Common Names: Indian Physic, American Ipecac, Western Drop-Wort. Features: This indigenous shrub can be found scattered in North America: Canada to Florida, on the eastern side of the Alleghenies. Does well in open hilly woods, in light gravelly soil.
The root is quite thick with thin bark and many fissured rootlets, of bitter taste. The several erect, slender and smooth stems are 2 – 3 ft. high, and of a reddish or brownish colour. The leaves are alternate. Flowers are of white and pinkish colour, and can be seen in May. Matured fruit of twovalved, one-celled capsule, seeds are oblong, brown and bitter. Medicinal Part: The bark of the root. Solvents: Boiling water, alcohol. Bodily Influence: Purgative, Tonic, Emetic, Cathartic, Expectorant. Uses: Very popular with the North American Indians for amenorrhoea( absence or abnormal interruption of the menstrual flow), rheumatism, dropsy, costiveness, dyspepsia, worms and intermittent fever. It may be used in all fevers where emetics are required. Dose: As an emetic, 20 – 35 grains of the powder, as often as required; as atonic, 2 – 4 grains. As a diaphoretic, 6 grains in cold water, and repeated at intervals of 2 – 3 hr.
GINGER— WILD Asarum canadense, L.( N. O.: Aristoloch)
Common Names: Canada Snake Root, Indian Ginger, Vermont Snake Root. Features: Ginger, being of many species, differs in appearance according to habitat; Africa, Calcutta, India, Pakistan, China, Jamaica, Japan, etc., have their own special native herb.
Our native Ginger is a beautiful little plant found growing in rich woods during April and May, from Maine to Michigan, and southwards. The root of the plant is round and fleshy, with dividing stem supporting a heart-shaped, deep green above ands light below, soft, woolly, and handsomely veined leaf, there being two to a plant. The flower is one to a plant, small and of a brownish-purple colour, growing only a few inches high and sometimes becoming covered by the dead leaves that carpet the woods. Odour: ginger-like, or recalling serpentaria; taste: pungent, bitter. Medicinal Part: The root. Solvent: Boiling water. Bodily Influence: Stimulant, Carminative, Tonic, Diaphoretic, Diuretic. Uses: As a carminative it is useful in all painful spasms of the bowels and stomach, also to promote perspiration, in all cases of colds, female obstructions, whooping cough, and fevers. Practitioners of the American Physic Medical School hold that this root exerts a direct influence upon the uterus, and prescribe it as a parturient when nervous fatigue is observed. It can be made into a tea and administered in small doses. frequently repeated, as large doses are apt to nauseate the stomach. Dose: As a cordial made with a tincture and syrup of molasses it is most agreeable. 1 teaspoonful of the granulated root to 1 pint of boiling water, 2 tablespoonfuls at a time as often as required. Of the tincture, 2 – 5 min. Powder may be taken dry, 20 – 30 grains. Homoeopathic Clinical: Tincture of root and whole fresh plant( Asarum europeum)— Alcoholism, Anus( prolapse of), Catarrh, Cholerine, Diarrhoea, Dysmenorrhoea, Eyes( affections of; operations of), Fidgets, Headache, Hysteria, Levitation( sensation of), Typhus. Russian Experience: Kopiten( Ginger) grows wild in the European and West Siberia of Russia, and the Far East. There is a special time for collecting the different sections of the well-known plant. Leaves in the early spring, rhizomes when the flower begins to form, roots in the fall. Folk Medicine: The different parts of the plant play an important specific as to their use, or perhaps