Herbs & Herbal Remedies @ Green Papaya

All-American Fever Treatment

Family: Myricaceae; (includes Myrtle)

Genus and Species: Myrica Cerifera

Also known as: Wax myrtle, Candleberry, Tallow Shrub

Parts Used: Root bark

The early American colonists found the bayberry tree growing throughout the East. but they used it to make fragrant candles rather than medicines. Initially bayberry was used medicinally only in the South, where the Choctaw Indians boiled the leaves and drank the decoction as a treatment for fever. Later, Louisiana settlers adopted the plant and drank bayberry wax in hot water “as a certain cure for the most violent cases of dysentery,” according to a medical account from 1722.

Second Only to Hot Pepper

During the early 19th century, bayberry was popularized by Samuel A. Thomson, a New England herbalist and creator of the first patent medicines. He touted it as second only to red pepper for producing “heat” within the body. Thomson recommended bayberry for colds, flu, and other infectious diseases in addition to diarrhea and fever.

Thomson’s herbalism lost popularity after the Civil War, replaced by the more scientific Eclectic physicians, who prescribed the astringent herb topically for bleeding gums and internally for diarrhea, dysentery, sore throat, scarlet fever, menstrual difficulties, and even typhoid.

Although bayberry has since waned in popularity, some contemporary herbalists recommend using the herb externally for varicose veins and internally for diarrhea, dysentery, colds, flu, bleeding gums, and sore throat. One modern herbal calls it “one of the most useful herbs in botanical medicine” and goes so far as to advocate treating uterine bleeding by packing the vagina with cotton soaked in bayberry tea. (Do not do this. See a physician for unusual uterine bleeding.)