the Iroquois made a tea from the plant now named Lobelia syphilitica (so named for its treatment of syphilis).
You can buy this plant (or a product made from the plant).
What is amazing is that none of these sites--even the homeopathic ones--mention it as a treatment for syphilis but only for a cough.
http://www.abchomeopathy.com/r.php/Lob-s/cough
Other birds, particularly the now extinct passenger pigeon and heath hen, would also have benefited from burning fallow Indian fields [8, 72, 841 for the reasons cited above, and because fire would also destroy some parasites and diseases of the birds [8]. Grouse, heath hen, passenger pigeon, turkey, and other fowl would have been important dietary items in early fall and early spring (Figure 1).
Some of the early accounts of Indian burning practices ascribed another purpose in addition to the ones cited in Section II, above--that of eliminating the "vermin" [24]. Specific vermin were not indicated, although one reason that the Indians often moved their villages was apparently to avoid fleas and lice which had come to infest a site [60]. Moist conditions are needed for the build-up of inocula for many plant diseases [35] and for the survival of many insects which live on or near the soil surface. Burning would destroy inocula on grasses and shrubs, and would temporarily create drier conditions on and near the ground surface. Some diseases would affect the plants as well as the animals which ate them. Ergot and other fungal poisons affect animals (and humans) which eat infected grassland plants [35, 55].
Burning would also destroy insects and arthropods such as ticks, fleas, chiggers, and lice which live on the ground surface when not parasitizing an animal host. These insects can be particularly damaging when they act as transmitters of internal parasites or diseases of wildlife and humans. A recent outbreak of "Lyme disease" in southern Connecticut has been partially attributed to the increase in the population of deer ticks-which carry the disease and infect humans with it (R. Wyatt, personal communication). Whether this disease existed in pre-settlement times is not known, although the transmitters of the disease existed then and certainly could have carried this or other diseases.
Fire affects organisms living below, as well as above, the soil surface. Ahlgren [5] reviewed the research on how fire affects soil organisms. Increased availability of mineral nutrients, which leach from the ash, improve conditions for the nitrogen-fixing bacteria of the Azotobacter and Clostridium species. The overall pH of the soil increases for the same reason. Stone [78] reported that these bacteria, as well as blue-green algae, were most likely the organisms responsible for increased levels of available nitrogen in frequently burned soils in the Southeast and in the Coastal Plain.
These increases occurred in several studies, despite the volatization of much of the nitrogen in the accumulated organic layer. Actinomycetes also increase following fires [5], but are not known to increase available nitrogen. Other soil fauna generally decrease after fire (e.g., earthworms, snails, beetles, mites, collembolans, centipedes, and millipedes). These organisms probably do not significantly affect soil fertility, but they do improve soil porosity and texture.
IV. Ecological Aspects of Controlled Forest Burning
The term "controlled burning" is used advisedly here, considering the lack of specific information in the early accounts about how the Indians actually managed the fires they set, although Martin [52] cited one account of Indians uprooting the grass around the circumference of an area they intended to burn in order to prevent the fire from running back. Martin stated that "all other early references to Indian burning are unsubstantial" (i.e., unspecific), in making the point that the Indians were not the "irresponsible incendiaries" that some early colonists [20] and some historians [54] claimed them to be. Indeed, it is likely that in their thousands of years of experience with fire the Indians would have learned as much as (if not more than) we know today about how meteorological, vegetational, and topographical factors interact to control the course of a fire [93].
www.daviesandcom/papers/tree_crops/Indian_agroforestry
You can look up the list of uses/symptoms in the Homoepathic Materia Medica. Sound a lot like Lyme. I posted about it here several years ago, but could not arouse much interest. I even got the medicine from Europe - still somewhere in a drawer.
Take care.
------------------
oops!
Lymetutu
Lymiecanuck
To Aligondo -
It may very well be that something has been done at/by Plum Island lab - i.e. some kind of modification to the spirochete, and release (perhaps accidental, perhaps not) from Plum Island.
However, Borreliosis has existed for centuries, especially in Europe. It has had about 100 names over the years. So, it isn't a new disease/germ.
But, it does seem to get around a LOT more know and be much HARDIER. And I'm sure we all still wonder - WHY?
What I wonder is, why does 90% of the population (apparenltly, I read on Eurolyme, I think) carry Borrelia?? This does not seem logical as far as the number of tick exposures go. So, it must be also coming from some other source (one would think).
DLL
As Dr. Lida Mattman has documented that she has found it in mosquitoes, fleas, tears, well water, African dust so it cannot all be coming from "deer ticks".
Just a thought,
Maggie
We will never know if they had lots or no lyme disease.
It certainly does no harm to look at early remedies. Thats where aspirin and others came from.
DLL
As stated in Lab 257, the scientist who allegedly brought it here was a Nazi, hired by the U.S. government after WWII to work at Plum Island in areas of germ warfare.
The question is what did or do they eat? Ledum, tree bark (quinine, aspirin), roots, what all do they eat? I have come across some amazing discoveries, but cannot remember them.
It seems there is a plant realted to ledum. It may be called bog labardor? It grows in swamps, stays green year around, and the deer and elk just eat it up. But my memory is poor.
The early settleres used tonic water. It stops colds, flu's, babesia, malaria, etc. If you get rid of the babesia you can better fight off the lyme disease.
So please keep up the research on natural treatments. The cure is out there, growing in you yard maybe. One of the latest new treatments is artemisin, from artemisia or wormwood. Another is cats claw, I tried it once many years ago and got much sicker so I sent it back. Now I know that was a herx.
The Bible says "the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations". God made the cure we just need to find it.
"A 125-year old disease"
"German physician Alfred Buchwald first discovered what we now call Lyme disease in 1883."
"The disease has been around for some time, and has been discovered in rodent pelts that have been stored in museums from the 1800's."
" Throughout the 1800's and early 1900's more discoveries were made about the disease and its symptoms,"
"and 100 American and 300 worldwide strains of the bacteria are now known."
"A disease that has been known for nearly 125 years in countries around the world should be well understood, with reliable tests and treatment for it, or so I thought. I couldn't have been more wrong."
Some will die young and some from natural causes. Death and disease is a part of nature & life and we are part of that big picture. It stands to reason that some of us are going to succumb to those statistics.
I dont like being sick but I dont feel like its all part of a big plot of evil its just the unlucky draw oof the cards and its up to me to find a meaningful life within the permeters I have.
That does not mean I wont continue to fight for better health and do everything I can to achieve it but Im not going to allow myself to be a victim.
quote:
Originally posted by dontlikeliver:
I have also read Lab257. All I am saying is that Borreliosis has existed for centuries in Europe.DLL
quote:
Originally posted by JRB:
http://www.townofsebago.org/articles/lyme.htm"A 125-year old disease"
"German physician Alfred Buchwald first discovered what we now call Lyme disease in 1883."
"The disease has been around for some time, and has been discovered in rodent pelts that have been stored in museums from the 1800's."
" Throughout the 1800's and early 1900's more discoveries were made about the disease and its symptoms,"
"and 100 American and 300 worldwide strains of the bacteria are now known.""A disease that has been known for nearly 125 years in countries around the world should be well understood, with reliable tests and treatment for it, or so I thought. I couldn't have been more wrong."
My husband swears that the stereotype of the lazy hillbilly is because the poor folks had lyme.
L
[This message has been edited by Linda LD (edited 03 February 2005).]
quote:
Originally posted by Linda LD:My husband swears that the stereotype of the lazy hillbilly is because the poor folks had lyme.
L
Could be. I'm a Texan living in the Ozarks. I get the picture! 
------------------
oops!
Lymetutu
The first recorded case of what is believed to have been Borrelia burgdorferi infection was in Germany in 1883 identified by Dr. Alfred Buchwald.
In 1909, Dr. Arvid Afzelius presented a report to the Swedish Society of Dermatology an illness that came from the bite of a tick.
This illness was referred to at the time as Lipschutz's Syndrome, Afzelius's erythema, & Lipschutz' erythema. (2)
Thoughts that come to my mind is the probability of an "infectious soup" we now deal with..which may include bio-warfare (Mycoplasmas) as well as other vector-borne co-infections that all work together to disable the immune system..
Then there definately must be something to attribute to modern age antibiotic resistance formed over the past hundred years in reguard to multiple forms of infectious agents..
Then I think also the enourmous impact of land development, enabling deer and mice populations to skyrocket, as predators are driven out..which increases tick and disease populations immensely, allowing the "infectious soup" development and transmission at much higher rate..
Then there is the modern Western diet..Native Americans ate and excercised as we breathe, and were in prime health always (Western diet and general health/immune system is poor IMO), not to mention there benefit of thousands of years of medicinal roots and herbs, which were very effective for disease as well as health maintainance. (so sad that much of that knowledge died with the civilization as White Man came in with modern medicine, and modern disease)
I think there are allot of elements to consider aside from the bacteria themselves, having to do with disruption of natural balance and health...though these things have allowed for bacteria mutations as well.
Also makes me think of the traditional healing/living practeices of say..the Shamen in the Amazon..
Who also have incredible knowledge and power in healing disease that is going extinct as the villages are "dying out"..and that they had remarkably effective cures passed down over thousands of years derived from indigenous plants..but the people who came into the area brought with them Tuberculosis, which the Shamen could not cure..so they then neded Wastern medicine (abx)..and began at that time to think we had all the answers (turns out we don't, and pharmaceutical companies' business concerns are a huge obstacle to gaining research and production of some medicinal practices that could help us, as these remarkable "medicines" cannot be isolated and produced in a laboratory, but work as natural chemical compounds..a good example of this is what has happened with Maleria, the pushing of pharmaceutical anti-Malerials, and the fact that Artemisinin is incredibly effective, creates no resistance, but cuz it is a "cheap" plant, drug companies made their own "better" anti-Mlaerials, which in the end only served to create a more deadly, resistant maleria strain) The Amazon civilizations began slowly abandoning the medicine man/Shaman work..
I know I went on a tangent, but just comes to mind in thinking about what we now face in fighting disease in the "Wastern" world, and how many answers man has extinguished over the past couple of centuries.
I know modern medical technologies offer many people much needed assistance, no doubt..but in the area of general health and infection, ect...they also have done allot of harm.
Mo
[This message has been edited by Mo (edited 17 January 2005).]
They probably had a form of Lyme.
They had a functional immune system because they did not eat junk food, refined foods, loaded with chemicals and preservatives; because they kept clean and respected their environment; and because they did not know our modern dentistry.
Take care.
P.S. Put it all in reverse, and you have your first step toward getting well.