THE HISTORY OF HERBAL MEDICINE IN NORTH AMERICA (Part Two)

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THE HISTORY OF HERBAL MEDICINE IN NORTH AMERICA

 

(Part Two)

 

 

By RFD Columnist, Todd Caldecott

of Clinical Herbal Studies

Wild Rose College Of Natural Healing

Calgary, Alberta

 

Email: phyto

Website

 

In this major series, RFD Columnist, Todd Caldecott explores the history of

herbal medicine in North America, with the view of fostering a better

understanding of the issues that face modern herbalists and a greater

appreciation of the evolution of the relationships between alternative,

complimentary and conventional medicine.

 

Herbal medicine in North America has a long and venerable tradition, from the

First Nations practices that were in existence thousands of years before the

first colonists arrived, to the development of four-year clinical programs at

the turn of the last century.

 

GO TO PART ONE

 

***

 

What little investigation there was of First Nations health care practices was

largely ignored by the European physicians. This was not unique to the Americas

however, but rather, reflected a newly evolving trend throughout Europe that

began with the Renaissance in which folkloric medicine was denigrated and

reduced to the sphere of the " superstitious " housewife. For the professional

doctor who had been trained in the theories of Galen and Ibn Sina, such common

practices could never display the results of his mastery: for this purpose, a

physician required fantastical agents to do the work of healing, such as

powdered pearl, the skin of a viper, or a piece of dried mummy. All these

ingredients would be commingled in highly complex formulae, impossible for

anyone except a trained pharmacist to compound.

 

When a series of infectious epidemics such as the Black Death swept through

Europe during the 14th century, doctors attempted to treat their patients on

strict humoral grounds, employing time-honored remedies used by the Arabic and

the Roman physicians before them.

 

Unfortunately, these preparations were for the most part useless, because they

never addressed the actual cause of the epidemics. Unlike the Greeks and Romans

before them, the Europeans had never caught on to the idea of sanitation, and

even personal hygiene such as bathing was viewed suspiciously. Raw sewage

emptied into the middle of busy thoroughfares, and garbage and waste lay

uncontained and strewn everywhere, feeding a rapidly expanding population of

rats. Rats unfortunately can harbor a deadly bacterium called Yersinia pestis,

and once introduced into the human population by fleas, over one-quarter of

Europe's population eventually succumbed to the disease.

 

The dark days of the Black Plague were soon followed by syphilis in the 15th and

16th centuries, a disease caused by the spirochete Treponema pallidum. Syphilis

manifests initially as a red pustular rash most commonly displayed in the

anogenital region, which soon erupts as a chancre, exuding a purulent fluid that

swarms with the spirochetes. The rash typically heals well, but syphilis

displays a highly variable course of progression, and can go into remission for

several years, but if left untreated, will eventually attack the brain, heart,

skin, bones, and spinal cord, causing blindness, deafness, mental illness, heart

failure, paralysis, and bone deformities. Once again, physicians that practiced

the medicine of Galen or Ibn Sina found that they had nothing to treat this

condition effectively. Confronted thus, physicians either refused treatment on

moral grounds (as syphilis was sexually-transmitted), or began to experiment

with highly questionable remedies out of sheer

desperation. One of these remedies was mercury, or quicksilver, long used in

the alchemical systems of Ayurvedic medicine for its potent healing effects. The

Arabs had probably learned of its usage in India, and began to experiment with

it as a healing agent, eventually developing unguents used in the treatment of

obstinate skin conditions. Unfortunately, for all the skill of the Arab

alchemists, they had not learned how to prepare mercury in such a way that

rendered it relatively non-toxic, unlike the bhasma preparations used in

Ayurvedic medicine. European physicians poured through the texts of their Arabic

forebears and found mention of the use of mercury, and with experimentation,

found that mercury could be a highly effective remedy. Indeed, if applied to the

syphilitic chancres the mercury salts act as an effective antibiotic, and can

even help relieve the itching. Thus mercury also found application in parasitic

diseases, and was soon applied in all manner of skin conditions.

 

One of the effects of mercury administration is the profuse stimulation of

salivation, and to doctors that witnessed such effects; it was thought that

mercury promoted the elimination of the affected humors. Mercury administration

will also promote a bloody diarrhea, and physicians considered this still more

reason to consider its powerful " cleansing " effects. Soon the Regular course of

treatment for syphilis was to apply a mercurial unguent all over the body for

several weeks, followed by the patient huddled over a little bowl in which the

saliva was collected, the course of treatment completed when the patient had

salivated several liters. Unfortunately, such administration also caused the

patient's teeth to fall out and develop terrible sores on the gums and tongue,

and in some cases for the jaw itself to be destroyed, leaving patients horribly

disfigured (Griggs 1981, 38).

 

Excessive administration led to alterations in personality, tremors, paralysis,

and renal failure.

 

Although the beneficial effects of mercury administration were questionable at

best, it could hardly be argued that its effects were impotent. The powerful

action of mercury seemed to resonate in the minds of the medical profession, and

it soon became an important component in the practice of every physician. Mixed

with or used along side other potent imported remedies such as Opium (Papaver

somniferum) and the violent purge Scammony (Convolvulus scammonia), the modern

physician had all the tools of the trade to do serious harm to prospective

patients, albeit with the best of intentions. Fundamental to the physician's

belief in the healing power of mercury was an insidious perception that the more

powerful a drug's activity the better it was. Unlike the Hippocratic concept of

health that placed a strong emphasis upon the healing power of nature (vis

medicatrix naturae), these physicians began to believe that nature was a thing

to be controlled and shaped according to their wishes.

Disease was no longer considered to be an impurity that affected the natural

rhythm of physiological function, but as an affliction of nature herself, whose

will must be broken by employing remedies with often violent activities. This

belief perhaps reached its zenith in the practices of

 

Dr. Benjamin Rush, Professor of Medicine at Pennsylvania University from 1769

until his death in 1813. In his lectures Rush was heard to thunder against any

kind of concept of the healing power of nature, treating " it in the sick chamber

as I would a squalling cat – open the door and drive it out " (Griggs 1981, 157).

 

Dr. Benjamin Rush would have an enormous impact upon the evolution of medicine

in North America, and although his institution was only one of four training

centers, it fully produced some 75% of all medical practitioners trained in the

United States during this period (Griggs 1981, 155). Rush was no doubt a

powerful personality, and like many charismatic people, had little patience for

details like the enumeration of diseases or endless hours spent studying

botanical specimens. According to Rush, there was only one disease, caused by

" irregular arterial action, " followed by a state of " debility " (Griggs 1981,

156). Rush thus endeavored to simplify the materia medica of the physician, and

promoted the dual therapies of bloodletting and mercury in the treatment of

almost every condition. To be fair, Rush also promoted the concept of fresh air,

clean water, and sufficient exercise, although these were mere adjuncts to the

paired therapies of bloodletting and calomel (mercurous

chloride). Rush would wax poetically about the beneficial effects of calomel

administration, teaching his students that it was a " safe and nearly universal

medicine, " and the " Sampson of the materia medica " (Griggs 1981, 156-7). Calomel

was thought to purge the body of disease, or stimulate the formation of a fever

that would bring about the resolution of the condition. Similarly, Rush

advocated the use of the lancet with the same confidence, to equalize the

circulation in diseased states, assuring any conscionable medical student that

it is " a very hard matter to bleed a patient to death " (Griggs 1981, 156).

 

Although it may seem difficult to understand how mercury and bloodletting were

such important therapies in medicine, Rush and his medical brethren had great

faith in their ability to help their patients with them, even though it was not

uncommon for a doctor to lose his patient soon after therapy was administered.

During the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793, Rush was initially unsure of how to

deal with issue, until he came across a note from an earlier doctor who stated

that the only efficacious remedy was drastic purging (Griggs 1981, 157).

Inspired, Rush began to dose his patients with ten grains of calomel (about 650

mg) and ten grains of Jalap (Ipomoea jalapa), a drastic botanical purgative.

When Rush's patients began to die he upped the dosage to 10 grains of calomel

and 15 grains of Jalap every six hours, followed by bloodletting. While most of

his patients continued to die, some got better despite this therapy, which only

convinced Rush of the efficacy of his treatments. From

then forward Rush was an enthusiastic advocate of high doses of calomel and

purgatives, and set the stage for increasingly larger doses in medical practice.

Soon it became common place to recommend upwards of 30 grains of calomel, and in

one account, Griggs mentions that one patient had been drained of 50 ounces of

blood, and when the patient finally came round from fainting, was administered

300 grains each of calomel and the violent purgative Gamboge (Garcinia morella)

(1981, 158).

 

Even though these accounts detail what may appear to be the height of arrogance,

the situation deteriorated further, continuing well into the early part of the

20th century. Such practices are now referred to as " heroic " medicine, although

the term " quackery " would appear to be a more accurate moniker. It is a history

now almost completely unknown by graduates of medical colleges today, but with

modern medicine's continued emphasis upon powerful synthetic drugs, it is a

history that appears destined to repeat itself. One recent study shows the

incidence of fatal adverse reactions to " correctly " prescribed pharmaceutical

drugs to be 106,000 in U.S. hospitals alone in 1998 (Lazarou et al. 1998). This

makes physician-prescribed drugs the number five killer in the United States.

 

It is with some trepidation that we might contemplate the current state of

affairs if the legacy of Dr. Rush and his enthusiastic supporters continued to

this day. With the development of antibiotic therapies and a newer, better

understanding of human physiology, medical researchers were quick to mend their

ways. And even though the history books largely hail these new developments in

medicine as the breakthrough that changed the way medicine was practiced, a

substantial argument can be made that the real impetus for change was sparked by

the revolutionary thinking of a simple farmer named Samuel Thomson.

 

CONTINUING

 

 

 

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