Scurvy

One of the most famous of all Indian "cures" occured in 1535 when the French explorer Jacques Cartier had lost twenty-five of his men to scurvy and was then ice bound in the St. Lawrence River, near the site of the future city Montreal. Cartier contacted a group of Indians who were walking on the ice near his ship and shrewdly asked for their aid in treating this disease without letting them know the poor health of his remaining crew members. There is still some doubt as to exactly which tree was used to cure his men, for in his journals it is written, "the tree is in their language called Ameda or Hanneda, this is thought to be the Sassafras tree." Several writers believe that an early translator of Cartier's account probably inserted the name of the tree on his own.

Some authorities on Indian medicine believe that the tree was either white pine or hemlock. Dr. Millspaugh lists the antiscorbutic tree as black spruce and definitely states in his own work on medicinal plants that "the discoverers of Canada were cured of the scurvy by it, since which it has become in common use in Canada, the Northern States, and even in Europe."

Cartier describes the preparation of this remedy in a section entitled, "How by the grace of God we had notice of a certaine tree, whereby we all recovered our health: and the manner how to use it." An Indian chief, Domagaia,

sent two women to fetch some of it, which brought ten or twelve branches of it, and there-withall shewed the way how to use it, and that is thus, to take the barke and leaves of the sayd tree, and boile them togither, then to drinke of the sayd decoction every other day, and to put the dregs of it upon his legs that is sicke:

The remedy worked so well on the first few men who tried it that soon fighting broke out

about who should be first to take it, that they were ready to kill one another, so that a tree as big as any Oake in France was spoiled and lopped bare, and ... it wrought so wel, that if all the phyisicians of Mountpelier and Lovaine bene there with all the drugs of Alexandria, they would not have done so much in one yere, as that tree did ni sixe days ...

Sprucebeer is still used in the northern regions, and the original Indian formula still holds. The twigs and cones of spruces are boiled in maple syrup and taken hot as a refreshing year-round drink. This drink was also used by Captain Cook on one of his voyages to prevent scurvy and also reappears in American folk medicine as a preventative for this vitamin deficiency.

Other plants which have been used to prevent or cure scurvy include the wild garlic of which the fresh bulbs and green shoots were eaten uncooked; the buds of balsam poplar; the berries of American mountain ash; persimmon leaves, which are said to be high in vitamin C; the bearberry; the highbush cranberry; and all the pine trees. The bright green, young needles were steeped in boiling water for an aromatic tea that is still enjoyed today by people of the outdoors.

It should be remembered that the early American Indians did not suffer from this vitamin C deficiency because they knew how to prevent its occurrence. For the Indians, the above-listed "remedies" were of a preventative nature.