Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.Cascara Sagrada
World’s Most Popular Laxative
Family: Rhamnaceae; (includes Buckthorn)
Genus and Species: Rhamnus Purshiana
Also known as: Cascara, sacred bark, chittem bark
Parts used: Dried, aged bark
The 16th-century Spanish explorers who first visited northern California had a problem-constipation. The local Indians had the solution-a tea made from a healing herb they held sacred. The herb worked, and the Spanish named it Cascara Sagrada, “sacred bark.” It has been the answer to millions of prayers ever since.
Wonder of the New World
The Spanish recognized Cascara Sagrada as a relative of buckthorn, the powerful laxative herb used in Europe since ancient times. But Cascara Sagrada was much gentler. The explorers sent some back to Spain, where its comparatively mild action was hailed as a wonder of the New World.
But the Spanish explorers were more interested in finding gold than in spreading laxatives around the newly discovered continent. For a long time Cascara Sagrada remained a West Coast folk remedy, known as “chittem bark,” a polite variant of the Gold Rush ‘4gers’ name, “sh-tin’ bark.”
In 1877, a Detroit Eclectic physician extolled cascara’s mildness in a home medical guide, prompting Parke, Davis & Co., the pharmaceutical firm, to market a commercial preparation. Cascara Sagrada has been one of the world’s most popular herbal medicines ever since.
Cascara Sagrada entered the U.S. Pharmacopoeia in 1890 and remains there to this day.
In Appalachian folk medicine, Cascara Sagrada has also been used to treat cancer. It was an ingredient in the popular but highly controversial-Hoxsey Cancer Formula, an alternative therapy marketed from the I930s to the I950s by ex-coal miner Harry Hoxsey.