Flesh-colored asclepias

Chronic bronchitis with thick, copious mucus and a tendency toward wheezing or asthma

Suspected tapeworm or roundworm infestation, especially in children, used alongside other vermifuge agents

Constipation with dry, hard stool where a gentle relaxant cathartic is wanted rather than a harsh purgative

Overview. Asclepias incarnata, swamp milkweed, is a perennial herb of wet meadows and marshes across eastern and central North America, valued in nineteenth century American Eclectic and Physiomedical practice for its root. The root was historically distinguished, sometimes with difficulty, from Apocynum cannabinum, with which it shares the common name white Indian hemp and a broadly similar range of traditional uses. It occupied a modest place in Eclectic materia medica as a gentle relaxant to the bowel and respiratory mucosa, and as a folk anthelmintic.

Clinical Notes. Eclectic physicians reached for swamp milkweed root chiefly as a mild relaxant cathartic, one gentle enough to soften stool without violent griping, and as a secondary respiratory remedy for chronic bronchial catarrh with thick secretions that were slow to clear.

Action and Therapy. Diuretic and vermifuge. There is good reason to believe this agent a good diuretic to be substituted for digitalis in cases of edema dependent upon cardiac insufficiency. Its action is similar to that of foxglove, without the irritating effects upon the gastric membranes. In fact, in small doses it is a stomachic and of some value in chronic catarrh of the stomach. In powder, 10 to 20 grains, 3 times a day, it is said to expel lumbricoids.

Therapy. It may be given in coughs and colds, rheumatism from cold, painful stitches in the chest with threatened inflammation of the lungs and pleura, asthma, chronic gastric catarrh, diarrhea, dysentery, dropsy, worms, erysipelatous diseases. It improves digestion, and is a good remedy in chronic catarrh of the stomach, and in catarrhal inflammation of the respiratory organs. It is both emetic and cathartic and may be used with advantage in the early stages of dysentery and diarrhea. In rheumatic and catarrhal inflammations it should be given to produce slight nausea. In doses of ten to twenty grains it acts as a vermifuge. It is also beneficial as a local and internal remedy in erysipelas and erysipelatous diseases.