Supple jack

Long-standing gleet with persistent, thin urethral discharge that has resisted other treatment

Chronic low-grade urinary irritation in a person otherwise weak and depleted

Overview. Berchemia volubilis, a twining woody vine of the buckthorn family, grows wild in the damp alluvial woods of the southern United States, climbing trees to considerable heights on a smooth reddish stem. The root was the part valued in nineteenth century physiomedical and folk practice, chiefly in the southern states, where it was said to have a marked and specific effect on the urinary organs. It appears almost exclusively in physiomedicalist writings as a remedy for stubborn gonorrhea and gleet, reportedly learned from folk healers in Arkansas and Louisiana, but it never entered wider Eclectic or modern herbal use and remains essentially undocumented outside these historical accounts.

Clinical Notes. This is a plant known almost entirely through secondhand nineteenth century report rather than sustained clinical experience, so any use today should be regarded as experimental and historically informed rather than well established.

Properties and Uses. I have repeatedly been told by responsible men, that the root of this plant has a peculiar and powerful action on the urinary organs; and that it has rare efficacy in curing lingering gonorrhea and gleet.

Description. Natural Order, Rhamnaceae. Genus BERCHEMIA: Calyx five-parted, petals five, inclosing the five stamens; fruit an oblong drupe, sitting deeply into the disk, with a bony, two-celled nut. B. VOLUBILIS: Climbing and woody shrubs, growing in the damp, alluvial soils through the Southern States; stem an inch or more in diameter, twining about trees to the height of ten or twenty feet, with a smooth, reddish bark, and very tough wood; leaves two inches long, ovate, with straight veins; flowers small, greenish-white, in panicles; nut small and very hard.