HELLEBORE
Veratrum viride
COMMON NAMES: Hellebore, Indian poke, itch weed, green hellebore.
FEATURES: American hellebore is native to North America and Canada, growing perennially in swamps,
low grounds, and moist meadows.
The thick and fleshy rhizome sends off a multitude of large whitish roots. The stem is 3–5 feet high,
lower leaves 6 inches to 1 foot long, decreasing in size alternately up the stem. June and July find the
numerous yellowish green flowers in bloom. The roots should be gathered in autumn, and as it rapidly
loses its virtues, it should be gathered annually and kept in a well-closed container. Has a very strong,
unpleasant odor when fresh, diminishing when dry.
MEDICINAL PART: Rhizome.
SOLVENT: Alcohol.
BODILY INFLUENCE: Sedative, emetic, diaphoretic, sternutatory.
USES: It is unsurpassed as an expectorant. As an arterial sedative it stands unparalleled. In small doses it
creates and promotes appetite beyond any agent known to medicine. As a diaphoretic it is one of the most
certain of the whole materia medica, often exciting great coolness and coldness of the surface, sometimes
rendering the skin moist and soft and in other cases producing free and abundant perspiration. In suitable
doses it can be relied upon to bring the pulse down from 150 beats per minute to forty or even thirty.
Protoveratrine, being the most active ingredient, slows the pulse by its powerful stimulating influence
on the vagus nerve, while nervine, constituting more than half of the total alkaloids, plays an important
part in lowering arterial tension by depressing powerfully the heart and vasomotor center. In fevers, in
some diseases of the heart, acute and inflammatory rheumatism, and in many other conditions that involve
an excited state of the circulation, it is of exceeding great value. Dr. Brown informs us: “As a deobstruent
or alterative it far surpasses iodine, and therefore used with great advantage in the treatment of cancer,
scrofula, and consumption.”
It is nervine and never narcotic, which property renders it of great value in all painful diseases, or such