American centaury

Weak appetite and poor digestion in a debilitated or convalescent patient who needs a gentle bitter rather than a stimulating one

Low, lingering intermittent fever accompanied by digestive sluggishness and a coated tongue

Overview. Sabbatia angularis is an annual or biennial herb of the gentian family, native to open woods, meadows, and roadsides across the eastern and central United States. It bears an erect, four-angled stem with opposite ovate leaves and a corymb of pink, star-shaped flowers with a yellow-green throat. The whole flowering herb is gathered and dried, and it was used in nineteenth-century American practice as a home-grown substitute for imported European gentian and centaury, valued as a simple bitter tonic.

Clinical Notes. American centaury was reached for in the older American traditions much as European centaury and gentian were used elsewhere: a plain, unheroic bitter to rouse a flagging appetite and support digestion in the weak or the convalescent.

Properties and Uses. This herb, which should be gathered when in full bloom, is an active tonic, of the more stimulating class, with moderate and somewhat diffusive relaxing qualities, allied to the American gentian, but rather milder.

Description. Natural Order, Gentianaceae. In the same Family with frasera, gentiana, and menyanthes. A neat and trim-looking plant, with an erect, slender, and four-angled stem two feet high. Branches many, opposite, erect, giving the plant a corymbose outline. Leaves opposite, ovate, five-nerved, half-clasping at the base, an inch or more long, smooth, entire. Flowers many, on long and terminal peduncles; calyx of five slender sepals; corolla five-parted, tubular wheel-shaped, an inch and a half in diameter, fine rose-colored; stamens five, erect, short. Fruit a one-celled capsule, with many seeds.