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Before European immigration to North America and for some time afterwards, the Indigenous peoples maintained an extensive stock of herbal medicines that they gathered from the forests, plains and mountains of their environment. This well-illustrated handbook describes 52 of the best-known herbs used by the First Peoples of North America. Each plant is identified by locale, sketch and photograph, and the uses to which each was put are briefly described.
Tonics, inhalants, poultices, laxatives, diuretics, sedatives - there was a plant for every need. Some of these tribal remedies passed - often in more sophisticated form - into the repertoire of the medical profession; many others have a secure place in the annals of folk medicine.
More than 200 medicinal plants indigenous to the Americas have been official in the United States Pharmacopoeia since the first edition was published in 1820. In addition to these, perhaps another 300 herbs known to Indigenous healers have been used by doctors, and a considerable number of these have been investigated by pharmaceutical firms and brought out under various names in the form of extracts or compounds or in synthetic forms.
