Eclectics and Native Medicine

In the early 1800s, distrust in the established medical order was at an all-time high. This was the so-called “Age of the Common Man,” an era marked by a fierce anti-intellectualism, or a rejection of anything perceived as emerging from an intellectual class. Doctors were no exception to this widespread mistrust of the intellectual class—a mistrust that arguably was well-deserved. The medicine of the age, which was based on the ancient Humoral Theory of Disease, resulted in many patients becoming sicker than they were before receiving treatment. According to Appalachian historian Luke Manget, at the time, disease was believed to be caused by imbalances in the four “humors” of blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Physicians believed they could treat illness by restoring balance to these humors through such practices as “bloodletting, puking, purging, cupping and sweating.”¹ Physicians, most of whom were trained in Europe, were also known to prescribe heavy metals such as mercury and arsenic. The few botanical medicines they prescribed, such as quinine and calamus, were imported from Europe or other European colonies.² While the “Age of the Common Man” certainly played a role in the shift away from accepted medical practices at the time, so did the spike in nationalism that occurred in the years following the American Revolution. Many Americans were chagrined they still relied on England so heavily for their medicines. This nationalism made Americans want to prove that the New World had all the plant medicine one could need. Not only all the plant medicine that one could need, but also plant medicine that was better than what the British could get. This led to a movement where people were encouraged to embrace natural solutions rather than what was perceived as artificial was also on the rise at the same time.³

A new system was needed, something that citizens of The United States could believe in. Many rose to the task by offering plant-based medicine as an alternate solution. This movement eventually became known as the Eclectic movement, with the previous science and material-based system termed Allopathic. During this movement, eclectics built many medical colleges and trained physicians in this new art of treatment.⁴ The general public enthusiastically embraced this new form of medicine, so much so that even allopathic doctors were forced to deal with botanicals.⁵

In order to fully understand the history of eclectic medicine and forest botanicals, we must first understand and acknowledge where this knowledge came from. This is a necessary but frequently painstaking task because many of the Eclectics’ medical botany books only cite who they refer to as “Indian doctors” or “a tribe of Indians.” These sources, the ones that gesture toward Indigenous origins for “An Indian Doctor,” show that even books that acknowledged Indigenous knowledge completely homogenized native peoples and did not mention tribes or individual names. For example J.H. Smith discusses a multitude of plants and their medicinal properties in his 1842 book, A Guide to Health; Being a Compendium of Medical Instruction Upon Botanic Principles. One plant he discusses is the partridge berry (Mitchella repens), also called squaw vine, winter clover, or one berry, which is reportedly indispensable for pregnant women to ease the birthing process. Smith gathered this information from, “a Tribe of Indians on the west part of New York.”⁶ The tribe Smith refers to here is likely The Seneca Nation, a group of Iroquoian-speaking peoples who live to the south of Lake Ontario.

This essay examines three botanicals that were used for medicinal purposes and written about by the Eclectics with knowledge that was appropriated from Indigenous peoples. The Eclectic movement in the United States was rooted in Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge that was refined over thousands of years. Their knowledge, which was localized, spiritual, and empirical, formed the true foundations of botanical medicine in the Americas, even as white Eclectics obscured its sources.

Bloodroot / Puccoon

Sanguinaria canadensis

Sanguinaria canadensis, commonly referred to as bloodroot or puccoon, was considered to be an important plant for medical treatment. In the few historical medical botany books that use the name puccoon, none identified the specific Indigenous language from which the name came, and only William Barton, who wrote Volumes 1 and 2 of Vegetable Materia Medica of the United States or Medical Botany in 1825, noted that the name had a Native American origin. Although Barton brought Indigenous people into the conversation when he discussed the common name of bloodroot, he did not mention any Indigenous medicinal uses of the plant. In fact, he did not identify a specific tribe or nation when he explained briefly that Native Americans would utilize bloodroot’s red-orange root for painting their faces, weapons, baskets, and even sometimes clothes.

In these texts, the most useful part of the plant is stated to be the root. According to Barton, the most common use of bloodroot for medicinal purposes was in making a decoction which could be used as an emetic, which is a substance which induces vomiting.⁸ In discussing its emetic properties, Barton uses several other studies from other white American doctors to demonstrate the plant's usefulness in treating cynanche maligna, or a severe sore throat.⁹ Barton noted that he did not find it efficient in treating jaundice, which was a common use for the plant at the time, and it was even the main ingredient in Rawson’s Bitters, which he referred to as a “quack medicine.”¹⁰ Instead, Barton wrote that it acted more as a prophylactic, or a medicine that is used to prevent disease. Although he did not mention any Indigenous peoples when he wrote about bloodroot’s medicinal uses, Indigenous knowledge exists within every part of his text.

Skunk Cabbage

Symplocarpus foetidus

The first of these botanicals, bloodroot, reveals how Indigenous naming and practice were stripped of specificity even as they were absorbed into Eclectic medicine. Bloodroot was not the only plant with this kind of history.

As one might expect, skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), also known as skunkweed, polecat cabbage, meadow weed, and skoka, which is the uncredited Native American term for it, possesses a pungent odor.¹¹ Skunk cabbage is mentioned in two dominant eclectic medicine books, A. B. Strong’s The American Flora or History of Plants and Wildflowers, Vol. 3, published in 1855, and William P. C. Barton’s Vegetable Materia Medica of the United States or Medical Botany, Vol. 1, which was published in 1825. These two books mention skunk cabbage as an antispasmodic, meaning it relieves muscle spasms, and acts as an expectorant, meaning it induces heavy coughing to clear mucus from the airway. For the eclectics, these treatments were usually administered through powder or syrup made either from the root or seeds of the skunk cabbage. The plant’s leaves could also be used to treat wounds. Its leaves, once flattened by a rolling pin, were wrapped around ulcers, recent wounds, some forms of herpes, blisters, and other skin conditions. According to eclectics, this helped stimulate discharge so that the skin could heal quicker.

Barton and Strong also both pointed towards successful usage for relieving coughing cases like tuberculosis and whooping cough. It was also found to be useful for easing the pain from asthma attacks. This is the only knowledge that Barton credits to Native Americans, though he does not specify a specific group or geographic region.¹² Although Strong also mentions the medicinal uses of skunk cabbage in the treatment of whooping cough, his book, which was published thirty years after Barton’s, makes no reference of the Native American origins for that knowledge. Despite his omission, there are many Indigenous groups that may have influenced these eclectics.

Goldenseal / Yellow Puccoon / Yellow Eyeroot

Hydrastis canadensis

Much like with bloodroot and skunk cabbage, Indigenous groups also had a long history with goldenseal that was co-opted by the Eclectic movement. Unlike those plants, however, one Eclectic medicine book, the Medical flora, or, Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America, Vol. 1, by C. Rafinesque, mentioned the Cherokee specifically when Rafinesque discussed the use of goldenseal in the treatment of cancer. Despite this more specific mention, Rafinesque went on to say, “Some Indians employ it as a diuretic, stimulant and escharotic, using the powder for blistering, and the infusion for the Dropsy.”¹³ Despite one nod toward the Cherokee Nation, Rafinesque, like many other Eclectics, still blurred the contributions of Indigenous Peoples by homogenizing their contributions through vague phrases like, “Some Indians.”

According to the Eclectics, goldenseal (hydrastis canadensis) is best used medicinally when the dried root is used to create an infusion, which is just placing the botanical into water and boiling it. Rafinesque gestured toward the Cherokee and other unnamed Indigenous groups when he detailed the many uses of goldenseal. Goldenseal infusions work well for washing sore or inflamed eyes and could be used topically for other local inflammations, like sore legs or dropsy, which is swelling under the skin. It was less common, but a powdered version of goldenseal was also sometimes used for blisters. Internal digestion of the infusion was used for dealing with dyspepsia, liver disorders, as a diuretic, as an escharotic, and as a cure for cancers. The only treatment that could not be connected to any Indigenous groups was Eclectics’ use of goldenseal as a laxative.

Conclusion

This essay examines the Eclectic uses of Bloodroot, Skunk Cabbage, and Goldenseal in order to better understand simultaneously the erasure of Indigenous knowledge and the undeniable importance of Indigenous knowledge on medicine. It also shows how Indigenous healing practices were, indeed, distinct from Western medicine. It is important to note, here, that it was not only the plants themselves that the Eclectics borrowed but entire systems of knowing. Indigenous healing traditions approached plants as relatives with spirit, agency, and responsibility, while Eclectic practitioners reframed them as pharmacological resources to be catalogued and commodified. For further reading about the traditional Cherokee approach to medicinal plants, please look to books like Cherokee Plants and Their Uses: A 400 Year History by Paul B. Hamel and Mary Chiltoskey, published in 1987.

References

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1. Luke Manget, Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia, University Press of Kentucky, 2022, 68, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv280b8gj.Back to top.
2. Luke Manget, Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia, University Press of Kentucky, 2022, 68, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv280b8gj.Back to top.
3. Luke Manget, Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia, University Press of Kentucky, 2022, 72, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv280b8gj.Back to top.
4. Luke Manget, Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia, University Press of Kentucky, 2022, 73, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv280b8gj.Back to top.
5. Hollembaek, Henry, The American Eclectic Materia Medica, Hollembaek, 1865, 15.Back to top.
6. Smith, J.H., A Guide to Health; Being a Compendium of Medical Instruction Upon Botanic Principles, 1842.Back to top.
7. Barton, William P. C., Vegetable Materia Medica of the United States or Medical Botany, Vol. 1. H. C. Carey & J. Lea, 1825, 39.Back to top.
8. Barton, William P. C., Vegetable Materia Medica of the United States or Medical Botany, Vol. 1. H. C. Carey & J. Lea, 1825, 39-40.Back to top.
9. Barton, William P. C., Vegetable Materia Medica of the United States or Medical Botany, Vol. 1. H. C. Carey & J. Lea, 1825, 38.Back to top.
10. Barton, William P. C., Vegetable Materia Medica of the United States or Medical Botany, Vol. 1. H. C. Carey & J. Lea, 1825, 38.Back to top.
11. Rafinesque, C. S., Medical Flora; or, Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America, Vol. 1, Atkinson & Alexander, 1828, p. 254.Back to top.