The Coneflower (Echinacea Angustifolia) plant is a native of Texas and the western Great Plains. Both the purple flower and the root are used to extract the active components. Echinacea Angustifolia was also used for more ailments than any other by the American Indians of the Great Plains and adjacent regions.
The founder of the world’s first ethnobotanical laboratory, Melvin R. Gilmore (1919), noted the importance of Coneflower to native groups of the Missouri River Region. This plant was universally used as an antidote for snake bites, venomous bites, stings, and poisonous conditions.
The whole root was placed on toothaches until the pain subsided, and Echinacea Angustifolia was also used on enlarged glands (like mumps). Coneflower was used as a smoke fumigant to treat headaches in people and distemper in horses.
Koch and Hasse (1952) found that Coneflower, injected together with animal hyaluronidase, produced a strong hyaluronidase-inhibitory action corresponding to that of cortisone.Kuhn (1953) again showed that the unknown substances in the plant inhibited hyaluronidase produced in the body and by microorganisms. Coneflower activates fibroblasts (cells that develop connective tissue), transforming them into cells that, in turn, produce hyaluronic acid.
Wagner and Proksch of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Biology, University of Munich, published their findings in 1981, in which they discovered two polysaccharides in Coneflower that stimulated T-cell activity 20 to 30 percent more than a highly potent T-cell stimulator.