Notes: Promoted by Dr. Meyers in Meyer’s Blood Purifier, this consisted of Echinacea, Wormwood and Hops.

Temperature: cool; Taste: acrid, bitter, slightly sweet (diffusive, stimulating)

Tissue State: depression, irritation

Native American use: treatment for snakebite, colic, infection and wounds; topically as an analgesic for toothache, sore throat, cough, GI distress and venereal disease and skin lesions.

Fyfe: Wherever disease results from lack of vital force, from a tendency to morbific changes, from a depraved state of the fluids, from blood-poisoning, or from a tendency toward disintegration of tissue, Echinacea should always constitute at least a part of the treatment.

King’s: useful for abscess, furuncles, cellulite, swelling from snake or insect bites, septicemia from many sources, fever, ulcerative stomatitis, for pain from cancerous growths as well as for internal use for mammary cancer and cancer cachexia. The specific indication: tongue coated black, putrescent odor from excess of broken-down material being eliminated from the system, as in scarlet fever, diphtheria, spinal meningitis and typhoid fever, strumous diathesis; old sores and wounds; snake bites and bites of rabid dogs; tendency to boils and carbuncles; foul discharges from weakness and emaciation; deepened, bluish or purplish coloration of the skin. Professor Webster: “action in slow forms of cerebrospinal meningitis, he asserts that as a stimulant to the capillary circulation no remedy is comparable with it.”

Matthew Wood: It has a wide range of applications to heat conditions, both those arising from tissue depression and those associated with allergy and excitation. It is a stimulate that has a cooling taste and effect. It is also sweet, indicated as a nutritive. It is suited to pathological conditions which manifests as an edematous, doughy condition of the muscular tissue, and under palpation, gives to the touch a sensation like that where there is deeply burrowed pus. It is suited to cases where white cell production is required in high amounts to combat putrefactive conditions or where health has been compromised due to a ling-term septic drain on the system. It is suited to a high level of exhaustion, overwork, and long hours; when a person gets sick when they have a chance to relax.

Specific indications: tongue coated with dirty brown or black; ulcerative pharyngitis, tonsillitis, and stomatitis, fatigue from overwork, swollen blue veins, and lymphatics, septicemia, septic infections, boils, abscesses, eczema from blood toxins, deepened, bluish, coloration of the skin with a low form of inflammation, old sores, gangrene, bee stings.

Peter Holmes: The remedy is very valuable because it stimulates capillary circulation and peripheral nerves, thereby restoring function and tone to pale, lifeless tissues, reducing mucosal over secretion and promoting tissue detoxification.

Recent research: Macrophage activation has been well demonstrated, as has stimulation of phagocytosis;The activation of polymorphonuclear leucocytes and natural killer (NK) cells and increased numbers of T-cell and B-cell leucocytes have been reported ; stimulates and chemokine production) and stimulates NO production in vitro; partially inhibit both COX-1 and COX-2 isoenzymes thus decreasing prostaglandin E2 levels; Ethanol extracts from echinacea roots showed potent agonist activity on TRPV1, a mammalian pain receptor. The compounds involved in the TRPV1 receptor activation differed from those involved in the inhibition of prostaglandin E2 production ; exert a mild anaesthetic activity, which is typically experienced as a tingling sensation on the tongue; reduces the incidence of tumour development; E. purpurea was able to show radioprotection (use before radiation) as well as radio-recovery effectiveness; can stimulate mammary epithelial cell differentiation); activity against gastrointestinal nematodes in goats and pigs; may be effective in reducing chemotherapy-induced leucopenia