Important: Safety Warning
This page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
This page presents medical treatment from an era before modern medicine. The remedies described are ineffective against the conditions named, and some of the ingredients or doses are harmful. Do not use them to treat any illness; consult a qualified medical professional.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Asthma
This Indian remedy is compounded of one ounce each of spikenard root, sweet flag root, elecampane root, and common chalk, beaten or ground very fine, with the addition of half a pound of strained honey. Dose: a teaspoonful after each meal and just before retiring to bed. When it is inconvenient to procure the above articles, for temporary relief, an application of a mustard plaster to the chest, and immersion of the feet in hot water, with a handful of mustard thrown in, will be found useful. A warm room and plenty of covering at night are absolutely necessary in treatments for this disease.
Consumption.- Take a peck of barley malt, add to it nine gallons of water boiling hot. Let it stand six hours, then add to the water in which the malt was soaked a peck of white pine bark, half a pound of spikenard root, and half a pound of Syria grass. Boil half away, then put the liquid part into a keg, adding a quart of brewers' yeast.