History of Herbs :: America
Land of Unkown Promise
Native Americans looked to the fruits of the earth to heal and prevent disease, just as ancient cultures in other parts of
the world had done. The land area Native Americans inhabited is quite vast, cultures developed according to their location
and in each tribe, healers became familiar with the local flora and fauna. By Native American, this author does not refer
to only indigenous cultures that inhabited the United States of America, but to cultures that inhabited the North American
continent. Population estimates place the number of people inhabiting this area at 1 million prior to the coming of the
Europeans. Only 512 years have passed since Columbus started the great wave of new settlers, but foreign disease, prejudice,
war, and cultural assimilation have taken their toll on both indigenous population and culture.
Prior to 1492, Native American culture thrived for an estimated 35,000 years. Tribes such as the Anasazi of the American southwest and the Olmec of Central America had risen to prominence and fallen into history. New cultures rose in their place and it was the Aztecs and remnants of the Maya that first encountered the conquistador Cortez. Europeans had already settled on the islands in the Caribbean and had begun to explore the continent. Cortez brought with him more than a thirst for gold and herbs; he brought small pox. This horrific disease was completely unknown in the Americas, in fact, only 38 total illnesses were spoken of by healers. Small pox spread quickly and wiped out thousands of indigenous people. Priests and healers were mystified by the disease and were told that the only thing that could be done was to pray. Hungry for wealth, land and freedom from oppression in the Old World, settlers flooded into the New World. Native cultures were forced to assimilate, work as slaves, or move further away from the newcomers.
For thousands of years, Native American medicine men and women had studied the herbs, plants, trees, flowers and roots provided to them by nature. They had discovered that black berry roots could be used as an astringent, cranberries treated blood and liver disorders and dandelion root aided digestion. Sugar was prepared from milkweed root and yucca leaves and Quillaja bark provided soap and shampoo. First hand accounts written by the new residents testify to the healthy, robust and strong health of the people they encountered and archeological evidence bears this out. From their technical studies, archeologists have found little evidence of bone disease, arthritis, cavities, tuberculosis, heart conditions, or terminal cancer. North American Indians enjoyed a life expectancy of 100 years, far longer than their European counterparts did.
For Native Americans, ceremony and ritual was an integral component of healing. Medicine men worked to heal the spirit body as well as the physical body and to bring the two into harmony. Dancing, chanting, prayers and journeys to the spirit world were used in conjunction with practical techniques. Stifling moist heat sweated toxins out of the body in sweat lodges, fractured bones were set in splints and poultices for sprains and cuts were pounded fine from roots. Cocaine and Novocain, in its natural form and dosages from the coca plant acted as painkillers. It should be noted that the amount of active constituents were not sufficient to cause dependency, our modern cocaine is far more concentrated and addicting.
Apprenticeships to become a tribal shaman began early and typically because of a life threatening event or illness that had been survived, a vision, or an omen of devotion, ability or wisdom. These wise men were to be entrusted with the oral history of their people, prayers, songs and legends in addition to being able to identify plants, their properties and uses. They learned these herbal preparations not only to treat illness, but to prevent it also. Among their herbal remedies are found preventatives such as tonics to strengthen the stomach restore vitality and ease the nerves. By way of native healers, European settlers discovered the healing qualities of black cohosh, echinacea, goldenseal, sarsaparilla, slippery elm and witch hazel.
For the most part, early American doctors followed the European medical model. Bloodletting was a common treatment, George Washington was bled four pints causing his death, and prescription regularly contained mercury and other toxic substances. Through benefit of location, colonial doctors had access to Native American herbal knowledge. The most well known exchange is the use of yellow cedar bark to prevent scurvy, which plagued European navies, after Jacques Cartier was served a tea of bark by Indians. Healers with regular contact with indigenous tribes were much more likely to tout native medicines than city dwelling, educated medical professionals were.
Among colonialists, kitchen gardens sprung up, filled with herbs for both cooking and healing. Pungent fumes of basil, lavender, rosemary, sage and tarragon wafted from drying bunches hung in colonial kitchens. Southern plantations houses set aside plots near the kitchen house for herbs that grew into beautiful gardens, both practical and suitable for and afternoon promenade. At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson cultivated 26 different herbs in his 1,000 square foot kitchen garden. Herbs were prized as both desirable imports and profitable exports. Black pepper and Chinese tea flowed in as ships laden with tobacco, cotton and ginseng sailed out. Ginseng was so prized a commodity that by the 1770s, harvesters had wiped out the supply east of the Appalachian Mountains. Settlers pushed west into West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee in search of more.
Samuel Thomson, born in 1760 in New Hampshire colony was the leading herbalist of his day. He termed himself a doctor, though he had completely only one month of schooling and lacked formal training, however he had apprenticed under an Indian healer and a midwife. He grew to detest the medical establishment that had declared his daughter incurable; he later cured her with herbs and steam treatments. Thomson’s personality was outspoken and idealistic; he treated all classes of people and advocated his own brand of medicine, which is now termed physio-medicalism. Opposition to his practices was great in the colonies, but in England, his system was adopted by herbalist A.I. Coffin and Samuel Wescott Tilke.
In 1809, Thomson was arrested and charged with murder after a patient died due to an overdose of lobelia, which induces vomiting. Acquitted of charges, Thomson turned his attention to business matters; he went on to obtain a patent for Thomson’s Improved System of Botanic Practice of Medicine. The patent allowed him to sell his remedies nationwide while retaining ownership of the recipe, these medicines later became known as “patent medicines” marketed by many different individuals, some were quality products and some were nothing more than morphine. Later, Thomson created Friendly Botanic Societies that purchased the formulas from him and distributed them in their areas. He released The New Guide to Health, or the Botanic Family Physician in 1822 and his doctrine spread into the Ohio River Valley. Thomson’s most well known American adherent was Dr. John Kellogg, founder of Kellogg Cereal Company, a therapeutic spa and the inventor of corn flakes.
America’s first herbal was actually written by a German, Dr. Johann David Schopf who had accompanied Hessian soldiers to the colonies and stayed after the war to write Materia Medica Americana. Constantine Rafinesque, a professor of botany who had studied with Native Americans in the Mississippi Valley, wrote Medical Flora in 1828 and coined the label ‘eclectic’, which was later adopted by scientific herbalists, for his style of medicine.
In America in the 1820’s, a movement began to return medicine to its herbal roots. These Eclectics, as they became known, practiced a blend of Asian, European, Indian, and slave herbalism. They established the first medical school in the country to accept women, the Eclectic Medical Institute, in Cincinnati, Ohio, though they later changed their minds and stopped accepting women in 1877. Students at the school took a controlled, scientific approach to the study of herbs. They analyzed chemical makeup and extracted active constituents; results of their studies were published in scientific journals. The late 1800s were the height of Eclectic medicines popularity, after the turn of the century, pharmaceutical drugs were promoted as being safe and Eclecticism almost died out.
A second school of medical thought became prominent in the 1800s – homeopathy. Created by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, homeopathy combined traditional herbalism, scientific study and contemporary medical thought. Homeopathy’s most famous declaration is the law of similars, which states, “that which causes, cures”. In the 1830s, homeopathy was introduced to the United States from Europe, where it already enjoyed a substantial following. It found its proponents in the States too, writer Mark Twain and business mogul John D. Rockefeller among them. With the transition to pharmaceuticals in the early 20th century, much of the horror of medical treatments was removed, so there was less reason to seek out alternatives. The movement did have a strong following, strong enough for the American Medical Association to declare that any physician caught practicing homeopathy would have his membership in the AMA revoked.
In Europe, homeopathy continues to be popular with many doctors prescribing homeopathic medicine in their practices. It is also enjoying a new popularity in the US and around the world as people look for more natural and less costly treatments.
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