Use of Medicinal Plants
There can be no doubt that in course of time a haphazard use of plants would naturally lead to the discovery that certain herbs are efficacious in certain combinations of symptoms. These plants would thus come into more frequent use & finally would obtain general recognition in the Indian materia medica. By such a process of evolution an empiric system of medicine has grown up among the Cherokees, by which they are able to treat some classes of ailments with some degree of success, although without any intelligent idea of the process involved. It must be remembered that our own medical system has its remote origin in the same mythic conception of disease, & that within two hundred years judicial courts have condemned women to be burned to death for producing sickness by spells & incantations, while even at the present day our faith-cure professors reap their richest harvest among people commonly supposed to belong to the intelligent classes. In the treatment of wounds the Cherokee doctors exhibit a considerable degree of skill, but as far as any internal ailment is concerned the average farmer’s wife is worth all the doctors in the whole tribe.
...The patient has much to do with his recovery, for the Indian has the same implicit confidence in the shaman that a child has in a more intelligent physician. The ceremonies & prayers are well calculated to inspire this feeling, & the effect thus produced upon the mind of the sick man undoubtedly reacts favorably upon his physical organization.
The following list of twenty plants used in Cherokee practice will give a better idea of the extent of their medical knowledge than [pg 324]could be conveyed by a lengthy dissertation. The names are given in the order in which they occur in the botanic notebook filled on the reservation, excluding names of food plants & species not identified, so that no attempt has been made to select in accordance with a preconceived theory. Following the name of each plant are given its uses as described by the Indian doctors, together with its properties as set forth in the United States Dispensatory, one of the leading pharmacopœias in use in this country. For the benefit of those not versed in medical phraseology it may be stated that aperient, cathartic, & deobstruent are terms applied to medicines intended to open or purge the bowels, a diuretic has the property of exciting the flow of urine, a diaphoretic excites perspiration, & a demulcent protects or soothes irritated tissues, while hæmoptysis denotes a peculiar variety of blood-spitting & aphthous is an adjective applied to ulcerations in the mouth.
James Mooney. The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886, US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 301-398
