516 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1941 



had learned its use in fevers from the Indians, it was described by 

 Nicolaeus Monardes of Se villa (1574) and it was soon imported into 

 Europe in large quantities. Spreading from Spain and France, its 

 use became well known in Frankfort-on-Main in 1582 and in Ham- 

 burg a few years later. Such was the demand for the new drug 

 that sailing expeditions were despatched to America to bring back 

 the root. An English merchant, Martin Pring, visited the American 

 coast in the summer of 1603, and following it to the south in search 

 of sassafras, returned in August, his two vessels laden. Until 1622 

 Virginia colonists were drawing the roots in winter and exporting 

 them in quantities equal with tobacco.®* That so valuable a drug 

 was growing in the Iroquois country naturally pleased the founders 

 of the short-lived French colony at Onondaga Lake. Its presence 

 there furnished Father Dablon a pleasant topic to offset some hard- 

 ships in writing "Of the nature and peculiarities of the Iroquois 

 country." 



But the most common and most wonderful plant in those countries is that 

 which we call the universal plant, because its leaves, when powdered, 

 heal in a short time wounds of all kinds; these leaves which are as broad as 

 one's hand, have the shape of a lily as depicted in heraldry ; and its roots have 

 the smell of the laurel. The most vivid scarlet, the brightest green, the most 

 natural yellow and orange of Europe pale before the various colors that our 

 savages [the Onondaga] procure from its roots.s" 



Since it had been long known among them as a blood purifier, it 

 is not strange that the Iroquois employed it to heal venereal diseases ; 

 Lafitau implies this use was ancient on the supposition that these 

 diseases were carried from America to Europe.^® Regardless of the 

 origin of these diseases, by the middle of the eighteenth century, 

 when the work of Kalm and others made sassafras known botanic- 

 ally, its use in their cure was so well known in Europe that English 

 gentlemen had abandoned drinking tea of sassafras flowers lest in 

 using it they be suspected of infection. Kalm found the Swedes of 

 New Jersey putting sassafras peels in beer, recommending it as an 

 insecticide against moths and bedbugs to the extent of turning their 

 bedposts out of the wood; and the women of Philadelphia had 

 learned, perhaps from the Delaware, to make a fast orange dye for 

 worsteds. Medicinally, an old Swedish woman had employed a de- 

 coction in cases of dropsy; and near Albany, Kalm learned that the 

 natives [Mohawks?] considered the sassafras valuable in treating 

 diseased eyes. 



They take the young slips, cut them into halves, scrape out the pith or the 

 medulla, put it into water, and after it has been there for some time, wash the 



«* Lloyd, John U., Laurus Sassafras, in Pharmaceutical Rev., December 1898, pp. 450-459. 

 » Relation of 1656-57, Paul Le Jeune, ed. ; Jesuit Relations, vol. 43, p. 259. 

 •« Lafitau, J. F., op. eit., vol. 2, p. 368. 



