_ROSIN-WEED AGAIN HISTORICAL AND PHARMACOLOGICAL_
When we wish to learn anything about American medical literature, we
turn to the big Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General.
The botanical name of rosin-weed is _silphium_. In the Index Catalogue,
the word _rosin-weed_ does not appear, but, in the first series, under
_silphium_, there are ten references, and thereby hangs a tale.
=Ancient Silphium.= In ancient Greek and Roman medicine there was a famous
gum called _silphion_ (Latin _silphium_) which, like all popular
medicines, was the better for being brought from a far country and for
being a little mysterious; for it was brought across the Mediterranean
from Cyrene, where it had been originally presented to the inhabitants
of that favored place by the gods. Learned botanists have discussed at
length what plant produced this gum and have concluded that, like its
neighbor in Egypt, the papyrus plant, it has disappeared from the
earth. Even in Dioscorides' time the plant was getting scarce and there
came a day when in all Cyrene there remained only a single silphium
plant, which was piously presented to that worthy representative of the
gods, the emperor Nero.
In the year 1817, an Italian, Della Cella, returning from an expedition
of the Egyptian Pasha against the neighboring Arab tribes, reported that
he had discovered the ancient silphion growing on the site of old
Cyrene. He brought back specimens of the plant which were identified as
a species of thapsia. Several expeditions brought back more specimens
but there was little general interest until Laval, in 1859, saw the
commercial possibilities in a revival of this wonder-medicine and put
the famous old cure-all on the market as a specific for consumption,
under the name of _silphium Cyrenaicum_, backed by the endorsement of
all the ancients from Hippocrates to Pliny. Seldom has even a French or
German drug house found so distinguished a company of medical
authorities to endorse its wares. Whereat, there began a brisk
discussion in the European journals, first, whether the ancient
silphion had been found and, secondly, whether, if found, it was worth
anything. Both questions being finally decided in the negative, the
ancient silphion passes again into the twilight of tradition; all of
which entertaining tale may be read at great length in the _Dictionnaire
Encyclopædique des Sciences Médicales_, Paris, 1881, Volume 9.
Now, with one exception, all the references to _silphium_ in the Index
Catalogue refer to this _silphion_ controversy and have nothing to do
with our American _silphium_ or _rosin-weed_. The exception is the
reference to Dr. Goss, to be related presently.
=The American Silphium.= On the American prairies from Ohio south and west
to Texas, as far north as Wisconsin and south to Florida, there grows
abundantly a plant unknown in Europe and better known here to botanists
than to physicians. From the gummy juice that exudes from the leaves and
stem, Linnæus himself named the genus _silphium_ in memory of the
ancient silphion of Cyrene and the plain people called it _rosin-weed_.
There are more than twenty species of rosin-weed or silphium, all
probably similar in their medicinal virtues. The species that we have
used in hay fever is the _silphium laciniatum (Silphium gummiferum,
Ell.)_ This species is known also as the compass-plant or pilot-weed
because the large lower leaves present their faces north and south, as
we may remember from our boyhood tales of the plains where the trapper
never lost his way because he had simply to look down at his feet and
there was the compass-plant pointing faithfully to the north.
=Rosin-Weed among the Indians.= This rosin-weed is not a poisonous plant.
Children all over the west gather the resin for chewing-gum as the
Indians did before them and horses eat it freely, being thereby
protected from the heaves, as the frontier tradition goes. Rosin-weed
was valued highly by the Indian. He chewed the gum to make his breath
sweet and drank a decoction of the root to make him live forever. The
rosin-weed of the Indian is the parallel of the ancient silphion, the
opoponax or _all-healing juice_ of southern Europe, the spruce gum and
pine tar of rural America and the more valued resins of the East where,
in Othello's time, the trees dropped down their medicinal gum; for we
find the native gums used all over the world for the same diseases,
cough and consumption and urinary distress, always with a dash of
mystery and the idea of prolonging life.
=Rosin-Weed among the Eclectics.= One would have thought that the early
American botanic physicians who worked so industriously to introduce
American plants and who learned the use of many native plants from the
Indians, would have adopted such a popular remedy but I find no mention
of it in their books. The learned writer in the _Dictionnaire des
Sciences Médicales_ was correct in writing, in 1821, Volume 51, page
312, that there were several varieties of silphium, all growing in
America, but that none of them as yet had been used as medicines.
It was reserved for a successor of the old botanic school, an eclectic
physician, Dr. H. B. Garrison, to introduce rosin-weed into medical
practice as a specific for asthma in an article in the _Eclectic Medical
Review_ in 1868. This article was abstracted in the _Pacific Medical and
Surgical Journal_, in the _Nashville Journal of Medicine and Surgery_
and in Francis Porcher's _Medical Botany of the Southern States_, second
edition, 1869 (not in the first edition of 1863). Dr. Garrison noted
also the popular belief that heaves or asthma did not exist in horses on
the prairies where this plant grew.
For a few years, rosin-weed became popular and was widely commented on
in the eclectic journals; but it soon dropped out of sight and is not to
be found in any eclectic text books to-day.
ROSIN-WEED AMONG THE HOMOEOPATHS. Rosin-weed comes into the
homoeopathic school through "the indefatigable Dr. Hale," as Richard
Hughes calls him. The homoeopathic school owes much to Dr. E. M. Hale,
who enriched our materia medica with many American plants, most of them
drawn from the eclectic school and, be it noted, Dr. Hale gives full
credit to that school from which the new medicines came. Dr. Hale did
masterly work in proving the new remedies and verifying the observations
of the eclectic physicians and published his _Characteristics of New
Remedies_ in 1864. In 1868, Dr. Garrison published his paper on the use
of rosin-weed in asthma and Dr. Hale, in his third edition of 1873,
included rosin-weed under the name _silphium laciniatum_, as follows:
SILPHIUM LACINIATUM
_ROSIN-WEED_
Syn. (page 544) Compass-plant, Polar-plant, Rosin-weed.
Analogues, Cubeba, Copaiva, Terebinthina.
Officinal preparations.--Tincture of leaves: dilutions.
Catarrhal affections and diseases of the mucous
membranes.--Eclectic.
Chronic catarrh of the nasal passages.
Chronic laryngitis and bronchitis.
_Asthma_, hurried (breathing?) with concomitant catarrhal
affections of the bronchial mucous surfaces.
(It is a popular domestic remedy in _asthma_. Eclectic physicians
value it highly in throat affections. Some homoeopathic
physicians, Drs. Small, Kendall and others have used it with
gratifying results.--Hale.)
_Horses_ that eat of the leaves mixed in hay are cured or relieved
of the _heaves_ and chronic loose cough.
Catarrh of the bladder.
Dr. Hale did not prove this remedy. All symptoms except the last one are
clinical, that is, they disappeared while the patient was taking the
remedy but they have not been produced on the healthy. The last symptom
is a pathogenetic symptom verified by cure. There is, however, a proving
of silphium but it is buried deep in the dust that covers old reports
and has not seen the light of day for many a year. I reprint it here
from the _Hahnemannian Monthly_, Volume 8, June, 1873, page 536, from
the report of a meeting of the Philadelphia County Homoeopathic
Society.
"Silphium lac.--Dr. G. A. Hall, in the April number of the Medical
Investigator gives a summary of a proving. (The first decimal
trituration was given in doses of two grains gradually increased to
ten grains every two hours.)
"It produces a scraping, tickling and irritation of the fauces and
throat; nausea, sick, faint feeling and a sense of goneness in the
epigastrium; a desire to hawk and scrape the throat, throwing off a
thin viscid mucus. The irritation extends up the posterior nares,
involving the mucous membrane of the nasal passages, producing
sneezing, followed by a discharge of limpid, acrid mucus from the
nose, attended with constriction and pressure in the supra-orbital
region. Engorgement and thickening of the mucous membrane of the
throat as far down as could be seen; rough cough, attended with
the expectoration of yellow mucus; contraction and tightness of
lungs, constant disposition to raise; hacking, spasmodic cough;
tongue covered with whitish slimy coat attended with dry sensation
as if burned with hot soup; urine high colored and scant, frequent
passages with sense of heat at the meatus urinarius during passage
of urine; stools natural in form but covered with whitish, slimy
mucus. An internal feverish sensation; pulse not accelerated; want
of appetite.
"=Clinical Observation.= For ten years, I have used silphium in
asthma with large quantities of stringy mucus, in influenza,
coryza, catarrh, and believe it to be the best remedy we have in
phthisis when gray or yellow mucus is expectorated copiously,
causing rapid exhaustion. I use the second decimal trituration in
one or two-grain doses every two hours until expectoration is
diminished perceptibly and then at intervals of four or six hours
until expectoration is diminished to a degree consistent with other
symptoms of the case."
In spite of this good start, rosin-weed did not have any better fortune
with the homoeopaths than with the eclectics. It never got into the
text books. After transient popularity in the journals, it sank back
into obscurity and has remained as a remedy for asthma in the memory of
a few of the older practitioners from whom it is occasionally handed on
by oral tradition.
It was in 1872 when rosin-weed was enjoying its brief publicity and when
the epidemic of epizoötic among the horses created a public interest in
veterinary medicines, that my father, Dr. Alexander H. Laidlaw,
discovered its remarkable curative power in hay fever, as related in
Chapter II.
=Rosin-Weed among the "Allopaths."= Rosin-weed never got into the
Pharmacopoeia but it is none the worse for that. More people have been
poisoned by the drugs inside of the Pharmacopoeia than by those
outside of it. Except the few comments by western and southern medical
journals, it was practically unknown in the dominant school, as shown by
there being only one reference to it in the Index Catalogue. This is an
article by Dr. Q. J. M. Goss, of Marietta, Georgia, in the _Nashville
Journal of Medicine_, 1887, xx, page 60, in which Dr. Goss praises
rosin-weed highly for its power to cure catarrh of the mucous membranes,
comparing it to the balsams, cubeb and turpentine, and relating the cure
of two cases of asthma.
In the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine, there is a thin
pamphlet by Dr. Goss, entitled _New Medicines_, which I suspect to be
taken chiefly from Dr. Hale's _New Remedies_, in which he says of
silphium laciniatum, "It has proved for me one of the best remedies in
humid asthma. I have made several brilliant cures with the tincture of
this plant and the tincture of ptelea trifoliata in doses of 30 drops
each four times a day in simple elixir.... In acute diseases of the
mucous membranes, the dose should be small, 5 to 10 drops; but in
chronic inflammation, the dose may be 30 drops of the saturated
tincture. It is a valuable remedy in chronic bronchitis and tracheitis.
It will soon become a popular remedy in mucous diseases."
This prophecy of popularity was scarcely borne out; for, with the
exception of the article by him in 1887, rosin-weed drops out of sight
and is found in no books published in the last forty years.
=Pharmacology.= For the following information, I am indebted to the
Botanical Department of Parke, Davis & Co., whom I wish to thank for
their unfailing courtesy in replying to my inquiries about this little
known plant:
"Rosin weed is a general name for all species of the genus
_silphium_ of which there are more than twenty species; some of
these species, however, have special names. Three species are
usually mentioned as being used for medicinal purpose. We list them
with their synonyms as follows:
Silphium perfoliatum, Lin. Indian cup, ragged cup, cup plant, rosin
weed.
Silphium terebinthinaceum, Lin. rosin weed (true), prairie dock.
Silphium laciniatum, Lin. Syn. S. gummiferum, Ell. compass-plant,
polar plant, pilot plant, rosin weed.
It is more than probable that all the species of the genus are
equally effective from a therapeutic point of view."
We have always used the fluid extract of the herb. Goss and Hale used
the tincture of the fresh leaves and so the homoeopaths have always
used it. Since looking into the history of the plant, I recall a remark
of that wise old physician, Rademacher, in regard to chelidonium. _Ich
bin kein Freund von Extrakten._ He preferred the tincture of the fresh
plant. Tinctures of the fresh plant were Hahnemann's preference too, and
it may well be that with rosin-weed also, the tincture preserves the
medicinal power better than the extract.
=Mode of Action.= If the proving of rosin-weed made by Dr. Hall is
reliable, we must conclude that rosin-weed cures the symptoms that it
produces in the healthy and it must be regarded as acting on the
homoeopathic principle. I must own that I am a little suspicious of
provings that match so closely the long established popular use of a
drug and, in this case, believe that we must wait for confirmation of
this proving before accepting it as sound. Rosin-weed has always seemed
to me to be a harmless herb, which is shown also by its use among
children as chewing gum. I have never noticed the "tonic, diaphoretic or
diuretic effects" attributed to it in eclectic medicine and believe that
they must be feeble. The only unpleasant effect that I have noted is
nausea after large doses, sixty drops or more, and this in very few
patients. Vomiting is rare, is never serious and ceases spontaneously
when the stomach is empty of the drug.
At the Baltimore meeting of the American Institute of Homoeopathy,
where the use of rosin-weed in hay fever was first reported, Dr. John
Sutherland, of Boston, made the proper criticism that if rosin-weed was
harmless and could not produce any effect on the healthy body, he could
not understand how it had any power to cure. To this, I had no answer
except that I had both taken and given large doses for many years to
patients of all ages and had never seen any symptoms develop. Another
speaker suggested that, like calcarea and silica, potentization would
develop pathogenetic powers that were not evident in the crude drug.
This I have never tried. As related in the chapter on Bacterial
Vaccines, I suspect that the curative power of rosin-weed in hay fever
lies in its power of relieving a coexisting catarrh, of which theory we
have the confirming evidence that other methods that cure catarrh, nasal
operations, bacterial vaccines, homoeopathic remedies, have often
cured a coexisting hay fever. Since that discussion, I have found Dr.
Hall's proving. It would be a pleasure to find that our old family
remedy for hay fever really acts on the homoeopathic principle but I
believe that the question needs the verification of further proving.
Transcriber's Notes:
Footnotes have been placed at the end of chapters.
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
All oe ligatures have been replaced with "oe" (eg: "homoeopathic")
page 52 "posioning" changed to "poisoning" (uric acid poisoning)
page 57 "familes" changed to "families" (gouty familes are especially)
page 69 "urid" changed to "uric" (so-called uric-acid disorders)
page 95 "Immutiny" changed to "Immunity" (Passive Immunity)
page 97 "Inthe" changed to "In the" (In the Centralblatt für)