundamental level. All other grapes have 38 chromosomes, whereas the muscadine has 40 chromosomes. Modern science has revealed that the muscadine, though somewhat related to grapes, are kind of a mutant grape.
Human history
Free food never goes unnoticed. Ancient man noticed plants that provided free food, and used the hell out of them. Muscadines are one of those foods ancient people noticed and used to survive. Long before the White Man barged onto the North American continent, Native Americans were collecting muscadines and using them for a variety of purposes. Indeed, Native people that had access to them derived a significant portion of their calories from muscadines. Apparently they were used fresh to make juice and dried into raisins for later use. Historical records tell us that the Native Americans made some kind of sweet corn and muscadine dumpling with them that was supposed to be delicious. Too bad the Indians got wiped out and the recipe got lost along with them.
Here is something I can’t resist mentioning. A lot of books talk about the muscadine being “discovered” in the 16th century when the White Man invaded Native American soils. Think again. They were discovered a long before that and it was not by the European invaders.
Anyhow, after we wiped out most of the Southeastern tribes, the white man started picking the muscadine grape. Much like me in the parking lot, European colonials noticed the free food hanging off this wild plant, and began using the grapes to make juice, jelly, and wine. The first record of European use of muscadines comes from the 16th century, and that involved the Spanish making wine with it.
The muscadine was a big hit with both the Spanish colonials and the English colonials that followed. Again, it was all about free food in a time when producing food was a lot of work. Anyhow, as we moved into the modern age, plantsmen saw the potential of the muscadine, and began developing new varieties. Today there are over 300 different varieties available to the gardener. In the wild, one finds bronze and black muscadines, but, now they come in green, bronze, red, and black. If you live south of the Mason Dixon line, this is the grape for you. And, you have lots of varieties to choose from.
Plant breeders may have come up with a hoard of new varieties, but, the incredible flavor remains intact in all of them. The muscadine, regardless of variety, offers the cook a rich, intense grape flavored grape, which makes for knock your socks off juice, jelly, and wine.
But, as it turns out, it is also a food really worth eating. Contemporary science has studied the grape and its contents and have found that it is incredibly healthy. It comes packing loads of compounds which have more than one healthy side effect!
Indeed, researchers Diane Hartle, Phillip Greenspan, and James Hargrove wrote a whole book about the medicinal applications of the muscadine, entitled “Muscadine Medicine”. It is a really remarkable book and if you are interested in how healthy this grape is, order up a copy. You can order it from www.naturespearlproducts.com. To summarize their exhaustive work, the muscadine fights heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, digestive diseases, and contributes to a long lifespan. Wow. And tasty too.
Here is my own list of interesting health attributes.
Survive our toxic food
They way we produce food, meat and produce, is so unnatural, we now have shockingly unnatural and unhealthy food arriving at the Grocery store. Wave after wave of infected, meat, eggs, and produce have found their way to our supermarkets and there is no end in sight. When eggs, one of the most natural foods, arrive to you filled with infection, you know there is a problem. It’s all pretty depressing. But, the good news is that there is something you can do. Have a glass of muscadine juice with each meal. Drinking muscadine juice or wine, or smearing some muscadine jelly on your bread, with meals, may help protect you and your loved ones from death by food. Here is some evidence to this effect.
Two studies found that Red muscadine juice killed Cronobacter sakasakii, a lethal bacteria found in baby food and formula. The good news was that this effect increases with heating the grapes in processing, so, cooking muscadines to make juice or jelly does not hinder this activity. In addition, Red muscadine juice was found to have a strong anti-E.coli activity. Two killers knocked out with a tasty glass of muscadine juice.
Here is the study I found really interesting. Factory farm chickens, fed ground muscadines, had an increased resistance to two lethal digestive infections, often found in chicken factories(coccidiosis and necrotic enteritis). This big news. These birds are kept in horrific living conditions and are bombarded with crap. Literally bombarded. As such, when a digestive disease hits the chicken factory farm, the chickens only survive with massive doses of antibiotics. Muscadines raising these birds resistance to digestive disease, in their crap filled world, is nothing short of a miracle. And, if could do that for the chickens, it might be able to help us survive crap filled food.
Skip Looking Older than Dirt
Anti-oxidants reduce the damage free radicals do to our bodies, and, a diet rich in anti-oxidants may reduce your chance of a heart attack and or ending up looking older than dirt. Four studies revealed that Muscadine grapes are incredibly high in free radical neutralizers, or, as they are more commonly known, anti-oxidants. In fact 88 compounds with anti-oxidant activity were found in muscadines. Though filled with anti-oxidants, ellagic acid is one of the most powerful. Slow the clock with a muscadine.
Anti-inflammatory
One of the parts of getting older that really sucks is all the aches and pains that come with a used body. Creeping out of bed in the morning becomes a procedure rather than a mindless activity. Well, regular muscadine consumption might help. Muscadines have been proven to have anti-inflammatory effect in mice with artificially induced skin irritation. It was also found to have in vitro(In the test tube) and in vivo(in living animals) anti-inflammatory effect on joint and muscle inflammation.
Anti-Cancer Activity
Anti-oxidants have a natural anti-cancer activity. They prevent damage to cells that lead to cancer. But, there is more anticancer activity here than that. Researchers revealed that Red muscadine juice caused colon cancer cells to self destruct, and concluded that muscadines’ had anticancer properties.
Drunk Alert!
Of the many downsides associated with being a drunk is bad health. A study with mice revealed that muscadine wine contains chemicals that offset the damage alcohol does to the body. Specifically, the loss of immune function due to alcohol consumption. Whereas alcohol depresses immune function, compounds found in muscadines stimulate immune function. The good in the wine counteracted the bad. If you like to get drunk, this may be a healthier option.
Getting Your Muscadine On
If you live south of the Mason Dixon Line, you can get your muscadines the way I get mine. Plant a vine and just sit back and do nothing. If you are interested in growing some muscadines, I suggest you contact my friend Jason Willis at (www. willisorchards.com). He has lots of different types and will be happy to mail you as many plants as you like. I suggest you keep the number low. Learn from my mistake. It does not take many muscadine vines to have a boat load of grapes.
If you live in the south, you may be able to buy fresh muscadines at the supermarket. I have even seen them for sale at my conventional grocery store and at my local whole foods supermarket. They become available in August. Check with your produce manager and find out when and if they carry them, and put it in your calender!
If you live north of the Mason Dixon Line, you may not have access to fresh muscadines. You may have to purchase your muscadine products on line, which I seriously recommend. Ebay often has people selling various muscadine juices and jams. There are some really great folks making great homemade muscadine products selling on ebay, so give that a whirl.
That said, there is a fabulous company that makes all kinds of muscadine products, and, I have sampled their juice and its absolutely the best. The juice costs about five dollars a bottle, delivered, but, it is worth every penny. You cannot put a price tag on health or flavor and you get both with their out of this world juice. GET SOME. They can be found at www.naturespearlproducts.com. They UPS the juice by the case, and, it’s worth the wait. You will never go back to conventional grocery store juice again.
Now, if you want to sample muscadine wine, there are several organizations that can help you find a winery. There is the North Carolina Muscadine Association (http://www.ncmuscadine.org) and the North Carolina Wine Growers Association(http://www.ncwinegrowers.com). Both can direct you to vineyards that specialize in muscadine wine. I don’t drink so I cannot attest to whether its tasty or not, but, I hear it is very good. Considering its health benefits, even if it tastes like pond water, its worth drinking. But, like I said, its meant to be very tasty.
Making Your Own
I like to make grape juice with my muscadines, as it’s a really healthy alternative to the commercially made beverages. The process requires muscadines, a food mill, and some mason jars. First, I put the muscadines in a pot. For every 5 cups of grapes, I add one cup of water. I then turn the heat on medium and begin stirring. These grapes have a high sugar content and are inclined to stick to the bottom of the pot and burn, so, keep stirring the pot. When the grapes have more or less fallen apart, turn off the heat. When the cooked grapes have cooled to room temperature, place in food mill and mill out the seeds and skins. When you finish milling you will have a bowl of really great chunky grape juice. You can thin it out with water to your preferred consistency. I think it comes out of the food mill plenty sweet, but, if you like your juice really sweet, hit with a little honey.
The traditional way to make a more transparent grape juice is to put the cooked grapes in a cheese cloth and strain out the juice. If you want to make this type of juice, you can forget about the cheese cloth concept. Cheese cloth sold today is for polishing silver not juice making. I use panty hose to filter my juice. A clean pair that is and not mine! All you do is pour the cool cooked grapes into the foot of a pair of panty hose, and hang the “bag” that results over a pot. The clear juice will drip out into the pan. Once again, add sugar to your particular juice tastes.
Both types of juice, chunky and clear, can be canned. Go to Mason Jar.com to get guidance as to how to can your juice.
In Conclusion
When I think about muscadines, two things come to mind. The first is that it is a grape that really tastes like a grape. It tastes really grapey and everything made from it packs a serious grape taste, be that juice, jelly, or jam. The second is this. This grape is native to North America, likes to grow here, and does so with no chemical help. Its native. Consuming muscadine products is better for the earth, and, because they lack pesticide, growth hormone, and fungicide residue, they are better for you. On top of that, muscadine juice, and products made from muscadine juice, offer you all kinds of health benefits. Ok, it might be a tiny bit inconvenient to order your supply of muscadine juice, but, go the extra mile. You’ll love the taste and being doing some thing good for you and for the planet and for you.
Posted in Features | Leave a commentFeatured Article: Prickly Pear
September 6, 2010
Prepare with a Pear?
(Opuntia ficus-indica)
Ever eaten a prickly pear cactus? Maybe not. However, you have probably seen them at the grocery store. From coast to coast, produce sections stock the cactus fruit, mainly for their Latin shoppers. If you haven’t noticed them, look for them on your next produce aisle stroll. And, for reasons you will discover, they are worth looking for.
Though this cactus fruit may be something new to you, me and the prickly pear go way back. My relationship with this particular cactus started whilst I was writing a book on the healing plants written about in the Bible. The book involved field research and I stupidly scheduled a trip to Israel in the mid summer. I learned the hard way, you don’t want to be out and about in the mid-summer desert! Call it “dry heat” if you must, hot is hot and it was making me want to puke. The heat was so bad it was making it really hard to get any work done. At a point a local person tipped me off to a desert survival secret. Get some prickly pear cactus fruit, eat it, and you will be better able to bear the punishing desert environment. There was a little Palestinian women who sold the fruit at the local market, I got some, ate them, and did better in the sun. After that, I got in the habit of munching the sweetish fruits before heading into the heat.
Now, the Israeli landscape is dotted with stands of prickly pear cactus and they are truly breath taking plants. The Israelis call them Sabras, a term also used for Jewish people born in Israel prior to the creation of the Jewish State. Anyhow, when you are walking around the desert, you find the prickly pear plant.
So, while working on my book, sweating like a pig in the desert, I came onto a lovely stand of prickly pear cacti covered with red ripe fruits. To beautiful to pass up, I helped myself to a hat full. Now, in my life as a botanist, “finds” such as these often turn out to be not so much of a find. And this was certainly the case here.
You see, I didn’t know was that the pears I had been buying at the market had been fleeced of microscopic glass like spines… and that the ones I had just picked had not. Half an hour later I was in sheer agony. What’s worse than being in the desert heat? Being there covered with microscopic cactus spines. I felt like I had rolled naked in a bed of glass shards. Ouch. And it took months for all the spines to work their way out of my pelt. I was in so much pain I wanted someone to shoot me dead. One of my most unpleasant experiences to date, the prickly pear cactus was forever etched in my mind and ass.
And actually, I wouldn’t want to forget it. It’s a fascinating plant with a curious past and a bright future. The prickly pear lives in the harshest environments known and still manages to flourish. It takes sand, heat, and killing sun and uses the three to produce nutritious pads and a delicious sweet fruit. The pads and the fruit both have a myriad of uses. In fact, wherever it grows, people adore it.
Let’s start with some basic botany. Though I encountered it in Israel, it is not native to that part of the world. It is native to the southwestern United States down through much of Mexico. It was spread to the hot and dry parts of the world during the colonial age.
On its home turf, the plant was really important to ancient Native American cultures. Aztec legend has it that Aztec civilization started at the foot of Prickly pear cactus stand. The story goes that a group of Aztec men saw an Eagle perched in a Prickly Pair cactus with a snake in its beak. The eagle had overcome the snake. They took this as an Omen that they too would overcome their adversaries and in reverence for the vision, they built their capital on the site of the vision. The Mexican word for Prickly pear, Nopal, comes from the Aztec word nocheznopalli. There are 30 different Prickly pear species(3) many of which were and are used by Native American cultures for food and medicine.
As the Spanish conquistadors moved into Mexico, they learned of the cactus from the Native people. In the colonial age, the cactus continued to play a pivotal role in day to day life. Spanish colonials used the cactus pads in tasty salads and the fruits were made into sweet cakes, syrups, jams, and candies. (1)
The Spanish colonists also became acquainted with the many medicinal uses for the Prickly Pear. Both the pads and the fruits were used to treat a variety of complaints involving inflammation. Different kinds of inflammation, but inflammation none the less. Traditional uses include inflammatory skin diseases, eye inflammation, intestinal tract inflammation (dysentery), urinary tract inflammation (gonorrhea) burns, and joint/muscle inflammation. (2,5) The most consistent use for the prickly pear, across a collection of Native America and colonial cultures was as a treatment for swollen muscles, joints, and bones. This includes chronic complaints (arthritis, fiber myalgia) and traumatic injuries (tears, strains, and breaks.) (5)
As you may know, America snatched a big chunk of Mexico (California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona from Spain) and this led to the cowboy age in the southwestern part of North America. In this transition of control, prickly pear went from Spanish mission cure to cowboy medicine. Life on the range was active and often resulted in nasty injuries. The part of the western, left out of the western, was that cowboys often fell off their horse and either got run over by the horse or dragged a few miles before being run over by the horse. You can imagine that being dragged through acres of thorny cacti would result in a cowboy that did not look like the Marlboro man.
Anyhow, when an injury occurred, cowboys collected the omnipresent prickly pear cactus and applied it to the affected part or parts. Once applied, the cactus sped healing and rapidly got the man back on his horse. Injury, worn out joints, festering wounds, (3) broken bones and general soreness were all treated with the pear. (5)
Straight out of a western, here is a real life cowboys account of prickly pear’s ability to heal injuries. “During the night, half asleep, I felt something crawlin’ on my face, and in strikin out to drive it away, I mashed a big tarantula just at the outside corner of my right eye. Didn’t think the thing had time to nip me, but his juice ran down my face, and I guess some it got into my eye. Well, sir, in the morning, there was a knot as big as a turkeys egg over my right eye, closing it tight. Then I was scared. Told the boys to hold the herd and burnt the earth getting back to Uvalde. Well, sir, the prickly pear done the trick. Next day, the knob over my eye was half gone. Another poultice of the same kind cleaned it out good and the lance cuts healed up quick. Since then the boys have used prickly pear poultices on themselves and their horses for festering wounds from tears of mesquite thorns and nigger heads they get while hunting beeves in the chaparral.” (3) Though most cowboys have moved onto greener pastures, throughout Mexico prickly pear is still used to remedy joint and muscle complaints.
In recent days the scientific community has validated these traditional uses of the pear. As an example, a prickly pear extract was found to be powerfully anti-inflammatory. In tests with rats, the extract inhibited experimentally induced joint inflammation. Researchers found that this anti-inflammatory effect was at least partly due to a potent inhibition of white blood cell migration into sites of inflammation and the suppression of white blood cell release of inflammation causing compounds. (9) A prickly pear extract was found to inhibit chronic joint inflammation in a study using mice (7) and to significantly increase wound healing in rats. (8)
So it seems the Aztecs, the Spanish missionaries, and the cowboys alike were smart to use various parts of the prickly pear to cure both chronic joint problems and out on the range accidents. However, a French research scientist, Gilles Gutierrez, believes that prickly pear is much more than a remedy for arthritic joints and thrown out backs. He feels it is the ideal supplement for anyone leading an active life.
At his institute in Malta, Gutierrez established that professional athletes were able to go longer and harder while using a prickly pear extract. Even more importantly, they recovered from strenuous exercise more rapidly when taking the pear.
According to Gutierrez, the key to this action is prickly pears ability to stimulate the production of the bodies’ natural restorative compounds. During stressful exercise the body produces compounds known as heat shock proteins. These compounds help the body heal itself after a work out. The researcher has established that the body synthesizes more heat shock proteins when dosed with his prickly pear extract. (10) His conclusion? To power up a workout and speed recovery from that work out, take regular doses of prickly pear extract.
As our population ages, anti-aging remedies are becoming increasingly important. Here too the pear may make a unique contribution. One of the sad realities of getting older is that we heal less rapidly. When you put your back out at 50 it stays out a lot longer than it did when you were 20. Research indicates that as we age we produce fewer heat shock proteins. Fewer heat shock proteins means slower recovery from exercise or injury. Prickly pear, with its ability to increase heat shock protein production, may put the very thing we need to put the spring back in our step.
Intrigued by these new uses for the pear, I decided to run a little clinical trial on Gutierrez’s prickly pear extract. I gave the extract to a number of non-professional aging athletes who had complained about not having the same recuperative power they once had. My test subjects included a doctor, a management agent, a lawyer, and myself. Our findings? All parties found that after using the extract, we had more energy for a work out and recovered more rapidly from said work out. You know, less soreness, muscle fatigue, weekend quarterback paralysis, etc.
This really brings the story full circle. When I first ran into prickly pear, it was suggested as a tool to increase resistance to strain, in that case, resistance to the heat of the desert summer.
In the world of herbal medicine, plants that increase your general strength and well being are called resistogens. They help the body resist stress. It could be the stress of too much heat, or, the stress of over exertion, mental or physical. The moral of the story is that prickly pear stimulates health and who doesn’t need a touch of that.
The best news is that prickly pear fruits and pads are available in most grocery stores in America. If you don’t find them there, you will certainly find them at the Latin markets that have popped up around the country. The big question becomes this. What to do with them?
As for the fruit, I suggest making a lovely punch. Take10 prickly pear fruits, mash them with a potato masher until really well squished. Add the juice of four lemons to the mash. Then, add two cups of raw pure sugar to the mix. Then, add one gallon of water the mix. Stir thoroughly, strain, and pop in the refrigerator.
The other alternative is to buy the prickly pear pads and use them in salads. Buy the fresh pads and peel them. Drop them in boiling water and blanch thoroughly. Then, cut the pads in strips. Cover the strips with your favorite vinaigrette and let marinate overnight. Then, serve just as a salad.
To really get the medicinal benefits of the prickly pear, probably the best way to go is to buy prickly pear juice. This makes it easy and convenient. Good news. Natalie McGee, of Arizona Cactus Ranch, has been making a 100% pure juice and pulp prickly pear nectar for the last 21 years, and is still making this wonderful juice available today. Run, don’t walk to the phone to get a bottle of her amazing nectar. The phone is 800-582-9903 and her website is WWW.ArizonaCactusRanch.com.
References
1. Pesman, Walter. Meet Flora Mexicana. Dale S. King publishing. Arizona. 1962. Page 20-22.
2. Magana y Jorda .Plantas Medicinales. Arbol editorial. Mexico. 1981. P.142.
3. Curtin, LSM. Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande Rydal Press. Sante Fe. P133-136
4. Ford, Karen. Las Yerbas de la Gente, A Study of Hispano-American medicine Plants. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1975. P.246.
5. Morton, Julia. Atlas of Medicinal Plants of Middle America. Bahamas to Yucatan. Charles C Thomas, Sprinfield. P. 607.
6. Lee et al. Effect of Opuntia ficus-indica var.saboten on gastric damages in rats. Arch Pharm Res 2002 Feb; 25(1):67-70.
7. Park EH et al. Anti-inflammatory principle from cactus. Fitoterapia 2001 March; 72(3):288-90.
8 . Park EH et al. Wound healing activity of Opuntia ficus-indica. Fiterapia 2001 Feb; 72(2):165-7
9 . Park EH et al. Studies on the pharmacological action of cactus: identification of its anti-inflammatory effect. Arch Pharm Res 1998 Feb; 21(1):30-4.
1 0 . Company provided clinical trials.
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