North American Herbalism – by Jessica Lane
In North America, traditions brought by the European settlers were merged with newly acquired knowledge of Native Indian healing. The first Europeans settling in North America brought with them familiar healing plants from home, altering the native landscape forever. Many of today’s common weeds owe their presence in North America to settlers who brought their favorite plants with them. Plantain, for example, was called “whiteman’s foot” by natives because it could be found wherever the Europeans had arrived. 

It did not take the settlers long to adopt Native American traditions, trying new herbs such as boneset, purple coneflower (Echinacea), goldenseal and pleurisy root.  The Europeans also learned about the use of sweat lodges and were impressed by their effectiveness.  They began publishing this new information as early as 1672.

In 1728, John Bartram founded North America’s first botanic garden near Philadelphia.  In 1765 he was commissioned “Botanizer Royal for America” and traveled widely collecting plant specimens to bring back for his gardens.  He was accompanied by his son, an excellent botanical artist.  It was through their work that Swedish scientist Carl von Linne became familiar with many North American plants, including them in his system of classification.

John Bartram’s botanic gardens eventually included plants from both Europe and the new world.

Healers, too, merged traditions, combining European herbs and treatments with herbs and methods learned from the Native Americas.  This merging of traditions resulted in the founding of the Physiomedical and Eclectic schools, which were later exported to Britain, adding a lasting North American legacy to British herbal practices.

Similar to other great traditional systems, Native Americans healing practices see humans closely tied into the whole cosmos and illustrated this belief by the medicine wheel.  The wheel is comprised of four cardinal directions from which healing guidance for a balanced life can be received.  The wheel itself, the circle, symbolizes the connectedness of people with everything around them, which is the way the Creator made the world.  The four directions are each assigned an animal totem, a different personality type, colors and spiritual energies, a system which is reminiscent of Chinese, Greek and Ayurvedic teachings.  Assigned symbols may vary among the different Native American nations, but the Assembly of First Nations authenticates the following designations.

• East is represented by the medicine of the Eagle with his ability of flying high and looking far a field.  The color of East is yellow, indicating the rising sun.  The East is the place of new beginnings.
   

• South is represented by the Beaver who is the friendliest of creatures, sharing his watery environment with anyone who comes to drink.  The color of South is red and is considered the place of  light-heartedness and playfulness, medicines that are often forgotten even though they are important for balance of life.
   

• West provides the medicine of the Turtle.  It is a place of transformation and change.  The color of the West is black, helping us to go inside, take a truthful look at ourselves and make the changes needed to achieve balance.
   

• North represents the medicine of the Wolf and the color white, which brings wisdom and justice.  At the end of one’s journey around the great wheel, it is said that one will end up with this medicine.

All peoples of the earth are also represented by the colors of the wheel and all of humanity is tied in to this wheel, which provides guidance for living in harmony with ourselves, each other and the planet, lessons all too relevant in today’s world.

The center of Native North American Herbalism is the medicine man or shaman.  The shaman, acting on behalf of the person who was ill, would induce a trance like state, often through drumming and on occasion with the aid of plant “helpers”.  He or she would then spirit travel to the symbolic directions of the medicine wheel seeking the soul of the sick person, finding help from spirits or animal totems and would learn the right treatment for healing.    The new North American practitioners learned a great deal from the native peoples.  The traditional use of the sweat lodge is still with us in the 21^st century and people utilize it to purify their minds and their bodies.

Also, in the last two decades, schools have sprung up in much of North America that teach the way of the Shaman, thus ensuring that traditional Shamanic journeying for healing mind, body and soul is still practiced and ensuring that the knowledge is passed down to the new generations and carried forward.

Physiomedicalism
Before the Plains Indians were decimated defending their land in battles with the US army, early settlers and natives shared much of their herbal knowledge.  One of the most prominent adherents was Samuel Thomson 1769-1843, founder of the Physiomedical movement.  Physiomedicalists are also called Thomsonians.  As a child Thomson had learned about herbs from the Widow Benton, a root and herb doctor, who combined the traditional knowledge of an herby wife with Native American healing skills.  Around 1800 Thomson’s daughter was taken seriously ill and declared incurable by physicians.  Taking things into his own hands, Thomson cured her with herbs and hot treatments inspired by sweat lodges.  Thomson had also turned to herbal healing because years earlier his mother had been “galloped” out of the world in nine weeks, due to harsh medical treatments administered by orthodox physicians.  In those days, physicians relied heavily on mercury laced potions, bleeding and violent laxatives, approaches sure to weaken and eventually kill patients already severely compromised by illness.

George Washington also lost his life at the hands of orthodox medicine.  In the year 1700, the elderly but still healthy statesman had developed a sore throat with chills, which could probably have been treated quite easily with hot liquids, bed rest and herbal antibiotics such as garlic.  Instead he was bled of four pints of blood, leaving him anemic and in a weakened state.  Adding insult to injury he was then given laxatives and mercury.  Washington died within twenty-four hours of this abysmal treatment.

Thomson’s healing system was based on American and European herbs, the use of sweat lodges and mineral baths.  He favored the use of the herb lobelia, which causes vomiting when given in large doses. In 1809 while in New Hampshire, several physicians had him arrested and tried for murder after the administering a lethal dose of the popular plant lobelia.  Though he was acquitted for lack of evidence Thomson was banned from practicing medicine in New Hampshire.

Thomson then went national, patenting his healing system into “Thomson’s Improved System of Botanic Practice of Medicine” which was a kit containing handbooks for self-diagnosis and his patent medicines.

It took the country by storm.  After his death in 1843, his system of medicine went into decline and though continued by some herbalists and practitioners, it was replaced by the practice of Eclecticism.   Today’s experts in herbal medicine who have undertaken serious study of Thomson’s methods hail him as a gifted healer, who contrary to accusations brought against him by orthodox physicians, used only gentle, balancing and toning remedies.  By listening to nature and valuing the long traditions of the Native Americans, Samuel Thomson gained more recognition than perhaps any other person in the history of North American medicine.

Eclecticism
During the nineteenth century most medical remedies consisted of herbs (three-quarters of the treatments mentioned in the 1880 US Pharmacopeia were herbal).  However, the orthodox physicians were aiming to dominate the medical field.  They employed drastic and sometimes dangerous treatments.  In the 1820’s a group of practitioners made up of Thomsonians, herbalists trained by Native Americans and disillusioned physicians, founded the Reformed Medical Society to promote natural healing.

The eastern cities in North America were the strongholds of orthodox physicians so the Reformed Medical Society opened a school near Columbus Ohio in 1830.  The new society called itself Eclectic because it combined all kinds of traditions, from European and Native American to the herbal traditions of American slaves.  In 1845, concurrent with a moving of the medical school to Cincinnati, it became the nation’s first medical center to admit women.  Unfortunately, in 1877, yielding to public and professional prejudice, women were barred from training. 

The Eclectics used herbs with a more scientific approach than the Physiomedicalists.  They developed methods of analyzing and diagnosing disease which were far superior to the self-diagnostic methods of the Thomsonian Physiomedicalists.  Eclectics experimented with herbs, analyzing their chemical composition and making liquid extracts of their active ingredients.  They also published papers in scientific journals.  The Eclectics generally figured prominently in the early development of the American pharmaceutical industry.  The movement peaked between 1880 and 1900 when there were almost ten thousand Eclectics practicing in the United States, giving orthodox physicians a run for their money.  Eclecticism was going strong until 1906, but started to decline when philanthropists Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller decided to throw all their financial support behind orthodox medical schools.  The last students to graduate the Eclectic Institute in Cincinnati did so in 1939.  Today the legacy of the Eclectics lives on in the naturopathic medical schools featuring herbal medicine programs.  The two oldest schools are the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon, and John Bastyr College in Seattle, Washington.

The period of 1920 to the 1960’s can be called the lost decades for herbal healing.  The orthodox medical schools ignored herbs and the synthesized drugs of the pharmaceutical industry replaced herbal treatments as medicines of choice.  Today with most medical college funding coming from pharmaceutical giants (a clear conflict of interest) it is not reasonable to expect that herbal medicine will take its rightful place in the North American medical paradigm.  However, thanks to a dissatisfied and disillusioned public, herbal therapies have enjoyed a strong return to public favor and currently natural medicine is experiencing a boom like never seen before as evidenced by the mushrooming of natural food stores alongside the malls of North America.  Our next article will examine the journey of herbal medicine to pharmaceuticals and pharmaceuticals back to herbal medicine. We will also look at the current popularity of herbal medicine and where it is headed in the future.        

Until the next issue, health and happiness to you and your precious animal companions.  Jessica Lane

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