This document summarizes the political history of herbal medicine in the United States from colonial times to the early 20th century. It describes how Native American and African American herbal traditions influenced early settlers. Herbalists, often women, were the primary caregivers initially. Regular physicians trained in Europe also practiced. The Thomsonian and Eclectic movements popularized herbalism but lost ground as allopathic medicine became the dominant model after the 1910 Flexner Report. This established medical schools and practice standards, favoring allopathy. While some herbal practices continued underground, goldenseal adulteration and conservation issues emerged as its popularity grew again later.

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