In 1899, Dr John King of Cincinnati opened a letter containing an unusual request. A Dr Meyer from Kansas was offering to travel to Cincinnati and let himself be bitten by a rattlesnake in front of Dr King. He even offered to provide the snake. Meyer would then treat the bite with a herb called Echinacea snakeroot, whose use he had learned from Native Americans. He claimed to be confident of a safe and speedy recovery.
King was a prominent member of the Eclectic Medical Profession, a group of MDs who, from 1840 until about 1930, used primarily herbal medicines in their practices.
King decided to take Meyer seriously, though he didn’t take him up on the rattlesnake offer. Over the next twenty years, he and others in the Eclectic Profession began experimenting with Echinacea.
Today it is the best-seller of all herbs sold in both Europe and the United States.
The story of Echinacea begins with the Native American tribes throughout the Great Plains of the American Continent; we can conjecture that these people used it for tens of thousands of years. It was through these Plains Indians that Echinacea entered into American professional medicine and then into Europe in the 1930s.
The man who bridged the gap between the native use of this plant and the medical profession was Dr Meyer who, it seems, came across the use of Echinacea by observing a Native American woman crushing Echinacea plants between two stones. On being asked what it was used for, she told him it was a poultice for wounds, that it helped them heal them more quickly than other remedies and that it was also good for rattlesnake bites.
Over many years of using Echinacea root, Meyer found numerous other uses for this plant. Most striking among Meyer’s claims for it was the assertion that it cured 613 cases of rattlesnake bite in men and animals, all supposedly successfully treated with its remedying powers.
The Eclectic practitioner, Ellingwood, relates an experiment that Meyer performed on himself:
With the courage of his convictions upon him he injected the venom of a rattlesnake into the first finger of his left hand; the swelling was rapid and in 6 hours was up to the elbow. At this time he took a dose of the remedy, bathed the part thoroughly, and laid down to pleasant dreams. On awakening in 4 hours, the pain and swelling were gone (Ellingwood, 1919).
King’s acceptance of Echinacea moved it into widespread use in America up to the 1930s, before the Eclectic Profession was swept from medical history because of the Regulars using political clout to deny accreditation to their schools and licensing to their practitioners.
By the 1930s Echinacea Angustitolia was widely used in Europe and large quantities were imported each year from the United States. In 1937 the French bought the entire crop, creating a shortage for German firms. Dr G. Madaus decided to travel to the States and obtain seeds so that his company could grow its own supply. He bought what he thought were seeds of E. Angustitolia, but when planted turned out to be E. Purpurea. This historical accident had huge implications for the worldwide use of Echinacea. Upon experimentation, Madaus found that E. Purpurea had medicinal properties similar to those of E. Angustitolia. Also Madaus used the flowering tips instead of the roots and found them almost as effective as the roots.
David Foley
MNIMH, MRCHM
Medical Herbalist
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