ECHINACEA
Echinacea angustifolia
COMMON NAMES: Purple coneflower, black Sampson.
FEATURES: Native to the prairie regions of America west of Ohio. This native herbaceous perennial
belongs to the aster family. The plant grows 2–3 feet high, with single, stout, bristly, hairy stems. Leaves
are thick, rough, hairy, broadly landscaped, 3–8 inches long, narrowed at the end, and strongly three-
nerved. The single, large flower head appears from July to October, the color varying from whitish rose
to pale purple. Taste is sweetish, then tingling, as in aconite, but without its persistent benumbing effect
when administered wrongly. Faint odor, aromatic, and should not be used after it has lost its characteristic
odor and taste. Contains inulin-bearing parenchyma tissue.
MEDICINAL PARTS: Dried rhizome, root.
SOLVENT: Alcohol.
BODILY INFLUENCE: Diaphoretic, sialagogue, alterative.
USES: Useful in all diseases caused by impurities in the blood. Thompsonian and physio-medical
practitioners and naturopaths have always maintained that Echinacea is a natural herbal antitoxin.
Orthodox physicians have not generally been willing to accept it as such, though many do. Controversy
being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth more true.
“Echinacea is a corrector of the deprivations of the body fluids,” was Dr. Niederkorn’s opinion, and
this whether the morbific changes of the body fluids are internal or caused by external introductions.
Echinacea has an honored place for septic infections, septicemia in its various forms, blood poisoning,
adynamic fever, typhoid fever, cellular abscesses, salpingitis, carbuncles, cancerous cachexia, and in
fevers or conditions where there is a bluish discoloration of the mucous membranes; for any condition that
points to sepsis, internal or external.
The Sioux tribe used fresh scraped root for hydrophobia, snakebite, septicemia.