Dear Listees,
Does anyone have any MM (or case experience) on the Rx Sassafras officinale?
Any information received with thanks!
Regz, Tan.
MM on Sassafras-o?
-
Shannon Nelson
- Posts: 8848
- Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2002 10:00 pm
Re: MM on Sassafras-o?
Hi Tan,
I don't know if any of this will be useful, but here's what I have in
RefWks:
From something abbreviated HomPhy:
5C. Toothache of a mild type. (The Homeopathic Physician, July, 1893,
Malcolm Macfarlan.)
Sassafras 5C. ‹ Toothache; pain like a coal of fire on passing water;
urine looks as if it had flakes of mucus in it; pain in both tubers ischii,
and intense pain in both hip-joints; abdomen appears distended, and
considerable eructation. (The Homeopathic Physician, March, 1892, page 93.
"Provings and Clinical Observations With High Potencies," Malcolm Macfarlan,
M.D., Philadelphia.)
NA Medicine:
(S. officinale, Laurus sassafras)
Sassafras, Saxafras, ague tree.
Family: Lauraceae
Chemistry: Volatile oil contains -safrole which is carcinogenic.
Recorder '98:
Sassafras [Laurus sassafrass L.] is one of the plants which found
entrance into European pharmacopeias ever since the 16th century. Martius
found it used in S. Paulo as with us, as an abluent, then also as a diuretic
and sudorific. Especially in the form of a decoction it is frequently used
by the settlers.
NHxTrees:
Article by Donald Peattie in A Natural History of Trees (1948).
Against the Indian summer sky, a tree lifts up its hands and testifies
to glory, the glory of a blue October day. Yellow or orange, or bloodorange,
or sometimes softest salmon pink, or blotched with bright vermilion, the
leaves of the Sassafras prove that not all autumnal splendor is confined to
the northern forests. Deep into the South, along the snake-rail fences,
beside the soft wood roads, in old fields where the rusty brook sedge is
giving way to the return of forest, the Sassafras carries its splendid
banners to vie with the scarlet Black Gum and the yellow Sweet Gum and other
trees of which the New Englander may hardly have heard. The deep blue fruits
on thick bright red stalks complete a color effect in fall which few trees
anywhere surpass.
In spring the leafing-out is late - later at least than the
inconspicuous pale gold flowers that bloom on the naked wood. But once they
burst their buds, the heavy glossy leaves form swiftly. On old boughs they
are simple in outline - boat-shaped and rather small; but on young trees and
vigorous new growth they grow large and take on their characteristic mitten
shape -with one "thumb" lobe and a larger terminal lobe. Or they may have
three terminal lobes, the middle one a little longer, a strong vein running
through each lobe. Such a blade is almost unique in our flora, and could be
mistaken for nothing else save perhaps the leaf of our wild Mulberry. But
the Mulberry's mittenshaped leaves are thin, dull, dark green, harsh above,
and manytoothed. The Sassafras blade is thick, waxy-glossy and yellow-green
above while chalky white below, and it has no teeth on the margin. More, the
Sassafras leaves, when chewed, at once set up a mucilaginous slime in the
mouth, like that of Slippery Elm twigs, which country children love to
taste; the hot and thirsty botanist, as well, has been known to resort to
chewing Sassafras to promote salivation, when no water was to be found on
his dusty tramps.
In the North, Sassafras is usually a small tree. Yet in the South it
may reach 80 feet, with a trunk 6 feet thick, and stout branches leaving the
trunk at right angles to form a strong rather than a graceful outline. On
the Lake Michigan dunes of Indiana, Sassafras growing out of pure shifting
sand may be a mere shrub, its stems only limber green canes. In northern
Illinois the Sassafras seems to be gaining ground, much as is the Red Cedar,
and is present now In places from which it was unreported by the first
botanical explorers. Because its bright blue fruits are eagerly eaten by
birds and the seeds carried and then voided, and because the Sassafras does
best not in forest country but in lands opened up by agriculture, it seems
destined to continue to increase its range, while so many other trees are
losing ground.
Its role in American folklore and early exploration is unique.
About it have clung fantastic hopes and promises of gain, and
SUperstitions that have not yet wholly departed. The wood, which has less
shrinkage in drying than any other hardwood (10 per cent), is not only
durable, so that it appealed to the pioneer for fences, and is still
esteemed for small boats, but its odor was reputed to drive away bedbugs;
hence many bedsteads were made of it, in a more innocent age and the more
innocent states of Arkansas and Mississippi. Negro cabin floors in Louisiana
were often laid in Sassafras for the same reason. In Kentucky, where soap is
still sometimes a home product, it is often supposed that the kettle must be
stirred with a Sassafras stick to make a good quality of soap. In West
Virginia it is believed that Sassafras hen-roosts keep out chicken lice.
But it has been the bark on the roots of the tree, yielding an oil once
prized beyond all reason, that gave the Sassafras its fame. As a demulcent
and emollient, oil of Sassafras has never completely ceased to be of some
importance in the manufacture of soaps and perfumes; it disguises the bad
taste of some medicines and may perhaps still be employed in the flavoring
of candy. At one time, however, especially in Virginia, roots were grubbed
out by the ton for the production of this essence, thereby clearing cut-over
land for the farmer and at the same time yielding a paying harvest. But the
old belief in Sassafras as a tonic that would prolong life has yielded place
to acceptance of radio advertisers' claims for vitamins to do the same, and
it is probable that Sassafras at the moment is at an all-time low in its
chequered career.
Yet no other American tree was ever exalted by such imaginary virtues,
in expectation, as Sassafras, or has fallen so far in esteem. Its reputation
was launched upon the world in 1574 by Nicholas Monardes, "physician of
Seville," in his work on the resources of the West Indies (translated into
the English by Frampton), with the delightful title Joyfull Newes Out of the
Newe Founde Worlde. And these are some of his glad tidings:
"From the Florida, which is the firme Lande of our Occidentall Indias,
liying in xxv degrees, thei bryng a woodd and roote of a tree that groweth
in those partes, of greate vertues, and great excellencies, that thei heale
there with greevous and variable deseases.
"It may be three yeres paste, that I had knowledge of this Tree, and a
French marine whiche had been in those partes, shewed me a peece of it, and
told me merveiles of his vertues....
"After that the French menne were destroied, our Spaniards did beginne
to waxe sicke, as the Frenche menne had dooen, and some whiche did remaine
of them, did shew it to our Spaniardes, and how theei had cured them selves
with the water of this merveilous Tree, and the manner which thei had in the
usyng of it, shewed to them by the Indians, who used to cur theim selves
therewith, when thei were sicke of any grief... and it did in theim greate
effectes, that it is almoste incredible....
"The name of this Tree, as the Indians dooeth name it, is called
pauame, and the Frenche merm doeth call it Sassafras."
Monardes goes on to say that Sassafras is a sovereign remedy for
"Quotidian Agewes [malaria], large importunate fevers... it comforteth the
liver and the Stomacke... it dooeth make fatte... doth cause lust to meate."
It is also good for "Tertian Agewes, griefes of the breast caused of cold
humours, griefes of the head," for "them that bee lame and creepelles and
them that are not able to goe."
Such a panacea as this was certain to raise high hopes in the Europe of
that day, when almost no disease was correctly understood in either its
origin or its treatment, so that credulity might mount untrammeled. it was
the easier to believe in a cure-all that came from the New World and had
never failed - because it had never been tried except by the Indians.
Indeed, the early Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and English were as
gullible about "Indian medicine" as the Americans of a later date. The great
value of Sassafras to the red men (aside from the undoubtedly soothing
effect that the mucilaginous properties of its sap would have on raw mucous
membranes) was doubtless in its aromatic nature. A plant with a strong
pleasant smell was supposed to ward off evil, and evil, rather than
bacteria, is believed still, among the Chinese, Indians, and certain
American sects, to be the real cause of sickness.
This conception of the curative, since evil-dispelling, nature of an
odor is very ancient; it goes back to Egyptian and druidical ceremonies and
was strongly believed in by Europeans during the bubonic plague, when
doctors wore great nose-beaks filled with spices; indeed, it survived to our
own times in the only recently abandoned theory of times in the only
recently abandoned theory of fumigation. The American Indians believed,
above all, in the efficacy of tobacco smoke, and it was as a curative that
tobacco was first introduced into Europe; Catherine de' Medici took tobacco
for a cold in the head! Such then is the background, the psychological
preparation, which greeted the first arrivals of Sassafras in Europe. It
rated with the spices of Ormuz and Araby as a precious substance.
Impatient to secure adequate supplies of it, the English charged their
early explorers to search for it. Thus when Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe
dropped anchor in Pimlico Sound, North Carolina, in 1584, they immediately
began the search for Sassafras. In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold was sent out to
explore what is now the coast of New England for the marvelous tree, for the
price of Sassafras in England had risen to E336 sterling the ton. Then in
1603 the merchants of Bristol, urged thereto by Richard Hakluyt, the
celebrated historian and anthologist of early exploration, formed a company
to send to Virginia for the sole purpose of gathering Sassafras. They sailed
in two vessels "plentifully victualled for eight monethes, and furnished
with slight Merchandizes thought fit to trade with the people of the
Countrey, as Hats of divers colours, greene, blue and yellow, apparell of
coarse Kersic and Canvasse readie made, Stockings and Shooes, Axes,
Hatchets, Hookes, Knives, Sizzers, Hammers, Nailes, Chissels, Fishhookes,
Bels, Beades, Bugles, Looking-glasses, Thimbles, Pinnes, Needles, Threed and
such like."
After a long voyage they reached land, probably in the neighborhood of
what is now Old Orchard, Maine. Meeting with no Sassafras there, they
continued southward, always hunting for it, and first encountered it on the
Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. Here they spent a month filling the
hold of the bark with Sassafras and then sent her home to England " to give
some contentment to the Adventurers," that is, satisfy the stockholders. The
remaining company continued to cut Sassafras and load it into the larger
ship, but either this aroused the jealousy of the Indians or the redskins
decided the foreigners had stayed long enough. Several surprise attacks were
made, ambushes were laid, and treachery attempted, but the stout banging of
a brass "Peece" (cannon) and the fear inspired in the natives by two
mastiffs belonging to the Bristol men drove off the Indians, and a fair wind
brought the Sassafras cutters away at last in safety to Bristol and, we
hope, returned great profit to the gentlemen "Adventurers."
Sassafras was one of the first exports sent by Captain John Smith from
the Jamestown colony, and as late as 1610 it was still demanded from
Virginia, like tribute, as a condition of the charter of the colony. But
soon it began to share the fate of other panaceas. It wasn't curing all the
ailments it was claimed to cure. A disillusioned public lost its faith in
Sassafras - but not in panaceas! So, through the years, Sassafras as a
medicament sank to the position of a tonic to "purify the blood" - a
continuation, of course, of the notion that our ailments originate in some I
inner evil. Thus for generations it was administered, in connection with
black cherry and various other unpleasant ingredients, to pioneer children
as the dreaded "spring tonic." Older people left out the unpleasant
ingredients and simply sipped Sassafras tea.
Even that placid custom is becoming a part of the past - that long
American past in which the Sassafras tree shone boldly forth, just as today
when it is only a bright reminder of the time when everything here was
wonderful and new.
on 11/6/04 11:59 PM, altcare@lis.net.au at altcare@lis.net.au wrote:
I don't know if any of this will be useful, but here's what I have in
RefWks:
From something abbreviated HomPhy:
5C. Toothache of a mild type. (The Homeopathic Physician, July, 1893,
Malcolm Macfarlan.)
Sassafras 5C. ‹ Toothache; pain like a coal of fire on passing water;
urine looks as if it had flakes of mucus in it; pain in both tubers ischii,
and intense pain in both hip-joints; abdomen appears distended, and
considerable eructation. (The Homeopathic Physician, March, 1892, page 93.
"Provings and Clinical Observations With High Potencies," Malcolm Macfarlan,
M.D., Philadelphia.)
NA Medicine:
(S. officinale, Laurus sassafras)
Sassafras, Saxafras, ague tree.
Family: Lauraceae
Chemistry: Volatile oil contains -safrole which is carcinogenic.
Recorder '98:
Sassafras [Laurus sassafrass L.] is one of the plants which found
entrance into European pharmacopeias ever since the 16th century. Martius
found it used in S. Paulo as with us, as an abluent, then also as a diuretic
and sudorific. Especially in the form of a decoction it is frequently used
by the settlers.
NHxTrees:
Article by Donald Peattie in A Natural History of Trees (1948).
Against the Indian summer sky, a tree lifts up its hands and testifies
to glory, the glory of a blue October day. Yellow or orange, or bloodorange,
or sometimes softest salmon pink, or blotched with bright vermilion, the
leaves of the Sassafras prove that not all autumnal splendor is confined to
the northern forests. Deep into the South, along the snake-rail fences,
beside the soft wood roads, in old fields where the rusty brook sedge is
giving way to the return of forest, the Sassafras carries its splendid
banners to vie with the scarlet Black Gum and the yellow Sweet Gum and other
trees of which the New Englander may hardly have heard. The deep blue fruits
on thick bright red stalks complete a color effect in fall which few trees
anywhere surpass.
In spring the leafing-out is late - later at least than the
inconspicuous pale gold flowers that bloom on the naked wood. But once they
burst their buds, the heavy glossy leaves form swiftly. On old boughs they
are simple in outline - boat-shaped and rather small; but on young trees and
vigorous new growth they grow large and take on their characteristic mitten
shape -with one "thumb" lobe and a larger terminal lobe. Or they may have
three terminal lobes, the middle one a little longer, a strong vein running
through each lobe. Such a blade is almost unique in our flora, and could be
mistaken for nothing else save perhaps the leaf of our wild Mulberry. But
the Mulberry's mittenshaped leaves are thin, dull, dark green, harsh above,
and manytoothed. The Sassafras blade is thick, waxy-glossy and yellow-green
above while chalky white below, and it has no teeth on the margin. More, the
Sassafras leaves, when chewed, at once set up a mucilaginous slime in the
mouth, like that of Slippery Elm twigs, which country children love to
taste; the hot and thirsty botanist, as well, has been known to resort to
chewing Sassafras to promote salivation, when no water was to be found on
his dusty tramps.
In the North, Sassafras is usually a small tree. Yet in the South it
may reach 80 feet, with a trunk 6 feet thick, and stout branches leaving the
trunk at right angles to form a strong rather than a graceful outline. On
the Lake Michigan dunes of Indiana, Sassafras growing out of pure shifting
sand may be a mere shrub, its stems only limber green canes. In northern
Illinois the Sassafras seems to be gaining ground, much as is the Red Cedar,
and is present now In places from which it was unreported by the first
botanical explorers. Because its bright blue fruits are eagerly eaten by
birds and the seeds carried and then voided, and because the Sassafras does
best not in forest country but in lands opened up by agriculture, it seems
destined to continue to increase its range, while so many other trees are
losing ground.
Its role in American folklore and early exploration is unique.
About it have clung fantastic hopes and promises of gain, and
SUperstitions that have not yet wholly departed. The wood, which has less
shrinkage in drying than any other hardwood (10 per cent), is not only
durable, so that it appealed to the pioneer for fences, and is still
esteemed for small boats, but its odor was reputed to drive away bedbugs;
hence many bedsteads were made of it, in a more innocent age and the more
innocent states of Arkansas and Mississippi. Negro cabin floors in Louisiana
were often laid in Sassafras for the same reason. In Kentucky, where soap is
still sometimes a home product, it is often supposed that the kettle must be
stirred with a Sassafras stick to make a good quality of soap. In West
Virginia it is believed that Sassafras hen-roosts keep out chicken lice.
But it has been the bark on the roots of the tree, yielding an oil once
prized beyond all reason, that gave the Sassafras its fame. As a demulcent
and emollient, oil of Sassafras has never completely ceased to be of some
importance in the manufacture of soaps and perfumes; it disguises the bad
taste of some medicines and may perhaps still be employed in the flavoring
of candy. At one time, however, especially in Virginia, roots were grubbed
out by the ton for the production of this essence, thereby clearing cut-over
land for the farmer and at the same time yielding a paying harvest. But the
old belief in Sassafras as a tonic that would prolong life has yielded place
to acceptance of radio advertisers' claims for vitamins to do the same, and
it is probable that Sassafras at the moment is at an all-time low in its
chequered career.
Yet no other American tree was ever exalted by such imaginary virtues,
in expectation, as Sassafras, or has fallen so far in esteem. Its reputation
was launched upon the world in 1574 by Nicholas Monardes, "physician of
Seville," in his work on the resources of the West Indies (translated into
the English by Frampton), with the delightful title Joyfull Newes Out of the
Newe Founde Worlde. And these are some of his glad tidings:
"From the Florida, which is the firme Lande of our Occidentall Indias,
liying in xxv degrees, thei bryng a woodd and roote of a tree that groweth
in those partes, of greate vertues, and great excellencies, that thei heale
there with greevous and variable deseases.
"It may be three yeres paste, that I had knowledge of this Tree, and a
French marine whiche had been in those partes, shewed me a peece of it, and
told me merveiles of his vertues....
"After that the French menne were destroied, our Spaniards did beginne
to waxe sicke, as the Frenche menne had dooen, and some whiche did remaine
of them, did shew it to our Spaniardes, and how theei had cured them selves
with the water of this merveilous Tree, and the manner which thei had in the
usyng of it, shewed to them by the Indians, who used to cur theim selves
therewith, when thei were sicke of any grief... and it did in theim greate
effectes, that it is almoste incredible....
"The name of this Tree, as the Indians dooeth name it, is called
pauame, and the Frenche merm doeth call it Sassafras."
Monardes goes on to say that Sassafras is a sovereign remedy for
"Quotidian Agewes [malaria], large importunate fevers... it comforteth the
liver and the Stomacke... it dooeth make fatte... doth cause lust to meate."
It is also good for "Tertian Agewes, griefes of the breast caused of cold
humours, griefes of the head," for "them that bee lame and creepelles and
them that are not able to goe."
Such a panacea as this was certain to raise high hopes in the Europe of
that day, when almost no disease was correctly understood in either its
origin or its treatment, so that credulity might mount untrammeled. it was
the easier to believe in a cure-all that came from the New World and had
never failed - because it had never been tried except by the Indians.
Indeed, the early Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and English were as
gullible about "Indian medicine" as the Americans of a later date. The great
value of Sassafras to the red men (aside from the undoubtedly soothing
effect that the mucilaginous properties of its sap would have on raw mucous
membranes) was doubtless in its aromatic nature. A plant with a strong
pleasant smell was supposed to ward off evil, and evil, rather than
bacteria, is believed still, among the Chinese, Indians, and certain
American sects, to be the real cause of sickness.
This conception of the curative, since evil-dispelling, nature of an
odor is very ancient; it goes back to Egyptian and druidical ceremonies and
was strongly believed in by Europeans during the bubonic plague, when
doctors wore great nose-beaks filled with spices; indeed, it survived to our
own times in the only recently abandoned theory of times in the only
recently abandoned theory of fumigation. The American Indians believed,
above all, in the efficacy of tobacco smoke, and it was as a curative that
tobacco was first introduced into Europe; Catherine de' Medici took tobacco
for a cold in the head! Such then is the background, the psychological
preparation, which greeted the first arrivals of Sassafras in Europe. It
rated with the spices of Ormuz and Araby as a precious substance.
Impatient to secure adequate supplies of it, the English charged their
early explorers to search for it. Thus when Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe
dropped anchor in Pimlico Sound, North Carolina, in 1584, they immediately
began the search for Sassafras. In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold was sent out to
explore what is now the coast of New England for the marvelous tree, for the
price of Sassafras in England had risen to E336 sterling the ton. Then in
1603 the merchants of Bristol, urged thereto by Richard Hakluyt, the
celebrated historian and anthologist of early exploration, formed a company
to send to Virginia for the sole purpose of gathering Sassafras. They sailed
in two vessels "plentifully victualled for eight monethes, and furnished
with slight Merchandizes thought fit to trade with the people of the
Countrey, as Hats of divers colours, greene, blue and yellow, apparell of
coarse Kersic and Canvasse readie made, Stockings and Shooes, Axes,
Hatchets, Hookes, Knives, Sizzers, Hammers, Nailes, Chissels, Fishhookes,
Bels, Beades, Bugles, Looking-glasses, Thimbles, Pinnes, Needles, Threed and
such like."
After a long voyage they reached land, probably in the neighborhood of
what is now Old Orchard, Maine. Meeting with no Sassafras there, they
continued southward, always hunting for it, and first encountered it on the
Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. Here they spent a month filling the
hold of the bark with Sassafras and then sent her home to England " to give
some contentment to the Adventurers," that is, satisfy the stockholders. The
remaining company continued to cut Sassafras and load it into the larger
ship, but either this aroused the jealousy of the Indians or the redskins
decided the foreigners had stayed long enough. Several surprise attacks were
made, ambushes were laid, and treachery attempted, but the stout banging of
a brass "Peece" (cannon) and the fear inspired in the natives by two
mastiffs belonging to the Bristol men drove off the Indians, and a fair wind
brought the Sassafras cutters away at last in safety to Bristol and, we
hope, returned great profit to the gentlemen "Adventurers."
Sassafras was one of the first exports sent by Captain John Smith from
the Jamestown colony, and as late as 1610 it was still demanded from
Virginia, like tribute, as a condition of the charter of the colony. But
soon it began to share the fate of other panaceas. It wasn't curing all the
ailments it was claimed to cure. A disillusioned public lost its faith in
Sassafras - but not in panaceas! So, through the years, Sassafras as a
medicament sank to the position of a tonic to "purify the blood" - a
continuation, of course, of the notion that our ailments originate in some I
inner evil. Thus for generations it was administered, in connection with
black cherry and various other unpleasant ingredients, to pioneer children
as the dreaded "spring tonic." Older people left out the unpleasant
ingredients and simply sipped Sassafras tea.
Even that placid custom is becoming a part of the past - that long
American past in which the Sassafras tree shone boldly forth, just as today
when it is only a bright reminder of the time when everything here was
wonderful and new.
on 11/6/04 11:59 PM, altcare@lis.net.au at altcare@lis.net.au wrote: