Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.Black Cohosh also known as Squawroot, Snake Root
The Indians Were Right
Family: Ranunculaceae; (includes Buttercup, Larkspur, Peony)
Genus and Species: Cimicifuga Racemosa or Macrotys actaeoides
Also known as: Squawroot, Snake Root
Parts used: Rhizome and Root
One of the 19th century’s most popular patent medicines was Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, introduced in 1876 to treat “female weakness” - that is, menstrual cramps. Pinkham’s Compound contained several herbs, and chief among them was black cohosh, long known among the Algonquian Indians as a treatment for gynecological complaints.
Pinkham’s product also contained an enormous amount of alcohol. During the 1 9th century, respectable ladies did not drink liquor. Many drank Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound instead. A reformulated Vegetable Compound is still available today-minus most of the alcohol and, ironically, without any black cohosh, the ingredient that may have had the greatest effect on menstrual pain.
Medicine for Indian Women
This herb was named black because of its dark medicinal roots. Cohosh is Algonquian for “rough:’ another reference to its roots.
The Indians boiled black cohosh’s gnarled roots in water arid drank the decoction for fatigue, sore throat, arthritis, and rattlesnake bite-hence one popular name for this herb, “snakeroot.” But black cohosh was used primarily by Indian women for gynecological problems and childbirth.
wild black cohosh grew most profusely in the Ohio River Valley, which was fitting because the herb was championed by 19th~century Eclectic physicians, whose medical school was in Cincinnati on the banks of the Ohio. The Eclectics recommended black cohosh for fever, rashes, insomnia, malaria, yellow fever, and all “hysterical” (gynecological) ailments. The Eclectic medical text, King’s American Dispensatory, stated: “In dysmenorrhea [menstrual cramps], it is of greatest utility, being surpassed by no other drug”.
Non-Eclectic (”regular”) physicians remained unimpressed, but Lydia Pinkham sided with the Eclectics and included it in her Vegetable Compound.
Many Modern Uses
Black cohosh does not grow in China, but Chinese physicians use several related plants to treat headache, measles, diarrhea, bleeding gums, and some gynecological problems.
Homeopaths recommend microdoses of black cohosh for menstrual problems and childbirth.
Contemporary herbalists prescribe it to relieve spasms, as a diuretic to treat water retention, as an expectorant to help clear mucus from the respiratory system, and as an astringent, sedative, and menstruation promoter. Several modern herbals, in fact, call it “one of our best” menstruation promoters.