Echinacea angustifolia, Heller
Common Names: Narrow-leaved Purple Coneflower, Purple Coneflower.
Nat.Ord. Compositae
Part Used. The dried root of Brauneria angustifolia, Linn. Echinacea angustifolia DeCandolle, Heller.
Preparations. Specific Medicine Echinacea
Dose, 1 to 60 drops, the smaller doses being preferred. Usual method of administration: Rx. Specific Medicine Echinacea, 1-2 fluid drachms; Water, enough for 4 fluid ounces. Mix. Sig.: One teaspoonful every 1 to 3 hours.
Found, In rich prairie soils of western United States, from Illinois westward through Nebraska and southward through Missouri to Texas
Principal Constituents. Minute traces of an unimportant alkaloid and an acrid body, ½ to 1 per cent, probably of a resinous character linked with an organic acid. The latter is the chief active principle of the drug.
Specific
Indications. "Bad
blood"; to correct fluid depravation, with tendency to sepsis and
malignancy, best shown in its power in gangrene, carbuncles, boils,
sloughing and phagedenic ulcerations, and the various forms of septicemia;
tendency to formation of multiple cellular abscesses of a semi-active
character and with pronounced asthenia; foul discharges with emaciation and
great debility.
Action. The physiological action of Echinacea has never been satisfactorily determined. It has been held to increase phagocytosis and to improve both leukopenia and hyperleucocytosis. That it stimulates and hastens the elimination of waste is certain, and that it possesses some antibacterial power seems more than probable. Upon the mucous tissues Echinacea causes a quite persistent disagreeable tingling sensation somewhat allied to, but less severe, than that of prickly ash and aconite. It increases the salivary and the urinary flow, but sometimes under diseased conditions anuria results while it is being administered. In the doses usually given no decided unpleasant symptoms have been produced; and no reliable cases of fatal poisoning in human beings have been recorded from its use. Occasionally bursting headache, joint pains, dry tongue, reduced temperature and gastro-intestinal disturbances with diarrhea are said to have resulted from large doses of the drug.
Therapy. External. Echinacea is a local antiseptic, stimulant, deodorant, and anesthetic. Alcoholic preparations applied to denuded surfaces cause considerable burning discomfort, but as soon as the alcohol is evaporated a sense of comfort and lessening of previous pain is experienced. Its deodorant powers are remarkable, especially when applied to foul surfaces.
Internal. Echinacea is stimulant, tonic, depurative, and especially strongly antiseptic; it is in a lesser degree anesthetic and antiputrefactive. The necessity for remedies that possess a general antiseptic property and favor the elimination of caco-plastic material is most marked when one is treating diseases which show a depraved condition of the body and its fluids. Such a remedy for "blood depravation," if we may use that term, is Echinacea. No explanation of its action has even been satisfactorily given, and that a simple drug should possess such varied and remarkable therapeutic forces and not be a poison itself is an enigma still to be solved, and one that must come as a novelty to those whose therapy is that of heroic medicines only. If there is any meaning in the term alterative it is expressed in the therapy of Echinacea. For this very reason has a most excellent medicine been lauded extravagantly and come near to damnation through the extravagant praises of its admirers.
Echinacea is a remedy for auto infection, and where the blood stream becomes slowly infected either from within or without the body. Elimination is imperfect, the body tissues become altered, and there is developed within the fluids and tissues septic action with adynamia resulting in boils, carbuncles, cellular tissue inflammations, abscesses, and other septicaemic processes. It is, therefore, a drug indicated by the changes manifested in a disturbed balance of the fluids of the body resulting in tissue alteration: be the cause infectious by organisms, or devitalized morbid accumulations, or alterations in the blood itself.
Echinacea was introduced as a potent remedy for the bites of the rattlesnake and venomous insects. It was used both externally and internally. Within bounds the remedy has retained its reputation in these accidents, it probably having some power to control the virulence of the venom, or to enable the body to resist depression and pass the ordeal successfully; nevertheless fatalities have occurred in spite of its use. For ordinary stings and bites its internal as well as external use is advisable.
Edited and abridged from:
The Eclectic Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics.
by Harvey Wickes Felter, M.D., 1922
