Conspicuous among the remedies introduced within recent years, echinacea undoubtedly takes the first rank. As with all new remedies, it has suffered the usual over-estimation, and the exaggerated claims made for it led Prof. Lloyd to view it with suspicion for a long time. Prof. H. T. Webster (Dynam. Therap.), was the first to give an extensive, though sectional, account of the therapy of the drug. Though now a well-known drug, echinacea stands peculiarly alone in being essentially a new remedy. Many remedies which have lately been introduced can be traced back for years, and some of them for centuries, as having at some time occupied a place in either domestic or professional practice, but our ancient scientific works are silent concerning this species of echinacea. Gray, in his Synoptical Flora of North America, published some years ago, wrote: “Used in popular medicine under the name black sampson,” but since he refers to the plant as “black sampson,” a name applied to Echinacea purpurea, it may be accepted that he referred to that drug. A careful search through the large number of works upon domestic medicine, herbals, medical botanies, and the so-called “irregular” works upon practice, contained in the Lloyd Library, failed to reveal even a mention of Echinacea angustifolia as a medicinal agent. In this connection, the following from the pen of Mr. C. G. Lloyd, who identified the drug first used by Dr. Meyer and Dr. King, will serve to distinguish between black sampson and Echinacea angustifolia:
“Echinacea purpurea, Mœnch, is a plant growing in the eastern states from Pennsylvania west. It was introduced in King’s Dipensatory under the name of Rudbeckia purpurea, and the common name black sampson. Echinacea angustifolia, De Candolle, is an entirely different plant, found only in prairie regions, and not occurring east of the prairie regions of Illinois, and has never been used under the name black sampson. There is no mention of it in medical literature preceding the paper of Drs. Meyer and King.” The first notices concerning echinacea are from Eclectic physicians, and the drug is, from start to finish, an Eclectic medicine.