Sarsaparilla

Sarsaparilla

Scientific Name: Smilax ornata

Uses: Immune

Part Used: Root

Did you ever wonder why old-fashioned drugstores had soda counters and fountains? Many years ago, in the days when everybody took tonics, the tonics were often made by druggists. They would collect tonic plants and brew them into a syrup which was then sweetened with honey or sugar. Formerly, people bought tonic syrups from the druggist and mixed their tonic syrup with water at home. At the turn of the century, carbonated water came into vogue, and the druggists began offering their brand tonics mixed with soda water right at the drugstore. One of the most popular tonics of the day was root beer. The base of root beer was made of ginger root, sassafras root, and sarsaparilla, and to this pharmacists added their own favorite herbs. But that was then – today’s root beer is usually artificially flavored.

Sarsaparilla is furnished by the root of a climbing plant of the genus Smilax, which prevails over the northern part of South America, the whole of Central America, the west coast of Mexico, and up and down the East Coast of the United States. While there are a number of different sarsaparillas used in medicine, all reputedly have about the same health-giving properties. The plant was said to have been introduced to Seville about 1536 from "New Spain" and Honduras. Pedro de Cieze de Leon’s Chronicle of Peru, written in 1553, mentions sarsaparilla as growing in South America, where the Spaniard had observed it as early as 1533. He found it to be one of the most excellent New World remedies he had encountered and considered it particularly good at treating syphilis and acute debility. The Spanish called it zarza parilla, which was altered to create the English word sarsaparilla.

The Native Americans felt pretty strongly about sarsaparilla, believing it to be the supreme spring and blood tonic.

Writing in 1559, Girolamo Cardano of Milan deemed it the supreme blood purifier and body enhancer. When the British arrived on American shores, they too ran into sarsaparilla and valued it as highly as the Spanish had.

Because the plant is indigenous to the Americas, most early mentions of it come from contacts colonials made with the Native Americans. In 1624, Sagard reported its use among the Huron tribe for healing sores, ulcers, and wounds. In 1708, Sarrazin-Vaillant wrote of the northern sarsaparilla, "The plant passed here for sarsaparilla because its root is something like it and has the same virtues almost as powerfully. I treated a patron who two years ago was cured of dropsy by using a drink of the root of this plant."

Carver had even more to say about sarsaparilla in 1778:

The root of this plant, which is the most estimable part of it, is about the size of a goose quill, and runs in different directions, twined and crooked, to a great length in the ground, and from the principle stele of it springs many smaller fibers, all of which are tough and flexible, the bark of the root, which alone should be used in medicine, is of a bitterish taste, but aromatic, it is deservedly esteemed for its medicinal virtues, being a gentle sudorifin and very powerful in attenuating the blood when impeded by gross humors.

The Native Americans felt pretty strongly about sarsaparilla, believing it to be the supreme spring and blood tonic. The Chippewa, Meskwaki, Ojibwa, Potawatomi, and the Tete de Boule tribes all reported to the colonials that when an illness threatened to turn into consumption, sarsaparilla should be taken immediately. The belief was that any weakness could be turned into strength with the addition of some sarsaparilla. By the mid-1800s, its use had caught on among white physicians who, according to Gunn, prescribed it as a treatment "in constitutional diseases, such as scrofula, syphilis, skin diseases, and where an alterative and purifying medicine is needed." By the year 1868, the plant was esteemed highly enough that it was included in an official list of Canadian medicinal plants.

The root beer served at so many drugstores was first called New Orleans Mead, presumably due to its popularity among Louisiana’s Cajuns and Creoles. In case you are interested in making a little for yourself, here is a recipe from the 1876 Canadian Pharmacy:

8 ounces of sarsaparilla, licorice, cassia, and ginger. 2 ounces of cloves, 3 ounces of coriander seed, boil for fifteen minutes in eight gallons of water, let it stand until cold. Then strain through flannel and add to it in the soda fountain, syrup 12 pints, honey 4 pints, tincture of ginger 4 ounces, and solution of citric acid 4 ounces.

The main ingredient, as you can see, was sarsaparilla. For all we know, it may still be an important component of commercial root beers, but there’s no way to tell because contemporary soda manufacturers refuse to reveal their recipes. Luckily, the Choctaw Indians were more forthcoming. They considered sarsaparilla the best available general tonic, and they told the Creole country doctors about it. According to Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men, root doctors in the bayou also used it in prescriptions for those who suffered from venereal diseases and "lost minds." And to this day, country folk will tell you that the root is number one for blood cleansing and strengthening.

Though root beer may have started in Louisiana, it caught on quickly throughout the United States, and a number of similar products were offered up for sale. The Shakers advertised their "Compound Concentrated Syrup of Sarsaparilla" in 1837 with an assertion that:

This medicine, taken in doses of an ounce, 4 or 5 times a day will fulfill every indication that the boasted panaceas and catholicons can perform; is free from the mercurial poisons such nostrums contain; and is much more safe and efficient as a medicine for cleansing and purifying the blood.

Like the Native Americans, the Shakers believed that when an alternative was needed, this was the plant. Whatever ailed you would be taken away with the use of sarsaparilla, or the syrup thereof. For years pharmacists from coast to coast agreed, and used it in their pet formulas for tonics. We will too.

You can buy sarsaparilla root from you local herb seller, who gets it from the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, or South America, or you can gather it yourself. The North American wild stock has been pretty hard hit in the past century, but it still can be found in patches up and down the East Coast and working towards the West. I have never heard of sarsaparillas being planted in the garden, but that’s not to say that it couldn’t be done.