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From issue: February 2000

Colonial Cures

by Susan Clunie

New Zealand's nineteenth century European settlers relied on medicine chests rather than herb gardens to cure their ailments.

Visitors to the Kerikeri Mission House often ask where the herb garden was, or proclaim that "Of course they would have had a herb garden in those days". These people assume that herbs, plucked from the garden, were commonly used for domestic medicine in the early to mid 1800s.

Kemp House at Kerikeri has a medicine chest on display. Photo: Don Donovan

But ailing settlers turned for cures not so much to the garden as to prepared powders and tinctures: herb gardens as such barely existed on the New Zealand frontier.

True, "Linnean arrangements" or specimen beds of medicinal herbs were cultivated in botanical gardens back home in Britain and there were extensive physic gardens where herbs were raised commercially for apothecaries and distillers. J.C. Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1824) shows how things stood commercially in the early 1800s:

"Herb or Physic Gardens: these are of limited number and extent and generally occupied along with market or seed gardens ... Peppermint is the principle crop ... Lavender is grown to a considerable extent, as is chamomile, wormwood, rosemary, thyme etc. licorice and rhubarb.

The medicine chest on display at Kerikeri. Photo: Historic Places Trust Collection

Roses are grown in large quantities for their flowers; white lilies and colchicum for their bulbs. In one or two gardens near the metropolis many species of herbs are gown to gratify the demand of certain classes of medical men, of self doctors and of quacks and irregular practitioners."

Turning to the domestic scene, Loudon noted that domestic kitchen gardens did indeed include herbs or "Plants used in tarts, confectionery and domestic medicine". But he emphasised that "excepting the species of rhubarb, this class occupies only a few yards of the largest kitchen garden".

The cover and one of the pages of a catalogue of drugs from 1821, about the time the Kerikeri mission was founded. Illustration: Historic Places Trust Collection

As in England, so in far off New Zealand. Despite the fact that by 1820 the Bay of Islands was already "over-run by cow itch", a potent herbal vern-tifuge, the spiny seeds of which transfix and kill intestinal worms (which plant Maori gave "Marion du Fresne the credit of having left among them" in 1772), early Pakeha planting lists barely mention medicinal herbs. Samuel Marsden's (1820) list for the Kerikeri Mission Station does include a few culinary herbs, but only two medicinal ones: "Featherfew" or feverfew used to combat headaches, and rue, a poultry conditioner.

Most drugs used by Pakeha on the New Zealand frontier were drawn not from the garden, but from the medicine chest. Purchased from chemists or druggists, these cabinets were stocked with professionally prepared tinctures and powders of botanical and mineral origin. The better ones were quite elaborate affairs, complete with a book for formulating and making up potions, scales and a mortar and pestle.

Medical books were also in lay use. In 1837, backed by Thomas's Guide to Health, and by advice from the Rev. William Williams, who was medically trained, Church Missionaries, Puckey and Mathews took on the care of five thousand "natives".

Limited though it was at that time, European medical knowledge was a potent missionary weapon. Using it could be risky, however. Wesleyan missionaries attending the dying Whangaroa chief, George, at Kaeo in 1824, were peremptorily told to consult their books and send him medicine.

The medicine chest which is on display at Clendon House, Rawene, another of the Historic Places Trust's Northland properties. Photo: Historic Places Trust Collection

Their calomel and julep failed to pass the test, his wife complaining that the drink was not sweet enough. The missionaries argued the toss. "On our denying the assertion as false, his brother said New Zealand men were not like us; that they had great throats and required a great deal of sugar to satisfy them." With their medicine discredited the Wesleyans were told that they would be plundered if George died.

As the novelty of European medicine and the eagerness of missionaries to dispense it became widely known, family medicine chests were unable to keep up with demand. Drugs were brought in wholesale. William Williams, treating Maori constipated by a diet of fern root, complained that the Church Missionary Society was being charged two guineas per hundredweight for Epsom salts - double the normal price. Laxatives remained in high Maori demand; Wesleyan missionary Samuel Ironside, acting on his best "knowledge and judgement", dispensed such "simple remedies as rhubarb, jalap, Jame's and Dover's powders, with Epsom salts for the men".

These medicines were bought rather than home grown. In the records of the various missionary endeavours, there are frequent references to medicines, but the cultivation of medicinal plants is rarely mentioned. An exception is that Richard Davis wrote from Paihia in 1830 that "The collections of seeds now received are exceedingly valuable, having had a short passage. I have already planted the peas and sown the medicinal seeds." Davis was a progressive farmer and it is likely he envisaged raising and processing medicinal plants on a commercial scale.

Bishop Pompallier's medicine chest can be seen at Pompallier in Russell. The older Kemp family one is on display at Kerikeri, and James Clendon's large chest, which dates from the 1860s, can be inspected at Clendon House, Rawene.

The Stone Store, Kemp House, Clendon House and Pompallier have all been registered by the Historic Places Trust as category I historic places.

Susan Clunie is the Historic Places Trust's gardens consultant in Northland.