Boneset, Eupatorium perfoliatum

Boneset

Scientific Name: Eupatorium perfoliatum

Part Used: Whole plant

In a Word: Flu Buster

Uses: To stop a case of Influenza or the Common Cold from developing; to stop secondary infections developing when you Influenza or the common cold (tonsillitis, bronchitis, pneumonia)

While the flu, or influenza as it is properly known, is rarely more than an inconvenience today, it used to be a life-threatening illness. One of the first recorded flu epidemics raged among the Greek soldiers at the siege of Syracuse, 395 BC. There were epidemics of lethal flu in 827, 888, 927, and 996. It seems that another big epidemic swept Italy, Germany, and England in December of 1173. More followed in the winters of 1293, 1323, and 1387. Another epidemic ravaged Spain, Italy, Hungary, Germany, France, and England in 1510. A major influenza outbreak in the 1920s in the United States left so many dead that bodies were stacked in great heaps outside of the White House in Washington, D.C.

A highly infectious disease, influenza is passed from one person to the next with a simple exhalation. Dr. Rollo Thomas writing during the last American epidemic said this of it: "Its force is irresistible, and it spares neither age, sex, nor condition. The millionaire and the pauper stand helpless before this nemesis. Fortunately, unless severe complications arise or the treatment be too heroic, the mortality is small."

The flu itself is not the killer, although it can make you feel as if you are dying. What kills people in a flu epidemic are the secondary infections like pneumonia that set in once the flu has taken its toll. For this reason, the elderly, the young, and the infirm can be in big trouble if they come down with the flu.

To give credit where credit is due, the advent of antibiotics is the reason flu doesn’t kill people as it once did. Central heating and proper nutrition also have a lot to do with the fact that flu doesn’t usually turn into pneumonia.

Before the age of the prescription pad, doctors kept lots of boneset on hand for the flu season.

Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the easiest way to deal with the flu is to avoid getting it in the first place. If you speak to people about when they came down with flu, you will find time and time again that it sank its claws in when they were run-down and tired. Take care of yourself, sleep and eat right, and you can avoid getting the flu for a long time.

People in the past were as interested as we are in medicines that could cure the flu as quickly as possible. In 1993, Americans spent several billion dollars on flu preparations. In the days when a touch of the flu could mean permanent rest for the patient, the number-one herbal medicine for treating the condition was a plant called boneset, Eupatorium perfoliatum. The plant is a native of North America, and it is from the American frontier that its powers were first extolled. In Mispaugh’s 1892 volume, American Medicinal Plants, he wrote:

There is probably no plant in American domestic practice that has more extensive or frequent use than boneset. The attic, or woodshed, of almost every country farm house has its bunch of dried herb hanging, tops downward from the rafters during the whole year, ready for immediate use should some member of the family, or that of a neighbor, be taken with a cold… the use of a hot infusion of the tips and leaves to produce diaphoresis, was handed down to the early settlers of this country by the aborigines, who called it by name that which is equivalent to ague-weed.

The plant gets its name directly from its use in treating the flu. One of the first flu symptoms is aching bones, hence the old-fashioned name for the illness, break-bone fever. People who wanted to put an end to the aches and pains associated with the flu found that boneset did the trick.

So what happened? Where has boneset gone? If you ask most Americans today what boneset is, they couldn’t pick it out of a field if they had a gun pointed to their heads. It is certainly not hanging from their rafters. One of the most powerful plants for treating the flu can be found growing wild in most wet places in the country, but few even know it exists.

Boneset’s power to relieve flu symptoms is unparalleled. Before the age of the prescription pad, doctors kept lots of boneset on hand for the flu season. The Eclectic physicians used it to treat influenza, constipation, rheumatism, influenzal colds, fevers, poor digestion, night sweats, achy bones, pulmonary inflammation and congestion, cough, chest soreness, postinfluenzal gastric irritation, biliousness, skin diseases, eruptive skin diseases, remittent, intermittent, and typhoid fevers, general debility, headache, and hoarseness. As you can see, almost all of the symptoms of flu are treated by this one-plant medicine chest, particularly fever.

In 1828, an early plant researcher named Raffinesque described the plant this way:

Common in swamps, marshes and near streams… where it appears to have been stationed by the benevolence of nature, where ever men are liable to local fever… the whole plants, roots, stems, leaves, are intensely bitter, but not astringent. It was one of the most powerful remedies of the native tribes for fevers, and consumption. It has been introduced extensively into practice all over the country and inserted in all our medical works. It acts powerfully on the skin and removes obstinate cutaneous diseases. This plant may be so managed as to act as a tonic, sudorific, laxative or an emetic, as required. No other tonic of equal activity can be exhibited in fevers, with less danger of increasing the excitement or producing congestion, the only objection to its general use is its nauseous and disagreeable taste. Chapman relates that it cured the kind of influenza called breakbone fever, acting as a diaphoretic, whence its popular name, boneset came. Eberle says that catarrhal fevers may be removed by drinking a weak infusion of it going to bed. It is particularly useful in indigestion of people, and may be used as an axillary to other tonics and emetics in all cases.

The settlers learned early on of boneset from the Native Americans. Boneset is a perennial plant, coming up each year from the same roots, it tends to be found in groves, usually near the edge of a wood. The tribes familiar with boneset used it to treat all infectious illnesses, colds, fevers, and debilitated conditions. Colonial homemakers gathered it from the woods and dried it in the eaves of their houses to have on hand whenever anyone came down with the flu. The early medical community knew boneset and swore by it, terming it a bitter tonic. In 1917, one drug supply company called it "one of the most valuable remedies for breaking up colds and fevers, and efficient for dyspepsia, jaundice, fever, ague and general debility of the system."

The plant contains sesquiterne lactones, eupafolin, euperfolitin, eufoliatorin, euperfolide, eucannabinolide, and helenalin, polysaccharides including 4-o-methylglucuroxylan; flavonoids including quercetin, kaempferol, hyperoside, astragalan, rutin, and eupatorin; diterpenes, triterpenes, dendroidinic acid, hebenolide, sterols, resin, and volatile oils. The polysaccharides have been shown to improve the function of the immune system, and the sesquiterpene lactones and flavones have been proven to inhibit tumor formation. The exact manner in which boneset perks up the flu sufferer is not yet understood, but all we really need to know right now for our purposes is that it works.

You may have noticed that whereas ten years ago, when you got the flu, it lasted for a week from start to finish, today, when you get the flu, you can be out of action for nearly a month. There are two schools of thought as to why this is true. The first holds that flu strains are getting stronger. The second holds that people are running themselves so ragged these days that their bodies aren’t strong enough to fight off the infection. In either case, boneset’s ability to strengthen the body means that your flu will only last for a week and won’t lead to secondary illnesses.

Practitioner’s Advice

The exciting thing about boneset, or the flu buster, as I like to call it, is that you needn’t let your flu develop into a complete case. As soon as the first symptoms appear, go to bed and stay there drinking hot cups of boneset tea until the sickness passes. With rest, good food, and boneset tea, you can skip the pleasures of full-blown flu and certainly any secondary infections. Stay on boneset tea for one week beyond the time when all your symptoms have disappeared. If you haven’t been able to stop the flu’s progression, or if your flu has already progressed, continue taking boneset and any other herbs in the following sections necessary to treat your particular symptoms.

http://www.planetbotanic.ca/fact_sheets/boneset.htm