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- 
pur eum, 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. 
