Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.Echinacea
Antibiotic and Immune System Stimulant
Family: Compositae; (includes Daisy, Dandelion, Marigold)
Genus and Species: Echinacea Angustifolia, E. Purpurea
Also known as: Purple Coneflower
Parts used: Roots
Echinacea is the best-kept secret among native American healing herbs. Few other plants are so potentially beneficial as immune-boosting infection fighters. Yet, like
the prophet ignored in his native land, no healing herb has been dismissed as thoroughly by this country’s orthodox medical authorities. Echinacea (pronounced en-kin-AY-sna) was once quite popular here, but since the 1930s its many benefits have been enjoyed almost entirely by Europeans. Fortunately, the situation is changing as echinacea regains its former-and well-deserved-prominence on this side of the Atlantic.
The Original “Snake Oil”
Echinacea was the Plains Indians’ primary medicine. They applied root poultices to all manner of wounds, insect bites and stings, and snakebites. They used echinacea mouthwash for painful teeth and gums and drank echinacea tea to treat colds, smallpox, measles, mumps, and arthritis.
Plains settlers adopted the plant, but it remained a folk remedy until 1870, when a patent-medicine purveyor, Dr. H. C. F Meyer of Pawnee City, Nebraska, used it in his Meyer’s Blood Purifier. He promoted the remedy as “an absolute cure” for rattlesnake bite, blood poisoning, and a host of other ills. Claims like Dr. Meyer’s gave patent medicines the name “snake oil.”
But Dr. Meyer truly believed echinacea could cure rattlesnake bite, and he set out to prove it. In 1885, he sent a sample to John Uri Lloyd, professor at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati, cofounder (with his brothers) of Lloyd Brothers Pharmacists, and later president of the American Pharmaceutical Association. Lloyd identified the plant as echinacea. But after one look at Dr. Meyer’s label with its claim of “absolute cure” for rattlesnake bite, Lloyd dismissed Dr. Meyer as a crackpot.
Dr. Meyer wrote back insisting echinacea was a cure for rattlesnake bite. He was so confident, he offered to bring a live rattlesnake to Cincinnati and let it bite him in Lloyd’s presence to demonstrate his Blood Purifier’s effectiveness. Lloyd declined the offer.
Undaunted, Dr. Meyer shipped some echinacea to Lloyd’s Eclectic colleague, John King, who had mentioned the plant’s Indian uses in the first edition of his Eclectic text, King’s American Dispensatory. King tested the herb, and after successfully using it to treat bee stings, chronic nasal congestion, leg ulcers, and infant cholera, he extolled the plant and included it in subsequent editions of his Dispensatory.
In Every Medicine Cabinet
Eventually, John Uri Lloyd accepted echinacea, declaring it useful in treating wounds, venomous bites and stings, blood poisoning (septicemia), diphtheria, meningitis, measles, chicken pox, malaria, scarlet fever, influenza, syphilis, and gangrene.
Lloyd’s enthusiasm was not simply academic. His family business, Lloyd Brothers Pharmacists, developed several echinacea products, which enjoyed tremendous popularity nationally as infection treatments from the 1890s well into the 1920s. During the early 20th century it was a rare home medicine cabinet that didn’t contain tincture of echinacea. (The Lloyd brothers founded the Lloyd Library in Cincinnati. Today the library houses one of the world’s largest collections of botanical information).
Eclectics Versus the “Regulars”
Unfortunately, echinacea became a casualty of the war between orthodox physicians (known prior to World War I as “regulars”) and the alternative Eclectic physicians. Each side was hostile to the medicines touted by the other. In 1909 the following appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association: “Echinacea … has failed to sustain the reputation given it by its enthusiasts … [who] make use of early unverified reports to endow their nostrums with remarkable therapeutic properties.”
By the 1930s, as antibiotics became available, echinacea’s popularity waned. It was listed in the National Formulary, the pharmacists’ reference, from 1916 until 1950, but from the 1940s on, it was largely forgotten-that is, until the herbal revival of the I970s.
Contemporary herbalists are as enthusiastic about echinacea as the Eclectics were They tout it as a botanical antibiotic and immune system stimulant for boils, colds and flu, bladder infections, tonsillitis, and other infectious diseases. Many recommend taking the herb daily as a tonic, infection preventive, and immune-system enhancer.