I had no clue that planting sunflowers used to be considered an excellent way to prevent malaria!
The swampy lowland around Washington D.C. were malaria magnets and the sunflower was promoted to protect the population of the city from the disease. The sunflower is a heavy drinker, true - but the flawed logic of the general population in ascribing more powers to the sunflower than it legitimately possesses is interesting.
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It is not the Aesthetical nor sentimental view of the sunflower that at present commands our attention, but rather its sanitary powers in warding off disease.
Agriculture is always lavish of its gifts. It feeds the hungry, clothes the naked and shields mankind from disease, sickness and death. The grass, the tree, the flower, all add to man's pleasure, comfort and health. Trees drain the wet places, and slowly but surely fill up disease-breeding swamps. But, in proportion to size, no plant is so beneficent in warding off malaria as the sunflower.
Sections of the once malarious West have became salubrious from the growth of sunflowers, accidentally dropped by some enterprising citizen seeking a new home on the generous acres of the West. These uncared for seeds took root, grew, and the plants ripened their seeds. These, the birds, or the winds, or both, scattered broadcast until an annual crop is furnished for whomsoever will partake of it.
These plants have furnished for the emigrants' horses, oxen and other stock on his road to a new home a grateful shade in midday; and the old stalks convenient fuel to cook the breakfast dinner and supper for the weary traveler. But the greater blessing conferred by the sunflower is the protection from malaria of the settlers on the rich lands of the prairies.
Whether the leaves inhale or absorb the malarial elements of disease; or whether, by exhaling a superabundance of oxygen, sunflowers protect man and beast from sickness, physiologists haven not yet determined; but that they protect from malaria, experience and experiment have abundantly and convincingly proven.
All plants absorb carbonic acid gas, and exhale oxygen; while living animals exhale carbonic acid gas and inhale oxygen. Plants are largely composed of the carbon obtained from the air, while oxygen is the vitalizing element in animal organisms.
Homes, districts, army stations, hamlets, villages and cities have been protected from malaria by trees and plants; but of all the plants, none exert so benign an influence against malaria as does the sunflower.
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Efficient engineering doubtless is the most effective means of overcoming malaria—by thorough drainage. Arboriculture ranks next. But for the quick and efficient aids to both of these, the planting of sunflowers in a proper manner is the most prompt and reliable means.
The necessary excavations of the engineer at first intensifies evil, by liberating the pent up miasma. So indeed does tree planting, but in a less degree. The sunflower cultivation, however, produces immediate good results while these more permanent measures are being perfected.
Another plant, the Jerusalem artichoke-— Helianthus tuberosus—near akin to the sunflower in its anti-malarial influence, and having the advantage in not requiring to be planted annually, and of also yielding a valuable preventive.
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| 1881-1910 Helen Sharp's botanical studies delight me. |
Washington is a veritable hot-bed of malaria. That this state of things should have been so long permitted to have existed is not creditable to Congress, the governing power. Many of our most valuable representatives have been sacrificed by exposure to Washington malaria; and vastly more have suffered in health in consequence of the unsanitary conditions surrounding the capital of a great, intelligent and rich nation.
While engineering and arboriculture are laying great sanitary plans, let the simple, efficient and immediate offices of the sunflower be brought to bear to protect the President, the Cabinet, Senators, Congressmen and the citizens of Washington from a pestilence that constantly hovers over the capital.
This valuable protecting power of the sunflower may be utilized in any locality where miasma is rife.
To protect that part of the city near the Potomac flats there should be planted a broad belt of sunflowers between that part of the flats upon which the engineers will operate and the unoccupied land; as broad and long a a belt as practicable should be well plowed and planted with the Russian mammoth sunflower, four feet apart in rows at right angles, so that a single horse-plow may cultivate both ways. One plant in the square thus laid out will be best, as the growth is rapid and vigorous.
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| 1892 - Currier & Ives |
Similar management will protect other localities. The occupants of farm houses and country residences can be thus secured against the baneful influences of malaria.
A few sunflowers planted about the farmhouse might be sufficient to satisfy the aesthetic taste of Oscar Wilde, but they would not be numerous enough to ward off malaria. A belt of sunflowers and Jerusalem artichokes is required. Though there would be but little variety in these plants alone, there might be interspersed a few plants of pearl millet, golden millet, or some others to please the fancy and relieve the homely monotony of the sunflowers and artichokes. Judging from the display of artificial sunflowers in the shop windows in New York City, one might imagine that the sentimental malaria of aesthetical society has been utterly banished, yet the sunflower aesthetical malaria has spread far and near. The subjects most susceptible are those of a peculiar organization—those who are more sensitive than sensible.
It is to be hoped that artificial sentiment and artificial sunflowers will not in any way impede the rational employment of natural sunflowers to protect mankind from real ills.
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Plant, cultivate and harvest a large crop of sunflowers, and a large crop of health at the same time. And at your harvest home festivities, bestow a thank-offering upon the Dispenser of all gracious gifts.
Thousands of valuable lives have been extinguished by the remorseless venom of malaria and if its full powers can be overcome by the simple act of planting trees and sunflowers, God bless the generous hearts that plan, and the benevolent hands that plant these life-preserving gifts for man.
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How to Prevent Ague in Rural Districts
Br A. S. Heath, M.D., New York.
Ague -A fever (such as from malaria) that is marked by paroxysms of chills, fever, and sweating recurring regular intervals. Also a fit of shivering, a chill.
The past summer and fall developed malaria so profusely in localities near New York, that the quinine trade was most active and profitable to druggists doing business in these rural districts.
To drain and sub-drain the land for thirty or forty miles round New York, would require years, and millions of money; and now that we are on the very eve of rapid transit, when these localities may be utilized as residences for workingmen, clerks and other citizens who may seek pure air in the country for themselves and families, how can the fever and ague be prevented? This is a question of great importance. The health and happiness of a people should interest the State and the great city in which the people reside. The product of labor to the city and State is the basis of their wealth and prosperity.
Until perfect drainage shall be accomplished, we have a cheap, prompt, convenient, practical and effectual means of warding off malaria, if we can trust the experience of disinterested persons, who have themselves profited by the method proposed, in various parts of the world.
This sanitary and prophylactic preventive of malaria is a well-known annual plant of thrifty growth, and easily cultivated everywhere at a trifling expense. It is no less than the familiar Hellianthus annuus, the sunflower.
This plant has been cultivated in almost every State in the Union, and in many parts of Europe, to some extent, for this purpose. Where it was largely cultivated, its reputation, as a preventive ague, is undisputed; but where only a few seeds were sown about the house—half-a-dozen plants were grown—its prophylactic powers are doubted, and on good grounds, too.
Trees, when dense around a house, ward off malaria. In a thousand places on the Mississippi and other rivers, deep forests ward off malaria. Even osage hedges, stone walls, and tight board fences, strips of thrifty rye interposed between a residence and swamp when on an elevated ridge, have all been known to interpose barriers to malaria; and none of these obstacles have been known to possess half the protecting power possessed by sunflowers.
...
The great cause of failure of protection by the growth of sunflowers is, that the culture was too limited. Powder can blast to pieces the hardest rock; but if used, grain by grain—homeopathically—its power is of no effect. It requires, to be effective, cumulation and concentration.
Neymer, a German professor and author of eminence, says: "I have no hesitation in saying decidedly that marsh miasma, malaria, must consist of low vegetable organisms, whose development is chiefly due to the putrefaction of vegetable substances. It is true that these low organisms have not actually been observed. No one has seen malaria spores."
At Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. J. W. Salisbury exhibited these spores to a large number of medical gentlemen from various parts of the Union, by the use of powerful microscopes. Knowing that malaria, then, is a congregation of minute vegetable organisms, and that these delicate organisms are destroyed by frost, by the odor of flowers and flowering plants, probably by the generation of ozone by these flowers and plants, we begin to know the modus operandi of the protecting power of the sunflower, as this is a profuse flowerer, and that every plant has an active organization, removing large quantities of water from the soil and generating a strong odor, and creating a large quantity of ozone. Swamps have been drained by sunflowers alone, by their excessive transpiration.
Though Neymer and many other physicians believe in the theory of vegetable organisms as the cause of malaria, and Dr. Salisbury and others have supposed that they have discovered the true organisms, yet it is not accepted by the profession as having been settled by microscopists, by any means. The fact is, the profession do not know exactly what malaria is, but rather what its effects are upon the human system.
I have read somewhere, but I do not know where, that a Southern army post had to be abandoned because of the sickness of the soldiers and officers. A discharged soldier and his family were permitted to occupy the station free of charge. This man, having a good many fowls, sowed a large plot of the ground with sunflower seed, immediately around the residence of himself and family. This proved to be a perfect protection from the ague. This fact coming to the knowledge of the government, this officer and his command were again sent to occupy this station, and they also were protected from the so much dreaded malaria.
Doctor Castle, editor of New Remedies, in an editorial, says: "An officer of the Engineer Corps, of the United States Army, recently informed us that, being stationed during the war on the Potomac river in one of its most malarious portions, he surrounded his quarters with a thick cordon of sunflowers, and escaped any trouble from ague."
The army officer Dr. Castle spoke of, did practice the proper method. He planted a thick cordon of sunflowers.
I confidently recommend to families who reside in New Jersey, Westchester County, New York, Staten Island, Long Island, and all other malarial districts, to plow deep a space of ground from ten to thirty feet wide, according to the distance from the house, on at least those sides of the dwelling toward the creek, river or swamp, from which the malaria emanates. The distance should not be greater from the house than from five to ten rods; and the greater the distance, the thicker the plot of ground should be sown with sunflowers.
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Bees make the most delicious honey from its flowers.
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I had to cut a lot from this. It was too repetitive. Orignally published in 1878 in Wallace's Monthly: An Illustrated Magazine Devoted to Domesticated Animal Nature
Just for the record :-)
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, a French army surgeon stationed in Constantine, Algeria, was the first to notice parasites in the blood of a patient suffering from malaria. This occurred on the 6th of November 1880. For his discovery, Laveran was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907.
To drain and sub-drain the land for thirty or forty miles round New York, would require years, and millions of money; and now that we are on the very eve of rapid transit, when these localities may be utilized as residences for workingmen, clerks and other citizens who may seek pure air in the country for themselves and families, how can the fever and ague be prevented? This is a question of great importance. The health and happiness of a people should interest the State and the great city in which the people reside. The product of labor to the city and State is the basis of their wealth and prosperity.
Until perfect drainage shall be accomplished, we have a cheap, prompt, convenient, practical and effectual means of warding off malaria, if we can trust the experience of disinterested persons, who have themselves profited by the method proposed, in various parts of the world.
This sanitary and prophylactic preventive of malaria is a well-known annual plant of thrifty growth, and easily cultivated everywhere at a trifling expense. It is no less than the familiar Hellianthus annuus, the sunflower.
This plant has been cultivated in almost every State in the Union, and in many parts of Europe, to some extent, for this purpose. Where it was largely cultivated, its reputation, as a preventive ague, is undisputed; but where only a few seeds were sown about the house—half-a-dozen plants were grown—its prophylactic powers are doubted, and on good grounds, too.
Trees, when dense around a house, ward off malaria. In a thousand places on the Mississippi and other rivers, deep forests ward off malaria. Even osage hedges, stone walls, and tight board fences, strips of thrifty rye interposed between a residence and swamp when on an elevated ridge, have all been known to interpose barriers to malaria; and none of these obstacles have been known to possess half the protecting power possessed by sunflowers.
...
The great cause of failure of protection by the growth of sunflowers is, that the culture was too limited. Powder can blast to pieces the hardest rock; but if used, grain by grain—homeopathically—its power is of no effect. It requires, to be effective, cumulation and concentration.
Neymer, a German professor and author of eminence, says: "I have no hesitation in saying decidedly that marsh miasma, malaria, must consist of low vegetable organisms, whose development is chiefly due to the putrefaction of vegetable substances. It is true that these low organisms have not actually been observed. No one has seen malaria spores."
At Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. J. W. Salisbury exhibited these spores to a large number of medical gentlemen from various parts of the Union, by the use of powerful microscopes. Knowing that malaria, then, is a congregation of minute vegetable organisms, and that these delicate organisms are destroyed by frost, by the odor of flowers and flowering plants, probably by the generation of ozone by these flowers and plants, we begin to know the modus operandi of the protecting power of the sunflower, as this is a profuse flowerer, and that every plant has an active organization, removing large quantities of water from the soil and generating a strong odor, and creating a large quantity of ozone. Swamps have been drained by sunflowers alone, by their excessive transpiration.
Though Neymer and many other physicians believe in the theory of vegetable organisms as the cause of malaria, and Dr. Salisbury and others have supposed that they have discovered the true organisms, yet it is not accepted by the profession as having been settled by microscopists, by any means. The fact is, the profession do not know exactly what malaria is, but rather what its effects are upon the human system.
I have read somewhere, but I do not know where, that a Southern army post had to be abandoned because of the sickness of the soldiers and officers. A discharged soldier and his family were permitted to occupy the station free of charge. This man, having a good many fowls, sowed a large plot of the ground with sunflower seed, immediately around the residence of himself and family. This proved to be a perfect protection from the ague. This fact coming to the knowledge of the government, this officer and his command were again sent to occupy this station, and they also were protected from the so much dreaded malaria.
Doctor Castle, editor of New Remedies, in an editorial, says: "An officer of the Engineer Corps, of the United States Army, recently informed us that, being stationed during the war on the Potomac river in one of its most malarious portions, he surrounded his quarters with a thick cordon of sunflowers, and escaped any trouble from ague."
The army officer Dr. Castle spoke of, did practice the proper method. He planted a thick cordon of sunflowers.
I confidently recommend to families who reside in New Jersey, Westchester County, New York, Staten Island, Long Island, and all other malarial districts, to plow deep a space of ground from ten to thirty feet wide, according to the distance from the house, on at least those sides of the dwelling toward the creek, river or swamp, from which the malaria emanates. The distance should not be greater from the house than from five to ten rods; and the greater the distance, the thicker the plot of ground should be sown with sunflowers.
...
Bees make the most delicious honey from its flowers.
...
I had to cut a lot from this. It was too repetitive. Orignally published in 1878 in Wallace's Monthly: An Illustrated Magazine Devoted to Domesticated Animal Nature
Just for the record :-)
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, a French army surgeon stationed in Constantine, Algeria, was the first to notice parasites in the blood of a patient suffering from malaria. This occurred on the 6th of November 1880. For his discovery, Laveran was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907.
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| http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/ |
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