146 



Old Time Gardens 



Goldenrod and vivid Sunflowers. Joe Pye was an 

 Indian medicine-man of old New England, famed 

 among his white neighbors for his skill in curing 

 the devastating typhoid fevers which, in those days 

 of no drainage and ignorance of sanitation, vied with 



so-called " he- 

 reditary " con- 

 sumption in 

 exterminating 

 New England 

 families. His 

 cure-all was a bit- 

 ter tea decocted 

 from leaves and 

 stalks of this 

 Eupatorium pur- 

 pureum^ and in 

 token of his suc- 

 cess the plant 

 bears every- 

 where his name, 

 but it is now 

 wholly neglected 

 by the simpler 

 and herb-doctor. 

 The sister plant, 

 the Eupatorium perfoliatum^ known as Thorough- 

 wort, Boneset, Ague-weed, or Indian Sage, grows 

 everywhere by its side, and is also used in fevers. 

 It was as efficacious in "break bone fever" in the 

 South a century ago as it is now for the grippe, for 

 it still is used, North and South, in many a country 



Boneset. 



