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

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Saturday, November 29, 2003 1:58 AM

THE HISTORY OF HERBAL MEDICINE IN

NORTH AMERICA (Part Two)

 

 

http://www.redflagsweekly.com/caldecott/2003_nov14.html

 

 

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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