It's very interesting. I've been digging around a bit more and it looks like it has many health applications:
Anticancer and Antioxidant Activities of the Root Extract of the Carnivorous Pitcher Plant Sarracenia purpurea
Anti-herpes virus activity of the carnivorous botanical, Sarracenia purpurea
And here's a very interesting article about plant-based remedies used in pandemics:
Pandemics and Traditional Plant-Based Remedies. A Historical-Botanical Review in the Era of COVID19
It's very interesting, even more so in light of what has been discussed about proteins as antennas.
Since people were talking about the homeopathic form of Sarricenia, I took a look in an old Materia Medica written by Dr. John Henry Clarke first published in 1900. The entire book is available online here:
Main page - A DICTIONARY OF PRACTICAL MATERIA MEDICA By John Henry CLARKE, M.D. Presented by Médi-T ®
Sure enough, there's an
entry for Sarracenia (
Sarracenia purpurea). From the intro:
The use of the Pitcher Plant in small-pox is a discovery of the Indians of North America, the spotted appearance of the plant probably suggesting a resemblance to the disease. Hale has collected much confirmatory evidence of its power to antidote the small-pox poison. A proving by T. C. Duncan, Thomas, and others brought out symptoms of fever, backache, headache, and gastric disturbance. Hering quotes these instances of its action: (1) A woman far advanced in pregnancy was cured of small-pox with Sarr. 3, 6, and 9, delivery being happily accomplished during her convalescence, the infant bearing on its body numerous red blotches, indicating that it had been affected with the disease. (2) An infant a few months old was attacked with a grave form of small-pox, with variolous angina so severe that it was with difficulty it could take the breast; the mother took Sarr. 3, 6, and 9, and continued to nurse the infant, which promptly recovered, the mother not taking the disease. (3) In an epidemic occurring in the environs of Wavre, Sarr. was given to two thousand persons living in the very middle of the disease and coming in constant intercourse with it, but all who took Sarr. escaped; during the same epidemic two hundred cases were treated with Sarr. without a death. Bilden, who used the 1x tincture in an epidemic with success, concludes that Sarr. is to small-pox what Gels. is to bilious fever. Hale quotes Surgeon-Major C. G. Logie's (allopath) account of his experience with Sarr. (decoction probably) in small-pox: "Four of the cases in my hospital have been severe confluent cases. They have throughout the disease all been perfectly sensible, have had excellent appetites, been free from pain, and have never felt weak. The effects of this medicine, which I have carefully watched, seemed to arrest the development of the pustules, killing, as it were, the virus from within, thereby changing the character of the disease and doing away with pitting."
So they were using homeopathic Sarrecenia to deal with some manifestations of smallpox and even using it prophylactically. But keep in mind that homeopathy is all about matching the symptoms of the disease as they manifest
in the individual. One person suffering smallpox may be helped by Sarracenia while another may need an entirely different remedy. Think of it like a flu that hits an entire family. One member may be exhausted laid up in bed while another may be perfectly functional but have a severe cough and yet another have mostly digestive symptoms - same disease, different manifestation. Those people would likely all need different remedies to cure.
Clarke says:
Relations.─... Compare: In small-pox, Ant. t., Merc., Vaccin., Variol., Maland. In bone pains, Eup. perf.
Those other remedies, in order are
Antimonium tartaricum, Mercurius solubilis, Vaccininum, Variolinum (this is a nosode made from the disease material of smallpox)
, Malandrinum (this nosode is from the disease in horses referred to as "Grease") and
Eupatorium perfoliatum. In other words, all 7 of these remedies were used at some point to deal with smallpox, but it all depended on the symptoms that manifested in the individual.
But this brings up the idea of
homeoprophylaxis - taking a remedy to
protect against an epidemic. There are many instances in the homeopathic literature of successfully inoculating populations against diseases that were ravaging particular areas, one of the most famous being Hahnemann himself protecting against an outbreak of Scarlett fever using
Belladonna. The way homeopaths do this is by looking at the common symptoms of the disease and repertorizing to find the best suited remedy, and/or by looking at the remedy that has most frequently affected cure within the population. This remedy is referred to as the
genus epidemicus. Homeopaths around the world were communicating at the height of the Covid pandemic, for instance, to find the
genus epidemicus for Covid in an attempt to protect populations not yet infected.
Often, when the specific genus epidemicus is unknown for a disease, homeopaths will resort to using the nosode for the disease; in other words, a potentized version of the disease material itself (in the case of smallpox, they take material that comes out of the vesicles, dilute and potentize it).
From this page:
More recently, another method of Homeoprophylaxis has been widely used, involving the use of nosodes – remedies derived from diseased tissue. Nosodes represent the generic appearance of the acute condition, not allowing for individual variation, and are useful in the early stages of an outbreak before the G. E. has been identified.
This is akin to vaccinating, except that using the homeopathic version instead of physical material, it's introducing the
information pattern of the disease rather than the crude material (attenuated virus, etc.) and is therefore much safer.
Homeoprophylaxis is like a way of educating the immune system for something it might encounter in the future. A lot of people will take
Influenzinum every year as a means of protecting against the flu, for example. But until the disease is actually present and developing symptoms in the population, it's shooting in the dark. It may be beneficial to take
Sarracenia or
Variolinum prophylactically, and it's highly unlikely it would hurt anything to do so, but a better course of action would be to wait for more information, IMO.