Chapter Six: Maine
North America, USA – Travels and Adventures through the Amazing World of Medicinal Plants
By Geoff D’Arcy, Lic. Ac. DOM.
Every year, for many years, my family and I go camping to a deserted Island off the rugged, rock strewn Maine coast, in the northeast of North America. We meet up with other Herbalists, Naturopaths, Healers, Medical Doctors and like-minded friends for a nature-herbal Camp for Adults.
Maine is the most northeastern state, sharing its northern border with Canada. It is an extremely large area of sparsely populated land in which many go to canoe, camp, fish, hike, hunt, or simply like us enjoy the plants in spectacular beauty of the forested mountains or the rockbound coast. It is still, to this day, primarily wilderness, untamed and not dominated by man. The topography is diverse: the western mountains rise to elevations over 3,000 feet, while the eastern coast is renowned for its islands, bays, and forested peninsulas. This abrupt change in elevation provides numerous lakes and ponds as well as rivers and streams. These water-ways have an abundance of warm and cold water fish. The coastal waters offer sailing and sea kayaking. There is a wealth of wildlife found in the remote spruce forests. The land is filled with small game, bobcats, coyote, deer, wild turkey, and sea ducks. The southern region is closest to the centers of population, whereas up north it is sparsely populated, with few paved roads and permeated with the feel of the wild.
Swan’s Island is an Island about an hour away from Bass Harbor in the northeast of Maine, reachable only by ferryboat. We come most years to do a “Herb Camp.” We hire a 120-acre property with its own rock and pebble-strewn beach and private cove, with one wooden hut as our base kitchen. The toilet is a trench-dug out-house; the shower is a water bag hanging from a tree. At dusk, there are mosquitoes in abundance. It is curious to me that at home in our house, our daughters will panic about a lone mosquito or a spider, and yet with all of the spartan, outdoor quality of these accommodations, here the profusion of bugs become forgotten in half a day. My daughters without doubt will tell you that this is their favorite vacation, and they enjoy it more than any fancy hotel!! Why is that? I believe that they have formed a deep bond with nature here. I can see it in their quiet moments, such as when they make their way to breakfast through the heavy misted Maine morning and arrive with their faces streaked blue, filled-up with wild blueberries picked on route. Ambling through a meadow foraging for wild greens for our dinner salad or sitting around the campfire by the pale luminescence of a full moon night, with the waves lapping at high tide only a few feet from us -- in these still, magical moments, when a calm slowly descends, like a comforting blanket on the soul – this is when children spontaneously and unconsciously bond with nature. Swan’s Island is a perfect place for a “Herb Camp.” My herbalist friend Rick started the camps many years ago, on this Island filled with “Wild Qi.” The only ‘tourist brochure’ I have seen for the Island says, “If you want restaurants, theatres, shopping malls and movies......then Swan’s Island is NOT for you!” That certainly sums it up -- the Island hide-away, only provides one restaurant, one general store, and that’s it! You are out in nature, without the distractions of modern life and if you do not enjoy this, do NOT come. Also if you do not bring with you what you need, yourself, from the main land, then it is not here. This is not the vacation most modern people seek out. This is a rugged lobster fishing community of 300 that swells a little more during the summer, and you barely find any tourists, just raw nature, raw ‘Wild Qi’. As with most “Wild Qi” places, if you are open to nature, she fills-you-up with rejuvenation, re-vitalization, and replenishment.
Herb Camp
The herb camp soon settles into its daily rhythm. In the morning we do ‘Qi Gong’ and stretching on the beach for 30 minutes, and then head off for a run or walk in silence through pristine pine and spruce bordered country lanes, breathing in crisp clear sea air. We arrive back also in silence for the morning bath in the frigid Atlantic ocean. It is absolutely freezing, even on the hottest day of the year, so needless to say it would be a short “bathing costume optional” swim. Often we do an “ocean-water-sinus-flush”, where you snort cold ocean water into your nostrils, it clears the sinus of old mucus and contracts any swollen mucus membrane, a useful cure for sinusitis and an aid for allergies. (It is also quite a shock and certainly takes your mind off the cold numbing water). After warming up in the morning sun of the beach, a vegan (non-dairy vegetarian diet) breakfast would be served and then afterwards we would study herbs, or wild-craft seaweeds at low tide. One of my ‘mind-opening’ moments regarding herbal medicine occurred on my first course on Swan’s island, when we sat down for the first day and studied ‘one square foot’ of the shoreline. I had packed hiking boots, and water fully prepared to go on long walks hunting Herbs! Yet he next day we studied an eco-system only 5 feet from the first day’s. By the end of a very full week we had moved 30 feet from where we had started, so rich were the medicinal plants and their eco-systems, it seemed a lifetime of study could be spent without moving one mile!
Some years we would have special guests visitors. One year the famous animal herbalist, 85 year-old Juliette de Bairacli-Levy, visited. We would listen to stories from her amazing life, lived like a gypsy: traveling, teaching, treating animals, and writing books. She had such a joi de vivre, and robust health it was a pleasure to be around her. What impressed me most was her mid-day swim daily in the brutally cold Northern Atlantic waters. Even at 85 years old she would make her way to the beach and stay in the waters for 20 to30 minutes. Every day after lunch, I would offer any one who so desired an acupuncture treatment. A floor of trodden grass would become my clinic, in our make-shift kitchen area. Ten to fifteen people lie down at once and receive a treatment. One of the best pictures I have of Swan’s Island is of my friend and his old dog, who both were suffering from arthritis, falling asleep, in the middle of their treatment, head-to-head both with a deep sense of relaxation on their face.
This camp of friends and healers would be a place of cross-fertilization of ideas, concepts and medical modalities. Our friend Harvey would give an after-lunch-siesta-lecture on his clinic’s non-invasive treatment of heart disease with meditation and low-fat vegan-diet. We would be stunned by his knowledge and stories of treating such chronic and acute heart disease and his medical innovation of introducing “integrative medicine” into a conventional hospital. The next day a local herbalist Rani would speak about her experience with growing the local Maine medicinal herbs on her farm and “herbal first aid.” We would make an oil of St. John’s Wort, collected earlier that morning. St. John’s Wort oil turns a wonderful color of purple after a few days infused in the sun. This oil is remarkable for nerve pain. One time when we were vacationing with my Mother and we were far from any herb stores, she developed acute sciatic pain down her leg. We simply collected St. John’s Wort and within a day the oil had turned color, leaching its active purple compound hypericin into the oil releasing its medicinal properties, after two days of rubbing this into her leg, the pain was gone, leaving her a true believer in “herbal first aid.” Some days I would give talks on different herbs from around the world or our friend and Naturopathic teacher Swevo, would talk about his gentle interventions with his patients and their lifestyles.
In the afternoon we would prepare finely ground oatmeal for ‘oatmeal packs’ on the beach. This is where oatmeal is rubbed into the skin, all over the body, and then you set the oatmeal by lying in the sun for 30 minutes until it hardens. You then scrub it off and replace it with gleaming nutritious olive oil, the perfect cure for all skin problems and produces an instantly glowing vibrant skin! (Well that’s the naturopathic theory, anyway.) We would all gather on the beach, clothing optional; we were told the property is so private and the Island so deserted, no one would ever bother us. A friend of mine who is a seaweed expert decided to do his own seaweed wrap. Much like in an expensive spas, he mused, he would step in to huge plastic bag of bladder wrack and kelp and lay there infusing the goodness of the minerals and skin nourishing compounds directly into his skin, while baking in the mid afternoon sun! So there we were 30 of us most without clothes, all looking like weird oatmeal cookies baking in the sun, and one laying in a huge black plastic bag with seaweed brimming out the top. We were all surprisingly quiet for such a strange scene. When suddenly my friend, in the huge plastic seaweed bag, starts swearing and screaming, by all accounts there are little crustations, tiny crab-like critters, that attach to the bladderwrack , and because of the heat generated inside the bag, left the seaweed and decided to bury themselves into my friend, looking for some protection. So he jumps up, and he starts ripping the bag off himself, strands of seaweed hanging from his Robinson Crusoe-like figure, with his long hair and beard and being flung everywhere, all while 30 oat meal cookies are looking on astonished. Just at that moment, around the point walk, two old ladies on their nature hike around Swan’s Islands rocky beaches. Well, if they were surprised they did not show it. They “brought off” this most embarrassing scene, by commenting to us on the “wonderful weather and the beautiful shore line” and “had we seen the beach around the point” and walking by 30 dumbfounded herbalists all with their mouth’s open in shock. I have always imagined that as soon as soon those older ladies were out of sight, they just fell about howling with laughter, at the scene they had just passed through!
One evening during our stay would usually coincide with the Swan’s Island music festival. This small festival would attract schooners over from the mainland, bringing with them the performers and folk musicians. These performers could be from any number of folk traditions on the Eastern seaboard and the show they would improvise together over the next few days would be stunning. On the evening of the performance, the Islanders and a few tourists would cram into the local ‘Odd Fellows Hall’ and sit there sweating in air-condition-less suspense. Then from the back of the hall, all the performers would burst in, singing old sailors’ sea shanties at the top of their voices, in unison, like a Sixteenth century crew hauling up an anchor, sending shivers up everyone’s spine. It was the most ‘wild Qi’ I’ve heard coming out of a group of performers.
Biophilia
“From Wakan Tanka, the great spirit, there came a great unifying force the flowed in and through all things- the flowers of the plains, blowing wind, rocks, trees, birds, animals-and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus were we kindred and were brought together by the same Great Mystery.”
– Luther Standing Bear, ‘Native American Wisdom’
Europeans are not the only band of ‘rag-tag settlers’ that have come to these shores, to use this place, in the same way as we have. There were many before us and many to come after us. Any of the four Maine native Indian tribes, the Maliseet, Micmac, Penobscot and Passamaquoddy, all known collectively as the Wabanaki, "People of the Dawn" would summer here every winter. It is hard to imagine a tribe of ancient Indians ‘Summering’. I had always imagined that the life of a ‘hunter gatherer’ would be hard subsistence living, involved constantly for survival. Apparently, according to my friend and esteemed herbalist Ryan Drum Ph.D., paleontologists believe that native Indians would come over from the mainland and would just ‘hang-out’, ‘summering’ with family and friends, much the same as we have, and just, sun-bathe, swim, do arts-and-crafts and the odd ‘herb walk’. From his description it sounded like a pretty good life. Why shouldn’t a ‘supposedly’ primitive people, be able to just ‘be’, and savor their daughters and sons just growing-up, appreciating the ‘being-ness’ with family and friends. In fact, to hear Ryan and his paleontologist daughter talk, these ‘hunter gatherers’ would have a respite just like us from their pressures of ‘Mainland life’ even having a truce with other bands of warring tribes, if they encountered their enemies on the Island. In fact, in general it seems the ‘hunter gathers’ worked far less than we do, to meet their survival needs, especially in the warmth and plenty of summer, and spend the rest of their time recreationally. They would canoe over from the mainland, instead of driving onto a ferryboat. They would erect primitive ‘teepee like’ shelters, we would erect our tents. They would bath in springs, we have thermal shower bags. They would cook over an open fire, fish for dinner, and so would we. They would collect wood and gather around a camp fire, on the beach, to tell stories of amazing life experiences they had, and watch the amazing August Pleiades show of shooting stars that would dazzle the northern skies, and so would we. There was evidence on this Island of ancient arrowheads, which leads to these conclusions of ‘vacationing hunter-gatherers’ from the main land, who knows how many hundreds or thousands of years before us. Modern man (and I include myself) all too often arrogantly holds the belief that we were the only people intelligent enough to have had vacations in this way. In actual fact, if we are so ‘intelligent,’ why we ‘supposedly’ intelligent modern industrialized people take more vacations? Both Japan and the US are pitifully nowhere near to taking the amount of vacation (average vacation in the US is two weeks a year) needed to rejuvenate, re-vitalize and replenish ourselves. Just check out the figures for chronic illness, stress related disease, or heart disease or cancers. In comparison, it is believed that indigenous peoples were a healthy group albeit plagued by snakebites and violent wounds. It is true that we are living much longer; yet, I worry about our quality of life and our lack of connection to nature, and how that reflects towards our health. Our modern-day society has lost the connecting and nourishing bond with nature -- with Gaia -- as a living nourishing being. With that loss comes a loss of healing energy to replenish and revitalize body, mind and spirit.
“Alienated from nature, human existence becomes a void, the wellspring of life and spiritual growth gone utterly dry. Man grows ever more ill and weary in the midst of his curious civilization that is but a struggle over a tiny bit of time and space.”
– Masanobu Fukuoka, The Natural Way of Farming
After just a week of living this way, it is always painful to come indoors, away connection and from the constant exposure to the open sky. Communities with a connection to nature usually have a few common elements to them, most indigenous cultures have a commonality among their ontologies, wherein the center of all things is rooted in spirit, and in which all substances are both unified by this common ground and arise out of this sacredness. Whether it is a Cherokee medicine man saying a prayer before picking a humble medicinal plant, or enduring a purifying sweat lodge before planting medicinal plant seeds, this sacredness underpinned many hunter-gatherer native American communities. There was also the common denominator that, as the “many things” are generated from the “one” – a unifying field or force -- then it is possible for man to be inter-connected with plants, animals, mountains, rivers and lakes. There was a unifying intelligence at the center of creation. Maybe this wasn’t an ‘adopted intellectual decision’ of what kind of world view to take-up; maybe rather it came from a deep unconscious connection to or an underlying ‘deep intuition’ that naturally bubbled up from the collective unconscious. Either way, the belief-systems of nearly all of the 300 or so natives tribes of North America and Mexico led them to perceive, from living in the elements of nature, a deep bond built from acknowledging continuity with nature, and finally into them forming part of the living being of Gaia herself.
To be connected, as life and plant communities are, to the bio-electromagnetic and bio-chemical messages or languages of the Earth, is to allow and make available to us, a possibility of deep and profound healing. Edward Wilson, who is Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, and many scientific awards, called this innate feeling of caring for living forms and systems of nature Biophilia.
“Other species are our kin. This statement is literally true in evolutionary time. All higher eukaryotic organisms, from flowering plants to insects and humanity itself, are thought to have descended from a single ancestral population that lived about 1.8 billion years ago. Single-celled eukaryotes and bacteria are linked by still remote ancestors. All this distant kinship is stamped by a common genetic code and elementary features of cell structure. Humanity did not soft-land into the teeming bioshere like an alien from another planet. We arose from other organisms already here.”
– Edward O. Wilson. ‘Biophilia and the conservation ethic’
“We are, by species history and genetic tendency, encoded for recognition of aliveness of the world and an emotional bonding with it.”
– Stephen Harrod Buhner, ‘The Lost Language of Plants’
Modern North American Herbal History
When European fur traders, soldiers, and missionaries first began to move into the western Great Lakes region around 1650, they found a group of Central Algonkian tribes.
These village-dwelling Indians, with each tribe averaging about 3,000 people, practiced some agriculture, yet hunting was the primary subsistence activity, and hunting and warfare the focal interests of tribal members. What was truly remarkable however – and much to the surprise of the Europeans -- was this strange phenomenon: the Central Algonkians seemed to carry out their society in the virtual absence of any sort of recognizable authority! Their herbal medicine appears to have been quite sophisticated. In diagnosing illness they took pulse, observed the eyes, tongue condition, felt for the body temperature, and would have asked after the nature and location of the pain. The healer would leave an offering of tobacco, (a sacred plant to most native Americans, and now the revenge of indigenous peoples on modern colonizing societies, by giving us its toxic progeny cigarettes!!) and a prayer to shed light on the on the disease at a shrine. The healer would then take a sleep-inducing herb and look for a dream, in which the herbalist’s guardian spirit would reveal the herbs needed. What I find most fascinating regarding these sophisticated herbalists is their use of formulas; they had combinations of herbs ranging from nine to twenty different herbs. They would partner some plants in their formulations, and if after lots of herbal teas in 4-8 days, the patient had not responded, then the formula they would be re-evaluated based on their dreamed insights, as well as their own system’s observations. Some tribes throughout North America would know of more medicinal plants than foods. Among the Cherokee Native Americans, their Doctors knew more than 230 diseases and over 600 formulations. They knew where and how to collect and prepare 150-200 different plants.
The newly arrived settlers had little in the way of medicine. Many of them learned directly from the Native Americans and their uses of local herbs. When their physicians came over, however, they depended on imported herbs from Europe and used many of the fashionable preparations of the time: mercury, bleedings, purgings and blisterings. During the American War of Independence (1776-1783) the Americans were forced by necessity to turn to local herbs as supplies from Europe became scarce and implied their dependence. Samuel Thompson (1769-1843) learned herbs from folk healers and personal experimentation. He became a root and herb doctor and challenged the American medical establishment. His theories were based on clinical observation.
The American continent is a rich source of plant species, with thousands of indigenous plants and many hundreds that have been imported and naturalised by the European immigrant populations who settled there. By the 17 and 18th century, the North Americans were set up for a rich transfer of information between Native American and European settlers, both sides were eager to exchange information of plants and preparations. Unlike the Amazon of today, where ethno-botanists are scrambling to study the healing legacies and herbal traditions of tribes and shamans before they are gone, North Americans have had centuries of botanical knowledge sharing. This fertile mingling of traditions in North America led to a more sophisticated system of herbalism than was available to the Europeans of the day.
Dr. Wooster Beech (1794-1868) was the chief proponent of the marriage of these two healing systems, and its main progeny was ‘Eclecticism.’ It was a new combination of conventional medicine, with its scientific approach of physiology and pathology, with the best of herbalism. Eclecticism peaked with 8,000 medical members around 1909. The steep decline mirrored the ascent of pharmaceutical funding for medical training. It would not be until another 70-80 years that herbal supplementation would be freed from the social, medical, economic and regulatory chains that had bound it. Today more than 48% of Americans are estimated to use dietary supplements and herbal medicines on a regular basis. Most of this usage is intelligent self-medication, for prevention and wellness, outside of the biomedical disease-care system.
Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa)
This famous herb is native to North American its a perennial herb, and can be found from southern Canada to the Appalachian Mountains and as far south as Georgia and Missouri. Black cohosh grows mostly on hillsides and open woods in moist rich soil. It has an ethereal bright, white, long plume of flowers from June to August. Contrasting it flowers, the rhizome of the root is rough and black, and ‘cohosh’ is a Native American word for ‘rough’ hence ‘Black Cohosh’. Long used by American women for menstrual and menopausal support. Often called squawroot or snakeroot, it was used by physicians at the turn of the century for painful menstruation, stimulation of menstruation, and the relief of menopausal problems. Black cohosh was adopted and used frequently by early settlers and herbal doctors, and in the 1840s by the Eclectic physicians, who used it for many symptoms, especially those associated with rheumatism and rheumatoid pain. I use this herb all the time in my practice, mainly in the areas of: Menopausal problems, PMS, Hot flashes, Inflammation and Rheumatoid arthritis. Black Cohosh contains Acetic-acid, Actein, Ascorbic-acid, Butyric-acid, Cimicifugin, Formononetin, Gallic-acid, Isoferulic-acid, Oleic-acid, Palmitic-acid, Salicylic-acid, and Tannic-acid. It is a good cardiac stimulant and has a sedative effect on the nervous system. Black cohosh influences the endocrine regulatory systems, with effects similar to one of the milder endogenous estrogens, estriol. For a short duration, it binds weakly with estrogen receptors and is thought to exert its effects on the vaginal lining. Research has also shown that the root has estrogenic activity and reduces levels of pituitary luteinizing hormone, thereby decreasing the ovaries production of progesterone. It also has use as a gentle uterine stimulant to prepare for labor, when taken three weeks before the due date. (It is often recommended by midwives.) Black cohosh is used today for menstrual pain and problems due to elevated progesterone levels and as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy or for problems that require its anti-inflammatory action (especially when related to menopause). It is also used for rheumatic conditions (clearing heat). With all the increasing problems with negative studies for Hormone Replacement Therapies H.R.T. for menopause, the interest in the use of black cohosh is growing phenomenally. It often can produce remarkable effects normalizing a whole range of difficult to treat menopausal problems. I usually suggest a menopausal formula with the ‘coldness’ of black cohosh balanced out first and then if the symptoms are better yet the hot flashes haven’t cooled down enough I will add to the menopausal formula the single black cohosh as well. My experience over the years have taught me to trust black cohosh and other herbs, without the usage and dangers of synthetic pharmaceutical H.R.T. Other symptoms to look towards black cohosh are: difficulty expectorating, dysmenorrhea, extreme menopausal heat, hot flashes, inflammation, menopausal depression, mood swings, rheumatoid arthritis, spasms, vaginal dryness, rheumatism. Currently, black cohosh has become one of the largest-selling herbal dietary supplement in the United States and is increasing. The German regulatory commission has a monograph for this herb and it is becoming very popular among German women and their doctors.
One of the many studies showed clear improvement of menopausal symptoms in over 80% of the patients within six to eight weeks, with relief of both physical and psychological symptoms. In 72% of the cases, physicians observed advantages of the black cohosh therapy in opposition to a preceding hormone treatment, due to a positive response not seen with HRT, or to the safety and tolerability of the black cohosh. The author concluded that black cohosh can be an alternative in the treatment of menopausal complaints, especially in those cases where treatment with estrogens or psychotropic agents is not indicated because of the risks and side effects.
American Ginseng Root, Panax quinquefolium
It moistens and nourishes the lungs and promotes immune function.
Long ago, ginseng was used by Native Americans and was considered to be an herb to nourish the weak and elderly. American ginseng is known in China as “Western seas herb”; it was exported to China in enormous quantities in the eighteenth century. How did an American herb become part of a traditional Chinese repertoire thousands of miles away? It was discovered by a Jesuit missionary, who had been working with the Caughnawage band of Mohawks, near Montreal in 1715. After he read an article by a fellow Jesuit working in China, asking had seen a similar herb growing in Canada. Well Pere Joseph Francois Lafitau had to look no further than outside his own cabin! Samples were sent to China where they were in need of a herb with its effects and energetics.
It filled a gap in Chinese herbology during a tuberculosis epidemic. The resulting trade brought both George Washington and Daniel Boone financial fortune and eventually led to such depletion that wild ginseng is now an endangered species in the American northeast. The Chinese still buy 95% of cultivated American ginseng, 2.3 million pounds from Marathon Valley in Wisconsin and 203,000 pounds of wild-crafted herb; total sales were $72 million in 1989. Chinese experience shows that American ginseng benefits energy, nourishes yin, nurtures the lungs, promotes the production of fluids and disperses heat. Often, Asian ginseng is too harsh and strong for the elderly, whereas American ginseng is a gentle, nourishing yin tonic. It also cools fevers, increases energy, and is used for coughs and wasting disease such as tuberculosis. It helps all coughs related to lung weakness. It has been demonstrated that it has a sedative effect on the brain while exciting the central nervous system, and is a cardio-vascular tonic.
It benefits energy, nourishes yin, nurtures the lungs, promotes the production of fluids and disperses heat. This ginseng is gentle and nourishing. It is traditionally used for: fatigue, cough, wheezing, dry cough, dry throat, inability to expectorate, low grade fever (especially in PM) and spontaneous night sweating.
Conclusion
Nature is the healer inside our bodies and by connecting to our external nature, healing is further potentated. Research has shown that the connection with nature heals. Weather it is a nature scene in a post surgical recovery room instead of a brick wall, healing time quickens, healing processes are influenced. The relaxation response induced by birds singing, or subtle fragrances of flowers piped in to the ventilation of a company has speeded production and lessen stress inside our body-minds. I am reminded of a friend of mine who visited New York City to celebrate his birthday, he came from a quiet village nestled in the countryside of the Cotswolds in England. Gerry was constantly pointing out sparse vegetation “Look up there! On the 40 floor a tree! “ we would lookup and sure enough on someone’s terrace garden, perched high above the concrete mass of the city there was a tree. The contrast was so sharp for him it was almost painful. He had cultivated biophilia in his life in the countryside. Being out of balance, or out of touch with nature is to lose Gaia’s subtle balancing rhythms, is to strip away balancing ‘relaxation response’ to which we have been encoded with and leave us the mercy of the stress responses. Connection to nature and the active cultivation biophilia, is it to open us energetically and biochemically, to greater healing in our industrial environments and stress filled lives.
Echinacea (Echinacea angustifolia and E. purpurea)
Echinacea has been used for centuries, maybe even millennia, for rattlesnake bite. Of course, these days it is enormously popular in Europe and the U.S. as an immune-boosting herb. Yet it is absolutely astonishing how for millennia the rattlesnake and echinacea came to live side-by-side on the prairies of North America.
This is one of the amazing and thrilling stories of nature’s (or Gaia’s) seeming master plan or intelligence. In the central plain of North America, from where Steven was bitten to south-western Saskatchewan, Southern Alberta and British Columbia along the Californian coastline into Mexico and eastward through the Dakotas, Nebraska and into Texas are the eight or so species of Western Rattlesnakes. We know from Steven just how poisonous and lethal their venom is. This pre-historic venom has a neurotoxin called crotoxin; it is a polypetide protein of two modest components, one acidic and the other, basic. These two components produce a synergy in action. They both have to be injected into the victim together to kill, going into Steven’s blood after the snake had bitten him caused great haemorrhage and sensory and motor depression followed by his collapse, shock and near death. Yet next door to each other, neighbours on the same prairie, lies the antidote, locked inside the chemistry of echinacea -- the chemistry of balance on the prairie. In the mesophyll compartments of the leaf tissue between the upper and lower epidermis of the pupurea, angusifolia and palida species of Echinacea is locked the life-saving ‘first aid’ and antidote to the rattle snake poison. This ‘kit’ is primed for rapid action. It is a glycoside-caked echinacoside. This glycoside is super water-soluble because it has a caffeic acid entity attached to it. This makes this medicine enter the blood stream with the speed of a life-saving bullet. In this first aid kit, together with echinacoside, are inulin, sucrose and betane, two isomers of 2 -methyltetradecadiens, echinacin (neotherculin, sanshool), and various resins and fatty acids. This arsenal ‘kicks–in’ the immune system, opens up the peripheral blood vessels, climbs into the subterranean world of rattlesnake venom and wages war until the venom is detoxified, gangrene is held at bay and health is restored.
It is told that Dr. Meyer, a Nebraska doctor of the1870’s, was so confident that his patent medicine “Meyer's Blood Purifier” could treat rattlesnake poison, that he even offered to be bitten just to prove his echinacea based medicine would work! (Now that’s confidence for you.) He claimed “Meyer's Blood Purifier” was "an absolute cure" for a multitude of ills, including rattlesnake bite and blood poisoning, gangrene, and leg ulcers.
In 1907, echinacea became the most popular herb in the United States, both among eclectic physicians and conventional doctors. In 1910, research found immune-stimulating properties of echinacea such as increasing white blood cell counts. Echinacea’s reputation began to spread across the Atlantic to Germany in the 1930’s, beginning a massive export trade from the US to Germany. With the discovery and production of antibiotics between 1940-1950, the popularity and fervor regarding echinacea decreased. Herbalists rediscovered it in the 1970’s, and herbal product manufacturers began to produce echcinacea products again. In Germany, doctors prescribed echinacea 2.5 million times in 1994 alone. Many scientific studies in the past decade have focused on its immuno-stimulant properties. In one study, a German team found that echinacea root seemed to reduce the severity and duration of cold and flu symptoms. After reviewing twenty-six human studies, a German researcher concluded that echinacea can stimulate the immune system. The studies show that it increases the number of white blood cells and enhances the process of phagocytosis (the gobbling up of invading organisms by immune cells). It may also block an enzyme that helps infections spread. There is some evidence that echinacea also stimulates cells called fibroblasts, which play a role in healing wounds. Echinacea’s properties may offer benefits for nearly all infectious conditions. Perhaps the most important immune-stimulating components are those found to increase both the production of T-cells and other natural killer-cell activity. Simply put, this herb activates the immune system.
The greek word ‘Echinos’ means spine. When you run your thumb over the cone-head of the ‘purple cone flower’ or Echinacea, in the center is a bed of ‘porcupine like’ spiny quills. These help Echinacea’s ingenious seed-dispersal-mechanism, it lives and survives in a dry prairie province, by nailing unsuspecting animals into carrying seeds to another destination, hitching itself to fur to get a free ride. Echinacea also has amazing adaptive characteristics to withstand long periods of prolonged intense sunshine married to minimal moisture. They achieve this by having a rough hairy surface on the leaves, which reduces evaporation, and they have the further ability artificially to place the leaves at 'wilt point'. In this state the plant goes into semi dormancy. These factors combined with their thick, tough tap-root system makes the plant indifferent to the insults of summer. Nature has produced a true ally for us in echinacea. It is an efficacious antiviral, antibacterial, and blood purifier -- one of the most wonderful tools in our “wellness herbal pharmacy.”