Shaker Herbs
If you would have a lovely garden, you should live a lovely life. —Shaker saying
February/March 1997
By RITA BUCHANAN
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This room at the Hancock Shaker Village re-creates the environment where the Shakers prepared herbs for pharmaceuticals.
Photography by Paul Rocheleau
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TO MANY AMERICANS today, the name “Shaker”
refers to a style of furniture, but actually, the Shakers made
contributions in many fields, as religious thinkers, social
pioneers, inventors, and builders. They were especially successful
as gardeners.
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In addition to producing their own food, they developed major
businesses—the largest and most advanced of their time—selling
vegetable seeds and medicinal herbs, which they grew, processed,
and packaged themselves.
The medicine of the time
To put the Shaker herb business in perspective, it helps to look
at the big picture. Americans in the nineteenth century had, for
the most part, different health problems from those we have today.
Burns, falls, and accidental injuries were often crippling. Birth
defects were lifelong handicaps. Many women died in childbirth, and
many children died in infancy.
Those who survived were vulnerable to colds and flu, which could
lead to pneumonia, and to contagious diseases such as tuberculosis,
smallpox, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and cholera.
Eating rancid or spoiled food caused both acute and chronic
digestive disorders. Children and adults often harbored intestinal
parasites, and malaria was a problem in swampy regions where
mosquitoes swarmed. Simple cuts, punctures, and other wounds easily
became critically infected. Boils and sores could develop into
persistent cankers. There were ailments with names you never hear
now, like gleet, phthisis, quinsy, and tetter.
Facing problems like these, what could doctors do? At first they
couldn’t do much. In 1800, physicians had virtually no
understanding of what caused diseases or how to prevent them. They
had no awareness of bacteria, no understanding of how contagious
diseases were transmitted, scant appreciation for sanitation or
hygiene, no knowledge of nutrition, and no explanation for
congenital disorders. They had no antiseptics, no antibiotics, no
anesthetics, and only a few painkillers. They mostly used drastic
procedures such as bloodletting and purges.
This situation changed over the next few decades. Many patients
started avoiding conventional doctors, fearful of the treatment
they might receive, and turned to local “root and herb” doctors who
had studied with Native American healers and learned to use native
medicinal plants in their practices along with traditional European
herbs. Several major books about native medicinal plants were
published, and some became best-sellers. This was very important to
the Shakers and to the growth of their medicinal herb industry. The
Shakers themselves weren’t responsible for prescribing or
dispensing herbs. Their business was to produce what the doctor
ordered, and by the mid-1800s, doctors were ordering hundreds of
different herbs.
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