Stillingia.

Botanical name: 

Stillingia sylvatica is native to the pine barrens of the Southern States of North America, and in the form of an infusion or decoction of the green drug has been used in domestic medicine as a purgative and alterative, creeping thence to the attention of physicians of the Southern States. It was also employed empirically in cutaneous diseases, and as a constituent of various "blood purifiers" used commonly by the people of the South. A once popular remedy, Wayne's Panacea, was asserted by Rafinesque (535) to depend for its qualities upon stillingia, which Dr. John King (356-357) in his American Dispensatory most positively controverted. Inasmuch as Peter Smith (605), the "Indian Herb Doctor," neglects stillingia in his Dispensatory, while Rafinesque (535) gives it brief mention in his Medical Equivalents, it is evident that the drug came to the general attention of the medical profession by reason of the use made of it by the settlers, about the date of the first edition of King's American Dispensatory, 1852. Since that period until the early 60's it was a conspicuous constituent of the popular American "blood purifiers," and in the form of compound syrup of stillingia was used alike in empirical medication and by the profession.


The History of the Vegetable Drugs of the U.S.P., 1911, was written by John Uri Lloyd.