Political history of herbal medicine in the US: Part I

1. Political History of Herbal Medicine in
US
Part I
Michael Tims, PhD

2. Part I
• History of herbal use in America
• Use of goldenseal as a sample plant to track various
concerns
Part II
• Political machinations that lead to our current medical
model
• What right to practice looks like in the contemporary
landscape

3. Early Herbal Practioners in US
• Initially European plants used – hard to get
• Women – primary caregivers and herbalist
Native American traditions
• Settlers adapted indigenous plants and practices
• Rich in both systemic approaches and materia medica
African Americans
• Provided own healthcare.
• Their traditions often borrowed by settlers
• Their plant diaspora now part of American landscape

4. Native American traditions
• Settlers adapted indigenous plants and practices
• Rich in both systemic approaches and materia medica

5. African Americans
• Provided own healthcare.
• Their traditions often borrowed by settlers
• Their plant diaspora now part of American landscape

6. Native use of Goldenseal
• Insect repellant
• Diuretic
• Wound healing
• Wash for sores and inflamed
eyes
• Dyes

7. Colonial America
• Regulars educated in British universities and medical
schools
• Herbalist or ‘root doctors’ had no formal training - self
taught or apprenticed
• Herbalist protected from prosecution from “regular’
doctors by legal charter established by Henry VIII
• Ongoing animosity between two groups

8. Regulars
• Heroic medicine – herbs and chemicals
• Dramatic use of emetics, opiates,
blood letting, etc..
• Counteracting poisons, considered
causative agent
• “Science-based”
• Professional identity leading to legal
recognition and licensure

9. Samuel Thompson (Early 1800 s)
• Thomsonian movement – root doctors
• Used many of the same heroic techniques of regulars
• Borrowed from Native Americans – diaphoretics,
astringents, emetics and sedatives
• Principles very rigid and anti-intellectual

10. Composition Powder
• Bayberry, hemlock, ginger, cayene and clove
• Useful for diseases of day – typhoid fever, influenza,
yellow fever, measles, whooping cough and malaria

11. Jackson Era (1830s)
• Egalitarianism – helped the “People’s Medicine” flourish
• Celebrated personal autonomy and responsibility
• Believed in healing power of nature
• Skeptical about regular or allopathic therapeutics
• Flourished in rural areas and on frontier

12. Rise of the Eclectics (1840-1930)
• Golden age 1875-1895
• Lasted until 1939
• Comprised of numerous sects
• Became rigid – missed opportunity to incorporate the
new fields of bacteriology and pharmacognosy
• Believed they had discovered all active ingredients –
“Resinoid craze”

13. Eclectic Legacy
• Re-introduced a number of native herbs in use today
– echinacea
– goldenseal
– wild indigo
– black cohosh
• Legacy of proven clinical medicine
• Materia medica, diagnostic and specific indication texts –
Ellingwood, King, Felter, Scudder and Jones

14. Goldenseal use, Colonial - Early 20th c.
• Barton noted powerful bitter quality
• Eye and mouth wash
• Official drug USP in 1830
• King provides 1st comprehensive clinical use in 1852,
influencing Eclectics

15. Goldenseal Adulteration
• Height of the Eclectic movement the price of goldenseal
led to economic adulterants - Coptis spp., Xanthorrhiza
simplicissima, Paeonia officinalis and Jeffersonia diphylla
• Adapted by allopaths and found in USP-NF
• Drug companies manufactured goldenseal products
• Used in official medical practice until 1960

16. Pharmaceutical Goldenseal Products
• Squibb - root in whole or powdered form, offering pure
hydrastine as well
• Park-Davis - fluid and solid extract, compound formulas
in pill or tablet form
• Lilly - extract standardized to 9 to 11 percent of ether-
soluble alkaloids
• Thayer - wine and fluid extract

17. Flexner Report, 1910
• Fledgling American Medical Association (AMA), with
Rockefeller and Carnegie money, hired Abraham Flexner
to study the current state of medical schools
• Provided medical validity for “science” based allopathic
training
• Gave control of practices and licensing to AMA

18. Allopathy
• Antagonistic to non-scientific medicine
• Forced medical schools offering alternative training to
drop training or go out of business
• Limited admission to males only
• Capital intensive requirements of Hospital/Med school
model appealed to foundations and investors
• More amenable to patent and trade protections

19. Goldenseal: Model for Renaissance
• 1970’s Back to Eden large influence
• Gave way to indigenous knowledge, TCM and revival
Eclectic medicine.
• By 1990’s prices rise again, in part by erroneous use of
goldenseal to negate illicit drug testing.
• Adulterant plants today include Coptis japonica,
Xanthorrhiza simplicissima, Mahonia aquifolium,
Chelidonium majus, and Berberis spp.
• Conservation issues – habitat loss