Goldthread

Small, shallow, burning mouth ulcers that recur with stress or fatigue

Sluggish appetite and mild dyspepsia during convalescence, calling for a gentle rather than an intense bitter

Aphthous ulceration; atonic dyspepsia; thrush.

Overview. Goldthread is a tiny, creeping evergreen of cool northern woodlands across North America and parts of Asia, named for its thread-like, bright golden-yellow rhizome. The rhizome is the part used, valued since colonial times and among physiomedicalist and Eclectic practitioners as a mild, pleasant bitter tonic and a topical remedy for sore mouths, from which its common name canker root derives. It belongs to the same family as the Chinese Coptis species used in East Asian medicine, though it has a longer folk history in North America than a modern research record.

Clinical Notes. Goldthread was reached for historically as a gentler alternative to harsher bitters like gentian or quassia, useful where a patient's digestion needed encouragement but their constitution was delicate, as in convalescence, chronic low-grade dyspepsia, or in the elderly.

Action and Therapy. External. The most effective application for thrush in infants. The decoction should be freely applied and at the same time given internally. The infusion or the tincture may be used, with or without hydrastis, in aphthous ulcers of the mouth.

Properties and Uses. This plant is one of rather fine and prompt bitter tonics. It is a mistake to class it with quassia and gentian, for it is neither so intense nor permanent as these; but rather is of the grade of boneset and leonurus, though giving out its properties more speedily than these.