Wild quinine

Dull aching low back pain with scanty, dark urine attributed to weak kidney tone

Intermittent low fevers where cinchona bark was unavailable or poorly tolerated, hence the folk name wild quinine

Overview. Parthenium integrifolium is a perennial prairie plant of the aster family, native to the dry open woods and barrens of the eastern and central United States. The fusiform root was the part chiefly gathered by nineteenth century American physiomedical and Eclectic practitioners, who knew it as the nephritic plant for its supposed action on the kidneys, and as cutting almond and wild quinine in regional folk use. It has almost no presence in contemporary herbal practice and is included here chiefly as a historical curiosity with a documented place in the physiomedicalist materia medica.

Clinical Notes. In the physiomedical literature this root was classed among the relaxant diuretics, given for a dull, aching, congested kidney picture with scanty or dark urine, often alongside other tissue-tone remedies such as corn silk or couch grass rather than as a stand-alone specific.

Properties and Uses. The root of this plant is relaxant and very moderately stimulant, and expends its chief power upon the kidneys. By its use, the amount of watery discharge in the urine is greatly increased; and at the same time a soothing impression made upon the mucous membranes of the renal apparatus.

Description. Natural Order, Compositae. A perennial plant, from one to four feet high, with erect and pubescent stems, with corymbose branches, bearing the flower-heads terminally. Leaves alternate, at considerable distances apart, three to six inches long by one-third as wide, tapering, crenate toothed, the lower ones often cut-lobed below the middle; those low down on the stem on petioles often six to ten inches long, which are gradually reduced till the upper leaves are small and sessile.