Complete Text (Part 1)

. ■ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ^n/5 i|up, iop^ng^t Ifta Shelf— ?..1& UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. mmmammm Dr. William M. Starr. * * * * M IN DEFENSE OF MEDICAL BOTANY. THIRD EDITION LI &lt;T C0PVR!GH / |VAUJB' BY TS<.<oVVt * DR. WIL IL STARR. * WASHINGTON, D. C. * * ¥ * ¥ J Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1891, By Dr. WII,I,IAM M. STARR, In the office of the librarian of Congress, at Washington* PREFACE. The design of this work is to profit the many thousand persons who are suffering from diseases of every kind, even to the advanced or chronic stage. I presume that ever}r man, woman, and child farmer, mechanic and da}^ laborer, as well as profess- ional men, have a right to acquire all the knowledge it is in their power to grasp. This book is calculated for the many who are not able to obtain the important and essential medical knowledge that is necessarj" for the perpetuation of health, longevity, wealth, and hap- piness, b}T purchasing the regular medical text books of our classical colleges, as well as those who live in the palace and take pleasure in the barouche and phae- ton. It is to teach the humble and poor, the farmer and mechanic, the merchant and his clerk, that God, in his infinite wisdom, has created and grown an herb with medicinal properties to prove a balm to every ail- ment that the human organization is heir to. My ob- ject is also to teach the many that a large number of these Valuable herbs, roots, barks, leaves and flowers, grow within the immediate reach of those who may be unfortunate enough to need them to heal their ail- ments. Every person's physical organization is his own, and he has a right to understand it, and most especially hygiene and Nature's remedies that will relieve and heal all afflictions or at least a great many of them, or the great majority of them. It is admitted by all of our classical medical men, that the great masses of the people know too little about themselves and remedies that grow in their yards, gardens, and woodlands. It is the author's object to acquaint the people with an important and valuable knowl- edge of the medical action of a great many of our most- common herbs, roots, barks, flowers, and leaves, and he will teach how to gather them in the proper season, and cure them by the proper process, so that they may have and retain all of their original pure medicinal virtues, and so that they can well un- derstand how to make their own gatherings into safe, reliable, and efficient infusions, decoctions, and tinc- tures; their dose, and how to administer; when and what for. Knowledge is power, and he who seeks it is wise, and he who neglects it does so to his own sor- row and detriment. Hippocrates, who is admitted by • the medical profession to be the father of medicine, says : "All men ought to be acquainted with the medical art." I have written this work with the be- lief that the people in general are ready to receive such knowledge, and will be thankful for and profit, fey it. DR. WM, M. STARR.. SKETCH OF DR. WM. M. STARR'S LIFE Dr. Starr, whose office is at No. 709 G Street, northwest, is a native of Virginia, born in Prince William County in 1813; moving to Ohio in 1817. He resided there until the commencement of the Mexican War, in which he took an active part. In 1849 he made his way to California, where he orga- nized a company to fight Indians in the Digger Indian outbreak, and held them in check until Gen- eral Smith came to his relief. From California he found his way to Texas, and then to Washington city and commenced the practice of his profession (having graduated in medicine at Xew Orleans), and soon -afterwards commenced the manufacture of medi- cines on new and scientific principles, having pro- duced many well-known preparations, such as his celebrated Cough Syrup, Liver Pills, Kidney Tea, Rheumatic Balm, Balm of Gilead Salve, Balm of Gilead Wash, and Chill and Fever Tea, the efficacy of which is attested by thousands of testimonials of the most reliable character. 6 It was a marked feature in his nature, from his infancy up, to be a close observer of Nature in reference to the vegetable kingdom. When but a boy he loved flowers, and wondered what kind of roots they had, and what they were good for ; which indicated a natural gift for botany and the herbal kingdom. Consequently he would go into the mountains, hills, prairies, and woodlands, and gather Nature's remedies and manufacture them into Botanical remedies. He at once observed the fact that the Indian doctors never injured their patients with their innocent remedies, and that they soon recovered without aching bones or a salivated mouth. In this way, he became strongly impressed with the fact that what was good for an Indian cer- tainly was good for a white man, and that it was a duty he owed to civilization to introduce or bring before the people the Herbal Theory. Being con- scientiously impressed with this fact, he at once be- gan to more thoroughly fit his mind with botanical medical knowledge, and acquaint himself with the roots, flowers, barks, leaves and herbs, from which their medicines were made. To acquire this knowl- edge took a long time. The object of the author is to give each one the opportunity of learning how to care for his own system, and to rectify the wrongs that may assail it, with harmless remedies, that will do good, and never harm when taken according to directions. A balm is hidden in the leaf, That God has given for relief, The Indians of the Western plains Have found that they will cure our pains. So now the author does extend A helping hand, an honest friend, He'll cure your aches, relieve your pain, If you will buy his Balm for Pain. It's made of barks, and oils, and leaves, And seldom ever man deceives, It never fails to satisfy, And on it, friends, you can rely. Unkind words, and acts, and deeds. To war and bloodshed often leads. Gigantic oaks from acorns grow, And wicked acts brine: weal and woe. Anatomy. Human anatomy describes the organization and construction of the human body, and how it is put together: how7 the bones are held together by liga- ments, aponurotic bands and muscles. It. tells the shape of the bones, the number, and how they are made, and what they are made of. It names each organ, and describes the construction of each par- ticular department of it. It numbers the bones, the muscles, nerves, arteries, ligaments, veins, and all that is found by the dissection of the dead body. Every man should know enough about his own "body in reference as* to how it is made, and the functions or actions of the essential or principal organs, to care properly for himself, and protect himself or body from a great many poisons and sur- roundings that cause disease, pain, sorrow, suffer- ing and death. Knowing this to be an essential fact I feel that it is a duty that I owe to my fellow man, or humanity in general, to embody in this work a few important and essential anatomical ideas that #re useful for man, woman and child to know. The human skeleton is composed of 208 bones, -the teeth not included, and these bones are con- trolled by 600 muscles, and through these bones and muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, and capillaries are very numerously distributed. There are 32 teeth in the grown person, with which we nlasticate, or chew, or grind our food. These teeth are coated with a material called enamel, which, when once in- jured by improper habits, will never renew itself again. The teeth are not like bones. Bones, when broken, if held in position, will grow together again, solid and firna as before breaking. But not so with ihe teeth, which, when once injured ; are, like a pane of glass, destroyed forever. Xow there are ninety-nine out of every hundred of my readers who know this statement to be a fact by actual experi- ence. Boys destroy their teeth when quite young by crushing hickory-nuts, almonds, cream nuts and pieces of ice. Cold causes sudden contraction ; heat sudden expansion. The white pearly substance which covers that portion of the tooth which pro- jects above the gum, called enamel, is admitted by all in the profession of medicine, most especially the chemical and dental professions, to be extremely susceptible to these two extremes, namely cold and heat; consequently ice, ice water, ice lemonade or any thing or substance near the same temperature,, should never, during health be put in the mouthy which everybody knows is practiced or indulged in every day by hale and hearty persons ; and just so- soon as such substances come in contact with the teeth, they being about 98 J degrees of heat, the ice,, or whatever it may be, being about 32 degrees,, causes a sudden contraction of the enamel, causing it to contract to such a degree that it cracks the enamel^ and decay follows. Parents should caution their children about cracking nuts, and chewing ice, and drinking hot tea and coffee. I have known men who have been free from all such indiscretions dur- ing their life, that had their full set of teeth, thirty- two in number, free from all decay. The Indiana have no need of a dentist, from the fact they do not drink hot tea and coffee. The Indian doctor has- 10 no steel forceps to crush the gum and jaw-bone, in order to extract an injured tooth, from which injury it has decayed. Their dentist is simply the strict observation of the laws of nature. If a man cuts his finger a scar will be the final result ; if a man violates the law§ af nature, and causes the enamel of his teeth to be cracked, or cut, the result is a scar in the form of a tooth ache, toothless gums, or false teeth. The teeth are especially intended for the mastication of food, or in words more plain, for the grinding of the food in order that the fluids of the stomach may have free access to every portion of it when it enters the stomach. When a person is eating a common meal, the salivary glands excrete eight ounces of saliva, which mingles with the food and has a special chemical property, and one special mission to perform outside of a chemical action, and that is, to oil or lubricate the bolus of food, that it may pass clown the esophagus or tube that leads from the mouth to the stomach. The stomach is an organ just beneath the lower tip of the breastbone, and hangs in the shape of a half moon, with the convex surface down when not filled with food ; but upon being filled with a meal of food or victuals, it turns upside down and commences to contractor relax, or, in other words, churn up the food so it is in a soft pulpy form, and at the same time mingles the gastric juice with it, which chemically seperates 11 the dross from the nutritious portion so that it may be absorbed by the little lacteal s, the same as a leech sucks up blood. Hence you see how the many abuse their stomachs ignorantly, by eating and drinking between meals, which obstructs and prevents the process of digestion, and ultimately causes dyspep- sia. The North American Indians were never known to be afflicted with dyspepsia, simply from the fact that their habits of eating and character of food were in accordance with the laws of nature. They never drink hot coffee, tea, whisky, wine, beer, pound cake, or pudding; but they live on plain diet, and the result is they never have dys- pepsia, cancer of the stomach, and thousands of ailments that civilization is heir to and afflicted with. The first portion of the bowels that leads from the stomach is called the duodenum. About two inches from where it connects with the stomach the bile from the liver and pancreatic fluid are emptied. These two fluids serve the purpose of converting the fatty portion of the food we eat into a saponi- fied condition — that is, a soapy condition ; both of the fluids being of an alkaline nature, and coming in contact with fat, the same chemical process oc- curs as does when common lye from ashes comes in contact with grease or fat in the soap kettle ; and when the fatty portion of our food is thus saponi- fied, it is ready for the lacteals of the bowels to ab- 12 sorb or suck up. When the nutritious portion of our food is thus absorbed it is carried into what is -called the thoracic duct, which is a tube about the size of a crow's quill running up the spinal column. "This tube is the medium through which our bodies receive our entire physical support.. The nutrition ^which is absorbed by the lacteals and carried into ^this tube is called chyle ; before it leaves the stomach it is called chyme. When it enters the thoracic duct, it is carried by it into the left subclavian vein, where it becomes blood, and is carried by the cir- culation to all the tissues of the body, to strength- en, support, and renew them. The second section of the bowels, or that part which follows the duodenum, or the first section of .the -small bowels, is called the jejunum. The third .•section, following the jejunum, is the illium. At the end of this section there is what is called the ulleocoecal valve, or the entrance from the small bowel into the large one, which is called the as- cending colon. This section runs upon the right side of the abdomen until it comes to the ribs and .liver, and then turns squarely to the opposite side, running just beneath the stomach and spleen. This is called, in anatomy, the transverse colon. After .reaching the left side it turns squarely down the left side. This section is called the descending •colon. After it reaches. the margin of the hips, or 13 in medical terms, the crest of the illium, it becomes pouched like a Scottish bagpipe, which is called the sigmoid flexure. Following this is what is called the rectum, the last portion, and the outlet of the- alimentary canal. At the outlet, which is called': the anus, there are muscles called sphincter or cir- cular muscles, which serve as a gate to the bowels,. and when the rectum becomes loaded with the drossy portion of that which we eat, or food, there is a pressure produced against these muscles, and a nerve sensation produced, which apprizes the in- dividual of the fact that nature calls him to stool. Xow the mouth, stomach, throat, and entire tract of the bowels, are lined with what is called a mu- cous membrane, and this membrane is netted with millions of little veins and capillaries. The veins in the lower portion of the rectum are called hem- orrhoidal veins. Now when a great many persons become constipated or costive, the circulation of the blood is checked or obstructed, and then these hemorrhoidal veins become full and engorged with blood, and pouch out the mucous membrane in lumps or rolls, and they become inflamed and pain- ful. This condition of the rectum is what is called piles. The Indian method for the cure of piles is a certainty, if the party so afflicted conforms to the directions. The human body has three sets of nerves in it, 14 , / sensory, motor, and sympathetic. The sensory nerves are those nerves that feel all pain and carry it to the brain and nerve centres for recognition. The motor nerves are nerves by which we control and move our muscles. The sympathetic nerves are nerves that govern nutrition. Our brain is locked up in a bony box of eight bones. It has two sections, the cerebrum, which means the large brain, and the cerebellum, which means the small brain. These lay in folds called convolutions. It is the dwelling place of intellect and the throne of life. The human body is covered with an integu- ment called skin. It is composed of four layers, and has seven millions pores, which, if they were stretched out in one line, would measure twenty- eight miles in length, and there is more deleterious matter and poison eliminated or thrown off from the body by the skin than any other eliminator known in the human organization. The skin has two sets of glands, namely, sudoriferous and sebaceous. The sudoriferous glands are what are called the sweat glands ; the sebaceous are glands that excrete an oily substance, to keep the skin soft, silky, and plia- ble. Any person can readily ascertain this fact by squeezing the nose, when they will see a white, oily substance come from the pores. We have hair on our heads to protect the scalp and brain ; we have eve-brows to act aseave troughs to lead the sweat 15 from the eves. We are told by Divine history that "man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow." The eye-brows do not sweat, but simply lead the sweat of the forehead from the eyes. We have eye-winkers, which are sentinels standing on guard to protect the eye from any foreign substance or material that may come in contact with the eyes and injure them. For