Boneset

Have to wear boots each morning to walk.  Phinnie’s belly gets wet and dirty but we both enjoy the morning scenes so off we go.

I learned about the white wild herb Boneset.  Maybe I should gather some In case I get the COVID, but my Boneset may be the killer weed—Snakeroot.  Boneset is also called Joe Pye weed.  Joe Pye was an Indian medicine man in New England who cured typhus using Eupatorium perfoliatum, boneset.  It relieved symptoms of break-bone (dengue) fever.

Boneset was introduced by the Indians to American culture as a remedy for fever. They used it to induce sweating in order to break fevers. Supposedly they often fought fever which caused a deep muscular ache so intense that it made one feel as if their bones were breaking - thus the name, boneset - as it rid the body of the fever, the bones no longer ached. However, the history would seem to go farther back than our native Americans. There are reports of the plant also being used as far away as Asia Minor as long ago as 100-ish BC. Mithridates Eupator was the king of Pontus in Asia Minor from 120 to 63 BCE. He had to flee a murderous mother, supposedly, as heir to the throne and in his exile to the wilderness, he purposefully consumed small amounts of poisonous plants to build up his immunity. One of the plants he was supposed to have ingested was from the genus that now bears his name, Eupatorium, of which common boneset is but one of 200 species. He likely ate some White Snakeroot too.  It is extremely toxic and has the notoriety of having killed Abe Lincoln’s mother via the milk she drank from cows who’d eaten it.