Sassafras Elixir Recipes. Tea - from history. Indian, Colonial, European, Virginia.

 First Aid, Cures and Enjoyment

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Sassafras Recipes for One and All

From History

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As we find them. Posts to continue.

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I.  Recipes from the old days

Note that if you would like a little sweetener with your sassafras, or to help the medicine go down, avoid high fructose corn syrup. It is marketed freely, despite enough findings of likely mercury to ban it, if the FDA were consistent.  See ://www.celsias.com/article/hfcs/; see also ://www.highfructosecornsyrup.org/2009/02/sweetness-and-blight-why-is-fda.html/. Apparently it meets some standard of  "natural" - see ://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2009/feb/04/is-mercury-lurking-in-high-fructose-corn-syrup/ - whereas safrole does not?  But the FDA refuses to define "natural" - leading to the inconsistency. See ://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Financial-Industry/Natural-will-remain-undefined-says-FDA

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Sassafras tea.*
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* A layman's disclaimer  Arguments against: see http://www.bccancer.bc.ca/PPI/UnconventionalTherapies/SassafrasTea.htm/ All hinges on whether that 1960's testing on rats (leading to the 1975 ban) who are themselves averse to sassafras and would never eat it, is valid as an indicator of cancer in people.  Debaters, start your root beer.  And note other sources that say the amount of carcinogen in sassafras is 1/14 of that in beer. See://www.florahealth.com/flora/home/Canada/HealthInformation/Encyclopedias/Sassafras.htm/ Why doesn't the FDA ban beer? Let's test the rats for beer the same way that sassafras was tested, except that is cruel. Idea is, see why we need testing to be consistent and reasonable?  FN 1

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 Modern recipes:  see ://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080608171520AAKjFKG/ = scroll down past the usual overview to someone's comment that describes uses in Virginia. 

• Use the root, not the leaves. The root has an outer bark on it, and you take that off and wash the root well. Get 3-4 roots that are 4-6 inches long. Chop in small pieces . Boil a gallon of water and drop in the pieces. Boil 15-20 minutes, or longer for stronger. Good also with honey.

• For using the leaves:  Boil water and pour over leaves and let steep for 20 minutes. Use 1 tsp dried leaves to 1 cup water.  Strain out the leaves before drinking. 

• Here is somebody's video - for watching. Note everybody smelling the root every chance they get. Visit ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxp0Nm-1qOc

Sassafras country. Around the reservoir.Note that in the video (no sound available) the people use a simple potato peeler to peel off the dark outside of the root, and use roots about a middle finger in diameter.

Not as big as a thumb.  They cut that into fingerlengths or less, and then pound them a bit with a meat tenderizer pounder until they are flatter and somewhat pulpy. Then they add the boiling water to make the tea.  That makes sense.  Speeds up the infusion if the root bits are softened down first. And they do keep smelling it all the time. Have to get some.

• This sassafras tea recipe uses a grater as well as a vegetable peeler, and explains about layers of the bark on the roots. Use spring roots, scrub and peel the outside darkest part, and use the under color.  Leaves are best picked in August, it says, and the file loses flavor over time, so keep going back to grind new ones for your gumbo. When  does fostering hospitality become a party. A natural party. Also an issue for alcohol. All in the dose, like anything else. See ://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/sassafrass

Sassafras has been used for healing many diseases. Here, Spanish soldiers had become sick, and a French survivor of a Spanish attack on French Huguenots told of this Indian cure:

• Dig up sassafras root. Cut it in small pieces. Put as much as needed into water. Leave the root in the water until it takes on a good color. The patient then drinks it at breakfast and supper, without regard to quantity.  

This, from the Indians, noted in "A Role for Sassafras in the Search for the Lost Colony," by Philip F. McMullan, Jr.at ://www.lost-colony.com/Philpaper.pdf/  Lost Colony at 21. The Lost Colony treatise refers to another treatis, from 1574, by a Spanish Doctor Nicolas Monardes, on the uses of sassafras   "Joyfull newes out of the new founde worlde."  The Joyfull Newes was published in London in 1596. We are trying to find it. We are looking for the translation by John Frampton, who was an English merchant who spent much time in Spain. This Monardes information is at page 31 of Lost Colony.

II.  A Look to the Past

Get the flavor of the early uses in these fair use quotes, from Voyages of the English nation to America, Richard Hakluyt (very early, but what year? see://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924024759395/cu31924024759395_djvu.txt

moreouer, they told vs, 

that the vertue of that tree was, to heale any other disease : the 

tree is in their language called Ameda or Hanneda, this is 

thought to be the Sassafras tree. Our Captaine presently caused 

some of that drink to be made for his men to drink of it, but 

there was none durst tast of it, except one or two, who 

ventured the drinking of it, only to tast and proue it : the other 

seeing that did the like, and presently recouered their health 

and were deliuered of that sickenes, and what other disease 

soeuer, in such sorte, that there were some had bene diseased 

and troubled with the French Pockes foure or fiue 

remedy yeres, and with this drinke were cleane healed. 

.igainst the After this medicine was found and proued to be true 

French Pocks * 

We cannot find how to designate this page, so do a "find" for sassafras at that full text site, and it appears at about the first 25% spot on the sliding scroll har to the right of the text page.


We found the full text of another treatise, Plants and Plant Science in Latin America, at http://www.archive.org/stream/plantsandplantsc033403mbp/plantsandplantsc033403mbp_djvu.txt/  Do a "fiind" for sassafras, and each instance of it will be highlighted in the text. Find distilling the essential oil,

a Frenche man that had bene 
in those partes shewed me a pece of yt, and tolde me marvells 
of the vertues thereof, and howe many and variable diseases 
were healed with the water which was made of it, and I judged 
that, which nowe I doe finde to be true and have seene by 
experience. He tolde me that the Frenchemen which had bene 
in the Florida, at the time when they came into those partes had 
bene sicke the moste of them of grevous and variable diseases, 
and that the Indians did shewe them this tree, and the manner 
howe they shoulde vse yt, &c ; so they did, and were healed of 
many evillsj which surely bringeth admiration that one onely 
remedy shoulde worke so variable and marvelous effectes. The 
name of this tree, as the Indyans terme yt, is called Pauame, 
and the Frenchemen called it Sassafras. To be brefe, the 
Doctor Monardus bestoweth eleven leaves in describinge the 
sovereinties and excellent properties thereof. 

That looks like the circumstance of the use of the tea, above. People also ate for days nothing but a porridge of sassafras leaves.

much as in foure dayes wee had done against the same : 
we lodged vpon an Hand, where wee had nothing in the world to 
eate but pottage of Sassafras leaues, the like whereof for a meate 
was neuer used before as I thinke 

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III. Sassafras for health and well-being:  

For us, it takes a society to give any credence to benefiting people other than through drugs manufactured and  bottled.  One with some success in this area is the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, James. S. Gordon, M.D. The Center collects, researches, gets the word out about choices, by Organizing It.  Letter to editor, NYT 5/26/2009 page D4. See ://www.cmbm.org/

Have to see if that group has researched sassafras.

At one time, the sassafras was considered the miracle tree. All we need is dosing and preparation information. And Stimulus Payments for a new industry backed by sound research on reasonable dosing and preparation. Does a form of simple universal health care consist in a Sassafras in Every Yard?

Sassafras is indigenous to North America, and introduced to Europe by early explorers, in about 1584. The story of the earlly colonies and explorers, especially as they found sassafras uses of the Indians, and tried to track the fate of a lost colony in Virginia, is at the Lost Colony site, above. It describes the saga of a "lost" Virginia colony, that had disappeared - all 116 souls - by the time help returned from England. 


Enjoy the full histories and description - especially of the fragrance of the sassafras when the Indians engaged in the annual burn-back of the lower growths in the forests. Wafted with a sweet arome even out to the ships. Sassafras, like anything else, can be abused by excessive use, see page 22.


The explorers found them "effective and safe" when not in excess. even healing scurvy and other mariners; ailments from long shipboarding. So again we are not at a ban of sassafras, but dosing information and preparation, as with anything else.  Do you chew seventeen teabags in an hour for six hours? Probably not. If you did,  and long enough, probably you too would get a tumor somewhere.

IV.  SLOAN-KETTERING.  Let's get it straight from the horse's mouth.


Are you detached enough from Pharma to fund testing of sassafras without using rats? Or other allelopathic animals, if indeed you have to use animals at all.

The Horse's Mouth

We ask because we think that venerable Sloan-Kettering surely would support finding out if the test animals are in an allelopathic relationship to the substance being tested, before drawing conclusions of those poor critters get tumors.  See ://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/11790.cfm?Disclaimer_Redirect=%2Fmskcc%2Fhtml%2F69363.cfm/

We find nothing on questioning which animals are used for what substances. Surely there is someone out there who delved into why we use rodents for plant and drug testing without first finding out for sure if that substance is part of their normal diet. The idea of extrapolating as we do makes anybody sick.

And while you are at it, SK, please test beer against sassafras tea.  Thanks.  Start with the good Dr. Duke at ://www.florahealth.com/flora/home/Canada/HealthInformation/Encyclopedias/Sassafras.htm/
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FN 1 Dr. Duke has ideas. Ask Sloan Kettering to check it out.

Beer More Carcinogenic Than Sassafras Tea?

Sassafras and the American Slave Tradition. Our Own History

 The Wisdom of the Folk Remedy

Not To Be Disregarded.

What trace elements in the natural cure or use 

cannot be replicated in the laboratory substitute, if any

Folk remedies. FN 1

Oven in the woods.How t retrieve the past

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Use and pass on the lore, because the materials are at hand, no extra cost, and there are enough experience, anecdotes, recipes, to make it reasonably safe.  There is no alternative where there is no money. Who to trust?  The healer, the old ways.

Hear Slave Narratives at The Gutenberg Project, at ://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/1/4/2/11422/11422.htm.  Do a "find" for sassafras, and see this: Charlie Vaden, then age 72, lived in Green Grove, Arkansas, and was interviewed as part of the project about slave and black lore. Scroll up to the beginning of the entries related to him.  Farmer.  He remembers uses for garlic as a poultice for neuralgia, and this: "Sassafras is a good tea, a good blood purifier in the spring of the year." At another entry, from A Folk History of Slavery,  after a whipping, slaves used sassafras as medicine.  See http://www.fullbooks.com/Slave-Narratives-A-Folk-History-of-Slaveryx14332.html: "We used snake root, hohound weed, life everlastin' weed, horse mint an' sassafras as medicine."

Gumbo file and slave cooking - see Slavery in America at ://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history /hs_es_cuisine.htm/.  A stew of vegetables, crawfish, chicken, pork. "The stew is thickened with powder from sassafras leaves."  Find that section by a "find" for sassafras. The term gumbo comes from African roots, :kngombo, or ochingombo.

During the Civil War, the blockades of the southern ports, people (not just slaves) "brewed a decoction of blackberry leaves and sassafras roots to take the place of tea." See Slavery: Islamic and Christian Perspectives, a bit of lore in an overall site looking with a new eye at our interpretations of ourselves, at ://www.al-islam.org/slavery/12.htm/

A search for "slavery" and "sassafras" turns up uses for sassafras in dyes, and liquor.

Then there is Daddy Jack, from the Uncle Remus tradition, there bundling sassafras roots when the little boy comes to find Uncle Remus.  See the Gutenberg Project at ://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26429 /  Do the "find" for sassafras to get to it.  A normal part of everyday life. Sassafras.

Now maligned and its possibilities cut off.

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FN 1  Do a search for Pharma and natural remedies and see all the sites where there is no testing result available because noone will or can pay for the testing where there is no  profit to the substance in marketing.

Still, the history of sassafras and other herbs leads to the conclusion that keys are there. Not miracles, but perhaps keys to why they worked so long for so many.  The well-to-do may well continue with their modern pills, but also let the poor as well as others who prefer the natural to the pill, have the information needed to use those substances safely.

Dese Doses Do Good. Dose Doses Do Bad. So, Inform About Da Dose. A family Bronx slant for Sassafras.

Have You Ever Seen a Foodstuff
A Foodstuff, A Foodstuff.

Have you ever seen a foodstuff
That couldn't make you sick.

Take this dose and that dose,
Take this dose and that dose.

Have you ever seen a foodstuff
That couldn't make you sick.

Sassafras, fall color for some

If the topic of reviews on the initial 1970's -1970's sassafras testing on rodents is new to you, see the overview, and the results, at  ://www.planetherbs.com/theory/notes-on-herb-drug-and-herb-herb-contraindications.html/. 

It explains why we want a recount.If safrole oil is the problem, safrole is also in mace, nutmeg, basil, black pepper, rosemary, dill, black tea, dang gui, tamarind, cinnamon, witch hazel, and Asian wild ginger, see this list at Planet Herbs. And a cup of sassafras tea is 1/14 (one-fourteenth) as carcinogenic as a cup of beer. Also Planet Herbs. Good reason to re-look.

History tells of many uses of sassafras parts (leaf, root, bark) and in various doses and preparations. Use this part for that remedy, that part for that other one. Safrole, the oil from the bark, seems to be the main issue for claims of carcinogenic qualities, but that came from rat testing, and it appears that rats are naturally averse to safrole. Is that a reasonable test to apply to humans? FN 1

And can the safrole issue, if there really is one, be approached with dosing information - as we do with alcohol and cigarettes. If there is that connection, and it is only claimed - nothing like the cause and effect we already have with the booze and tobacco.

The historic uses include, as summary:

• healing,
  
• hospitality (a nice relaxer, think happy thoughts) - take too much and maybe you hallucinate, or use it toward that end with something else.
  
• flavoring,
  
• aromas,
  
• digestion issues, flatulence
  
• an emetic - take too much and you get vomiting
  
• even for family planning - take too much at the wrong time, and you may not have wanted that result. An abortifacient. Or maybe you did. What did Great-Granny do? Or even Eve - she had those first two, then waited until they were grown before having her third. How did she do that? See other essential oils that are characterized as abortifacients at ://www.essentialoils.co.za/abortifacient-oils.htm/  A matter of degree, and the objective.
  

No, stay away, says drugs.com. Sassafras produces vomiting, hallucinations, etc. ://www.drugs.com/npp/sassafras.html. Obviously the total ban desription at that site is false, because we use file in cooking, and file gumbo, ground sassafras, is delicious as a thickening agent. Dose control.

Why not just inform and warn about what does is needed for what purpose. Improper dosing of anything makes you sick. Alcohol, cigarettes, sugar.

Here is why, so far, we think

• Sassafras grows all over. It is too accessible, too cheap, no profit to industry. So is it really industry pressure to preserve its own profits, combined with cultural issues (the family planning, the relaxer-nice thoughts part) that drive the FDA?

• Nobody likes to admit an error. So say there is new information, and then you don't have to. Can we move beyond that and just review the testing done here, the test animals and their relationship to the substance.

Then, if other species are used, with reasonable doses (again, anything will make anybody sick if taken in unreasonable quentities), then the issue becomes this:

Sassafras Police - Watching Your Woods

Does warning and information about dosing suffice. Why a total ban? Have we no heads? If quantity is a problem in case someone wants to make another substance out of it, put it behnd the counter, like Sudafed. Big deal.

Avoid the sloppy generalizing. Separate out the uses of leaves from uses of root and bark.

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FN 1. Monitor the FDA testing.

If it is true, as other posts offered here with specific site references suggest,

• that rodents were used in the testing; and
• that huge and constant ingestion of the substance was forced on the rodents with the predictable result of sickness and death; and, in addition,
  
• that rodents (including rats, mice, beavers) have a naturally allelopathic relationship to sassafras - the plant makes them sick as a defensive mechanism of the plant itself against being eaten, as for beaver dams, for example); and
• that the testing method was influenced by industry who sought broader use of patentable and profitable lab substances, not the everywhere sassafras, and
• that the FDA assumes (there is legislation creating that assumption, of sorts) that any carcinogenic property as to rodents, even in that allelopathic relationship to the plant being tested, means danger to humans; and
• that the FDA then fully bans the substance, while permitting similarly health-endangering substances such as alcohol and cigarettes to be marketed with usual warnings as to dosage and ordinary use at table ir in bottle continuing uninterrupted; and
  
• nobody tests the testing done in the first place; and
• our root beer tastes bad; then

On what ground is the drug industry site so positive about its statements about safrole as carcinogenic, dangerous.

We want that recount. Maybe the FDA is right; the ill effect is repeated in test animals that are not rodents.  We prefer no animal testing, but if that is what we have, at least steer clear of the rodents with sassafras. . And maybe the safrole hype is hype.

Sassafras and Guantanamo; Retest Safrole and Apply, If Applicable

Sassafras. The hospitality tea.

The feel-good root-beer component, just from the bark of the sassafras tree, not an additive, not a "drug," part of a food. And available all over America at one time, and even now.

Consider its ancient hospitality use: Native Americans, others, see the history of the uses of sassafras, at this site. Yet, even a site that says it explains "dangers" never finds any, all is hearsay, there has been no testing as is done when Pharma is seeking a patent (can't patent the sassafras). So what is the problem?

You read it. The title has no bearing on the content, at Lifescript.com - ://www.lifescript.com/Health/Alternative-Therapies/Herbs/The_Dangers_Of_Sassafras.aspx?trans=1&du=1&gclid=COrd7-O0spkCFQu-GgodUz6y7w&ef_id=1350:3:c_6077ee56874670969761bdf470921909_2540435225:TIGaiEo-KR4AAB-JJuMAAAAS:20090320210705/

Sassafras, waiting for the sunrise? Sketch, gift to us, by Hermann Dahl, now deceased, can find no trace of family

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The site otherwise gives a good history of its traditional uses. Are these folks on Pharma's payroll?

Cultural use: facilitation.

Invite the stranger in your home, offer hearth and food, and the last thing you need is someone getting up in the night and beating everyone to death and making off with your possessions. The colonials - here is a brew that makes you feel good. It may not cure, but you feel better. Sassafras tea. In great demand.

Now: We have at Guantanamo a number of people who hate us, as anyone with an ideological difference and experience of torture would.

If safrole is not really carcinogenic to people - that is the important point.

Sassafras Remedies - A Pharmacology List

Step Right Up

We do need serious testing on this plant, leaves, roots, bark, all used in different ways historically.

Does someone know if the FDA has withdrawn its concern for safrole? Here is a site that touts its uses with no mention of anything carcinogenic - for rats or anything else - and that is a surprise.

Visit ://dotcrawler.com/natural-herbs.html. Find uses such as for:

• stimulant
• diaphoretic (?)
• alterative (?)
• add "qualacum of sarsaparilla" and treat your rheumatism
• distill the bark for soaps and a yellow dye (so no ingesting)
• the young shoots are used for beer (these would be the ones that the rats are allelopathic toward, so the plant defends itself?)
• the "pith variety" has mucilant in it and is used as an emulcent
• catarrhal infection
• syphilis
• pain of periods
• dental disinfectant

There.

Now: On to testosterone. Reports that the roots contain testosterone are mixed: see ://www.planbecovillage.org/native-plants.php/ Scroll down. They describe the way the plant spreads - those underground runners - as 'suckering'.

Sassafras: single leaf node form at the upper story level

Add uses:

• mosquito repellent (great now that we seem to lost our bats).
• Use the shoots to make a drink, and add yeast for carbonation - root beer (we knew that one)
• add some sassafras to your moonshine.
• antidiarrheal
• measles
• chew the roots for bad breath
• poultice for wounds
• eyewash for sore eyes

Sassafras. A sight for sore eyes?

And finally, sassafras for family planning. See ://www.drugs.com/npp/sassafras.html. Is that the real reason, a cultural one, for treating sassafras differently from other matters where we are merely warned and informed? Impatience with abortifacience? Abortifacient. Do you dare say it. Might reasonable, intelligent, moral people want information? Who decides?