Alum root

Passive, watery or bloody diarrhea occurring in a weakened, low-toned patient after a prolonged febrile illness

Boggy, oozing mucous membranes or tissue that needs firming and drying rather than stimulating

Overview. Heuchera americana is a native North American perennial of the saxifrage family, growing wild in rocky woodlands across much of the eastern and central United States. Its thick, knotty rootstock is the part used medicinally, valued since indigenous and early American folk use, and later adopted by physiomedicalist and eclectic practitioners, chiefly for its pronounced astringency. It has a modest place in older American herbal practice as a local styptic and bowel astringent, largely displaced today by other tannin-rich botanicals but still occasionally used by practitioners drawing on the older physiomedical materia medica.

Clinical Notes. Alum root is one of the most strongly astringent native American roots, rich in tannins, and older writers were careful to note that this astringency is powerful enough to be constipating and drying if used carelessly.

Properties and Uses. This root is intensely astringent, with a modicum of stimulating properties. It is too powerfully drying to be suitable for internal use, except in such passive conditions of the bowels as are connected with hemorrhage and coliquative diarrhea suddenly following typhus; when it may be combined with a stimulant and used by injection.

Description. Natural Order, Saxifragaceae. A genus of plants with perennial roots, and herbaceous annual stems. The leaves spring directly from the root, on very long and downy petioles with dilated margins; roundish, five inches by three, usually margined into seven short lobes with short teeth.