This section of the book is from "The Complete Herbalist" by Dr. O. Phelps Brown. Also available from Amazon: The Complete Herbalist: The People Their Own Physicians By The Use Of Nature's Remedies.
MEDICINAL PARTS. The whole plant.
Description. -- While traveling in Paraguay,
South America, some years ago, I became acquainted with a species of Eupatorium
or Lungwort called Aya-pana, possessed of most extraordinary virtues in
consumption and other diseases of the chest. In Paraguay, which is
a very paradise on earth, numerous medicinal herbs of exceeding great value
grow to the greatest perfection. The Aya-pana belongs to the class
of Eupatorium Perfoliatum, though quite unlike the Lungwort and Thorough-wort,
indigenous to North America. The Aya-pana is only found on the eastern
slope of the Andes, on the mountain sides, along the sunny banks of streams,
and beautifully luxuriant on all the tributaries to the Amazon, and La
Plata especially. It is a perennial plant, with numerous erect, round,
hairy stems, five to ten feet high, the stalk plain below, but branching
out in numerous stems near the top. The leaves grow on the opposite
sides of the base. The direction of each pair of leaves is at right
angles with that of the pair either above or beneath. The leaves
are long and narrow, broadest at the base where they coalesce, gradually
tapering to a serrated point, wrinkled, palish green on the under surface,
and beset with white silken hairs, which add much effect to their greenish-gray
color. The flowers are snow-white, slightly tinged with a purplish
hue at the end, very numerous, supported on hairy peduncles. The
calyx is cylindrical, and composed of imbricated, lanceolate, hairy scales,
inclosing from twelve to fifteen tubular florets, having their border divided
into five spreading segments. There are five black anthers united
in a tube, through which a bifid filiform style projects above the flower,
rendering the whole a beautiful and picturesque plant.
History. -- It flowers constantly during
the dry or sunny season, the blossoms and leaves being only used for medicinal
purposes. The flowers are better than the leaves, have an aromatic
odor, resembling slightly chamomile, and possess a strong bitter taste,
somewhat like horehound or quassia, which virtue is imparted either to
water or alcohol. Resin, gum, balsam, and mucilage are among the
principal constituents of the flowers. The flowers are gathered in
the morning on sunny days, carefully dried in the sun or by artificial
heat, when they are put up in bags or cedar boxes, and become ready for
medicinal use. Prepared in this way, the flowers and leaves retain
their properties for years, improving in their virtues by age, adding to
their rich honey-like yellow coloring matter when distilled for medical
purposes.
Properties and Uses. -- This plant may rightly
be regarded as a specific in all forms of pulmonary and bronchial affections.
It has also great influence over the valvular action of the heart, in its
healthful invigoration of the arterial and venous systems, and its wonderful
power in expelling carbonic acid from the air-cells and pulmonary vessels,
prior to the elimination of rich vermilion blood through the great aorta
of the human economy.
It is one of the ingredients of my "Acacian Balsam"
(see page 469), which, with various other remarkable medicinal agents,
forms one of the most wonderful remedies for coughs, colds, and consumption
ever compounded. The plant is not much known in this country, and
only imported by myself, and can consequently not be had in apothecaries.
 
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