“Ghost pipe is the bee’s knees for anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, migraines, muscle spasms and just all the things,” says a popular forager on [TikTok]. “It makes you feel very Zen and grounded.”
“Basically, it will solve all your problems,” a user whose account is dedicated to holistic healing says in a video that has been watched more than 17 million times....
Ghost pipe became widely popular in the mid-19th century, thanks to a group of physicians known as the Eclectics, who rejected the punishing medical practices of their day — such as bloodletting and mercury-induced purging — in favor of botanical remedies. Eclectic doctors administered ghost pipe as a tonic, sedative and antispasmodic. The odd flower also blossomed in the popular imagination. In 1890, the cover of Emily Dickinson’s debut book of poetry featured a painting of the plant; the poet called ghost pipe “the preferred flower of life.”...
ADDED: That's not a painting by Emily Dickinson. It's a painting sent to Dickinson by Mabel Loomis Todd. Emily responded with a poem about a hummingbird.
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14 comments:
Everybody get on your feet
You make me nervous when you in your seat
Just grab your ankles, you’re in for a treat
Go in a trance that can't be beat
We're ghost pipin', we're ghost pipin'
We're ghost pipin', we’re ghost pipin'
When doctors were cool! I'll have some of that ghost pipe with a morphine syrup back, please.
I've been reading a lot of Dickinson. This is a perfect illustration for her poetry.
Also, I love the word "antispasmodic". In my life, I don't think I've ever said it aloud. That changed today. A fun word to articulate.
I think the painting is very beautiful. I'll have to look into the artist.
A Route of Evanescence,
With a revolving Wheel –
A Resonance of Emerald
A Rush of Cochineal –
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts it’s tumbled Head –
The Mail from Tunis – probably,
An easy Morning’s Ride –
The last two lines imagine a flower expecting a delivery. Cochineal is a deep red dye.
DH Lawerance also wrote a poem called Hummingbird but I wasn't impressed. Good thing he wrote novels and travel books. Don't think he would've made it as a poet.
Ok, after a dip into Loomis Todd's biography - wow, she is interesting. Her art, not so incredibly much - from the but I saw, lots of botanicals, which are pretty and well rendered but not extraordinary. But - writer, editor, astronomer, artist, and apparently sex fiend!
(for the time, I mean)
Jamie, never underestimate the sexual wackiness of the New England utopians and Eclectics and other communal society denizens of the second half of the 19th Century.
You can mix them into a nice beef Wellington, say, if you're fixing brunch for your in-laws.
Looks more like Limp Dick
Wow, that old thread from last Summer has some classic comments from Bich and Dingabat.
Just another placebo.
“Basically, it will solve all your problems ..."
Yes it will make the White man go away and bring back all the buffalo.
Or maybe that was the "Ghost Dance".
There's no more ginseng in the neighborhood and all the rhinos have lost their horns, so I guess it's time to start collecting ghost pipe.
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