Lobelia (Lobelia inflata)

botanical

provenance:botanical

first introduced:1806

regulatory status:supplement

context:Samuel Thomson's signature herb and numbered remedy No. 1, an emetic plant known as Indian tobacco that he said he discovered as a boy by feeding it to other children for the sport of watching them vomit; it became the keystone of the patented six-remedy Thomsonian system he began practicing publicly around 1805-1806 (Thomson 1835; Flannery 2002).

MECHANISM CLAIMED

Thomson held lobelia was harmless in any quantity and used it to induce vomiting that cleared the stomach and every bodily obstruction, helping restore the body's natural heat and thereby cure disease in general (Thomson 1835).

MECHANISM ACTUAL

Lobelia's principal alkaloid, lobeline, acts at neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and inhibits the vesicular monoamine transporter (VMAT2); this produces a real emetic and autonomic effect (nausea and vomiting) but is not evidence that inducing vomiting cures yellow fever, cholera, or any other disease Thomson treated with it (Dwoskin and Crooks 2002). A Thomsonian practitioner in New York was convicted of manslaughter in 1837 for a patient's death from an excessive lobelia dose (Young 1961).

INTERVENTIONS USING IT

Thomsonian Botanic System

EXTERNAL REFERENCES

Wikipedia

NOTES

Lobelia inflata (“Indian tobacco,” or the “emetic herb”) was Samuel Thomson’s favorite remedy and numbered No. 1 in the patented six-remedy system that anchored his Thomsonian botanic practice. Thomson maintained it was harmless “even in large quantities” and used it, along with steam baths and cayenne, to force vomiting and sweating that he believed cleared the body’s obstructions and restored its natural heat. The plant’s actual pharmacology, described by modern mechanism-of-action research, explains why it reliably induces vomiting (nicotinic receptor activity and disruption of vesicular monoamine storage) without supporting Thomson’s disease-curing theory; large doses carry genuine toxicity risk, and an 1837 manslaughter conviction of a Thomsonian practitioner in New York, for a patient’s death from excessive lobelia, is the clearest documented instance of the danger Thomson denied.