458 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
Popular confidence in Indian medicine remained strong during the 
early 19th century, when the population was flowing over the Appa- 
lachians. The “yarb and root” doctor, red or white, played a prom- 
inent role in many communities. In 1813 in Cincinnati there was 
published “The Indian Doctor’s Dispensatory.” Other books fol- 
lowed, including Selman’s “The Indian Guide to Health” (1836) and 
Foster’s “The North American Indian Doctor, or Nature’s Method 
of Curing and Preventing Disease According to the Indians” (1838). 
In a lecture given at the New York Academy of Medicine in 1936, 
Dr. Harlow Brooks (emeritus professor of clinical medicine, New 
York University) said: 
The universal testimony of those qualified to judge has been that even within 
the memory of my generation we have incorporated into our pharmacopoeia and 
practice a good many practices and drugs of our Indian predecessors. ... 
The leading doctor in my boyhood memory, in the district in which my parents 
settled, was an old Sioux medicine man, whose services were considered by the 
territorial government so valuable that when his tribe was removed to a reser- 
vation he was asked to remain with his white patients, among whom were 
my own parents. I am sure that much of the medicine I received as an infant 
and child was derived directly from the lore of this fine, learned, and much 
respected old man. In those days it was on the service of these men that our 
pioneers relied for medical help; otherwise, little or none at all was avail- 
able to the early settler.” 
What is particularly interesting is not merely the incorporation 
in our pharmacopoeia of some aboriginal drugs, but the positive 
attitude toward Indian medicine and charms that has persisted into 
the 20th century. For instance, old Seneca families still sell 
wild flowers and sassafras on certain street corners in Buffalo, and 
the Pamunkey Indians of Virginia until a decade ago went to Wash- 
ington every spring to sell sassafras and other herbs. In “Triple 
Western” (fall, 1954) there is a short item on “Medicine Man’s 
Wisdom.” 
The potencies attributed to Indian herbal remedies have had still 
other manifestations in our culture, an important one being the med- 
icine show. While not all these shows made use of the Indian, 
most of them did. It has been said that “as a symbol” the native 
“was as important to the med-show platform as the wooden Indian 
was to the tobacco shop.” It exploited the image that had already 
been created of him as a “healer.” When Chief Chauncey Kills-in- 
the-Bush Yellow Robe died, eulogies appeared in the theatrical press. 
Rolling Thunder, the owner of the Kiowa Indian Medicine and Vaude- 
ville Company, commented on these as follows: 
It is fine to see this intelligent recognition of the life work of an Indian. 
Too many people have always thought of the American Indian as next to a 
beast. There are some who are now learning the truth: that the Indian’s drug- 
4 Harlow Brooks, The contribution of the primitive American to medicine, in I. Goldston 
(ed.), “Medicine and Mankind,” p. 87. New York. 1936. 
