Word: snakeroot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...brew used in Shropshire to bolster failing hearts, William Withering found in 1775 that the active ingredient came from the common foxglove, thus stumbled upon digitalis-still a sovereign remedy. Only 28 years ago, Western-trained physicians in India concluded that there was more magic than myth in ancient snakeroot remedies for high blood pressure and some emotional disturbances, pointed the way to the isolation of reserpine-now flourishing as a multimillion-dollar prescription item. Ephedrine, which was isolated only in 1885, and is valuable in treating asthma, was the active ingredient in Ma Huang, a herbal drug the Chinese...
...From the Snakeroot. The new drugs are as important, in their way, as the germ-killing sulfas discovered in the 1930s. Two drugs ushered in the new era: chlorpromazine* (TIME, June 14), a synthetic compound, and reserpine †(TIME, June 21), a pure alkaloid from the juices of the snakeroot (Rauwolfia serpentina), crude extracts of which had been used for centuries by medicine men in India. Both drugs became available in the U.S. in 1953. But most ivory-tower mental hospitals, attached to medical schools with good research facilities, passed up the chance to be first to try the drugs...
...Derived from the root of the snakeroot shrub, Rauwolfia serpentina, crude extracts of which have been used for 3,000 years by India's medicine men. The late Mohandas Gandhi took such an extract as a tranquilizer...
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