The first published account of the use of lobelia in regular medicine, is by the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL. D., in his "Account of Indigenous Vegetables" (1785), stating that the leaves, if chewed, "produce a giddiness and pain in the head, with a trembling agitation of the whole body." Cutler was a great sufferer from asthma and found this drug to give him more relief than any other, and as Thomson had been in the habit of using lobelia for this complaint, and practicing so near to the home of Cutler, in Massachusetts, it is fair to presume that the latter derived his knowledge of the drug from Thomson. As early as 1820, the first edition of the U. S. P. recognized lobelia and it has continued official until the present time.
Library · King's American Dispensatory, vol. 2, 1905
LOBELIA (U. S. P.)—LOBELIA. History
Harvey Wickes Felter and John Uri Lloyd, p. 1201. Transcribed from the page image on September 25, 2026, as printed.