- Native American women used a variety of weeds, seeds and flowers to make tea to control menstruation and promote health after birth and during pregnancy. The Indian Paintbrush flower and Antelope Sage were boiled into tea and drunk during menstruation. Milkweed was often drunk after childbirth to help the mother heal. The leaves of American Mistletoe were often steeped and drunk to promote contraception.
- A variety of fruits and grasses were eaten to reduce or stop diarrhea. Teas from blackberry roots were drunk to remedy diarrhea among Indians in northern California. Wild Black Cherries were kept in a jar or pot, and were allowed to ferment before being drunk for dysentery. The Pawnee, Omaha and Dakota tribes used to boil the roots of black raspberries into a tea for dysentery as well. The most unique (and painful) remedy for diarrhea and dysentery was used by the Menominee tribe, who boiled the inner bark of a dogwood tree and passed the warm solution into the rectum with a rectal syringe made from the bladder of a small mammal and the hollow bone of a bird.
- Asthma was treated with skunk cabbage and used to break up phlegm. Wormwood was boiled into a tea to cure bronchitis, and Sarsaparilla was combined with sweet flag and made into a sort of cough syrup. Pleurisy root, or a weed with Orange flowers also known as Butterfly Weed, was boiled into a tea for bronchitis, pneumonia and other lung problems. According to herbs.lovetoknow.com, it is still an excellent remedy for these ailments.
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