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of the family, or that of a neighbor, be taken with a cold. How many children 
have winced when the maternal edict: “drink this boneset; it'll do you good,” has 
been issued; and how many old men have craned their necks to allow the nause- 
ous draught to the quicker pass the palate! The use of a hot infusion of the tops 
and leaves to produce diaphoresis, was handed down to the early settlers of this 
country by the Aborigines, who called it by a name that is equivalent to ague-weed. 
It was first introduced, as a plant, into England in 1699; but was not used in 
medical practice, even in this country, until about the year 1800, but it now has a 
place in every work on Medical Botany which treats of North American plants. 
Eupatorium perfoliatum is diaphoretic only when given in generous doses of 
the hot infusion ; a cold decoction is claimed to be tonic and stimulant in moderately 
small, laxative in medium, and emetic in large doses. It is also said to be anti- 
dyspeptic and anti-rheumatic. It is prominently adapted to cure a disease peculiar 
to the South, known as break-bone fever (Dengue), and it is without doubt from 
this property that the name boneset was derived. This herb has also been found 
to be curative in intermittent fever, bilious fever, bilious colic, typhus, and typhoid 
conditions, influenza, catarrhal fever, rheumatism, lake fever, yellow fever, and 
remittent types of fevers in general. Many of the earlier works allude to this 
species as being diuretic, and therefore of great use in dropsy; this is evidently 
an error of substitution, the previously described drug being the species used. 
Dr. Barton, who had made this species one in general use in his practice, 
_ observes as follows: “The late Samuel C. Hopkins, M.D., who resided in the 
_ village of Woodbury, N. J., and had an extensive practice in a range.of fifteen or 
twenty miles of a populous tract of country, in which, from the low and marshy 
nature of the soil—exposure of many of the inhabitants holding fisheries, to the 
water and other pernicious causes—intermittent and typhus fevers were very | 
prevalent, and the latter particularly malignant. The Doctor was among those 
partial to the sweating plan of treating this fever, and his unusual success in a 
multitude of cases for five or six years in succession, is strongly in favor of that 
mode of practice. The boneset was the medicine used in producing this effect. 
He prescribed it freely in warm and cold decoction, but preferred the warm. He 
assured me that in many instances his sole. reliance was upon this plant, which was 
occasionally so varied in its manner of exhibition as to produce emesis, and fre- 
quently was intentionally pushed to such extent as to excite free purging. Its 
diaphoretic effect, however, he deemed it indispensable to ensure, and therefore 
preferred in general giving it warm.” * | 7 
My friend, Dr. Henry S. Sloan, of this city, relates his personal experience 
with this drug as follows: When a young man, living in the central part of this 
State, he was attacked with intermittent fever, which lasted off and on for three 
years. Being of a bilious temperament, he grew at length sallow, emaciated, and 
hardly able to get about. As he sat one day, resting by the side of the road, an 
old lady of his acquaintance told him to go home and have some thoroughwort 
* Barton, Med. Bot., ii, 136. 
