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 issilphium. In the Index Catalogue, the wordrosin-weeddoes not appear, but, in the first series, undersilphium, there are ten references, and thereby hangs a tale.
Ancient Silphium.In ancient Greek and Roman medicine there was a famous gum calledsilphion(Latinsilphium) 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 disappearedfrom 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 ofsilphium 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 theancient 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 theDictionnaire Encyclopædique des Sciences Médicales, Paris, 1881, Volume 9.
Now, with one exception, all the references tosilphiumin the Index Catalogue refer to thissilphioncontroversy and have nothing to do with our Americansilphiumorrosin-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 genussilphiumin memory of the ancient silphion of Cyrene and the plain people called itrosin-weed. There are more than twenty species of rosin-weed or silphium, allprobably similar in their medicinal virtues. The species that we have used in hay fever is thesilphium 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 orall-healing juiceof southern Europe, the spruce gum and pine tar of rural America and the more valued resins of the Eastwhere, 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 theDictionnaire des Sciences Médicaleswas 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 theEclectic Medical Reviewin 1868. This article was abstracted in thePacific Medical and Surgical Journal,in theNashville Journal of Medicine and Surgeryand in Francis Porcher'sMedical 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 Homœopaths.Rosin-weed comes into the homœopathic school through "the indefatigable Dr. Hale," as Richard Hughes calls him. The homœopathic 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 hisCharacteristics of New Remediesin 1864. In 1868, Dr. Garrison published his paperon the use of rosin-weed in asthma and Dr. Hale, in his third edition of 1873, included rosin-weed under the namesilphium 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 inasthma. Eclectic physicians value it highly in throat affections. Some homœopathic physicians, Drs. Small, Kendall and others have used it with gratifying results.—Hale.)Horsesthat eat of the leaves mixed in hay are cured or relieved of theheavesand chronic loose cough.Catarrh of the bladder.
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 inasthma. Eclectic physicians value it highly in throat affections. Some homœopathic physicians, Drs. Small, Kendall and others have used it with gratifying results.—Hale.)
Horsesthat eat of the leaves mixed in hay are cured or relieved of theheavesand 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 theHahnemannian Monthly, Volume 8, June, 1873, page 536, from the report of a meeting of the Philadelphia County Homœopathic 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; roughcough, 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."
"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; roughcough, 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 homœopaths 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 afew 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 Pharmacopœia but it is none the worse for that. More people have been poisoned by the drugs inside of the Pharmacopœia 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 theNashville 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, entitledNew Medicines, which I suspect to be taken chiefly from Dr. Hale'sNew 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 courtesyin replying to my inquiries about this little known plant:
"Rosin weed is a general name for all species of the genussilphiumof 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."
"Rosin weed is a general name for all species of the genussilphiumof 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 homœopaths 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 withrosin-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 homœopathic 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 Homœopathy, where the use ofrosin-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, homœopathic 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 homœopathic principle but I believe that the question needs the verification of further proving.