Tag Archives: Native American

It Cures What Ails You

Leave a reply

Blood, Liver and Stomach Renovator

Patent medicines reached out to a populace with little faith in, or access to, medical doctors. Manufacturers  generally leaned on heavy doses of alcohol and great advertising to move their products, which often promised to cure just about anything a patient could have. Promoters of these cure-alls favored personal testimonials that gave weight to their medicine’s powers. Many of the medicines also relied on an association with Native Americans.

Despite the cultural bias of the times, there did seem to be widespread respect for the centuries of medical wisdom that Native Americans had accumulated. Makers of patent medicine tried to establish a link to their potion and secret Indian recipes to give credibility to their concoctions.

 

Here are some popular patent medicines that linked themselves to Native Americans:

Patent Medicine Label

1. Indian Restorative Bitters.

2. Chief Wahoo Electric Tonic

3. Alacaster’s Indian Vegetable Jaundice Bitters

4. Goff’s Indian Vegetable Cough Syrup

5. Clements Indian Tonic

6. Dr. Morse’s Indian Root Pills

 

 

Disdained and Respected

1 Reply
The Cherokee Physician, or Indian Guide to Health

The Cherokee Physician, or Indian Guide to Health

At the turn of the last century (early 1900s), doctors were not considered infallible by any means. Most families relied on local herbalists or their own knowledge of “doctoring” to get them through most medical emergencies.

Though often reviled by whites for any number of supposedly savage or uncivilized traits, Native Americans were often seen as very competent in the use of native plants for medicinal purposes. Here is a recipe for an ague pill, ague being a general term for a fever marked by fits of chills, fever, and sweating.

“Take equal quantities of mullen leaves and red sassafras bark, of the root, boil in water to a strong decoction, then strain and continue boiling the decoction to the consistency of very thick molasses, add a sufficient quantity of sassafras bark finely pulverized to make it the proper consistence to roll into pills. Dose three or more morning and night.”

This recipe is taken from The Cherokee Physician, or Indian Guide to Health, as Given By Richard Foreman, A Cherokee Doctor. This version of the work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.