TESTIMONIALS
A HISTORY OF THE HEALING CHILI
MOST CERTAIN STIMULANT—AND NEARLY A CURE-ALL
FROM THE MEDICAL WORLD
FOOD AS MEDICINE
CULTIVATION AND COLLECTION
PREPARATION
PREPARATION AND USAGE
DESCRIPTION
CHEMICAL COMPOSITION
DR. CHRISTOPHER'S COMBINATIONS CONTAINING CAYENNE
CURRENT FINDINGS
BIBLIOGRAPHY

A farmer used to give Cayenne to his chickens and cows when they were ailing, but never to the children when they were sick. One of the sons said, “We were worth more to him than those animals! He should have given it to us, too.” Dr. Christopher assured us that Cayenne is one of the greatest herbs of all time--though it is also one of the most misunderstood and ridiculed. He said that every home should have a good supply of Cayenne pepper.

Because it was such a large policy, the company required the examination to be given by two medical doctors, each to examine twice. At the end of one of these physicals, one of the doctors said, “This is astounding! You have the venous structure of a teenage boy, at forty-five years of age!”

The other doctor kept pumping up his blood pressure equipment over and over again, repeating the blood pressure check. Dr. Christopher began to be perturbed, and asked him if the equipment was broken. “It always has worked up till now, but I keep looking at your chart, which says you are forty-five years old, and yet your systolic over your diastolic is absolutely perfect. I cannot comprehend it.” Dr. Christopher assured him that it was indeed perfect, and he attributed this clean bill of health to Cayenne.

However, Dr. Christopher needed to be converted to the use of Cayenne. When he was attending the Herbal College in Canada, the teacher announced that they were going to study Cayenne. “Why Cayenne?” asked Dr. Christopher. “It will burn the lining out of the stomach.”

“Where did you get your information,” asked the teacher, Dr. Nowell. “Oh, my mother told me,” answered Dr. Christopher.

Everybody in the class laughed except the teacher and Dr. Christopher. Dr. Nowell took Dr. Christopher around Vancouver and introduced him to over a dozen people whose lives had been saved with Cayenne; people with heart troubles, ulcers, asthma, and many other ailments. Wherever they went, the people were full of gratitude for being taught about Cayenne, and from then on Dr. Christopher was sold on it.

While Dr. Christopher was working in the business world, he was taking Cayenne, and on one business trip, he was traveling with an athlete, a man who had a black belt in karate and who was, in Dr. Christopher's words, “a husky little guy.” Yet he came from a family with a history of high blood pressure, and his uncle had died of varicosity. He was under the care of a doctor at the time. Every morning, Dr. Christopher would take a spoonful of Cayenne in a glassful of water, followed by a few tablespoonful of wheat germ oil. The young man wanted to know what Dr. Christopher was taking and wanted to try some. “You're probably too chicken,” Dr. Christopher told him! This reverse psychology worked; Dr. Christopher noticed that his Cayenne was disappearing gradually. When they returned from the trip, the man continued taking Cayenne, one teaspoonful three times a day. The doctor was astonished at the young mans next checkup; after a lifetime of high blood pressure, he now had a clean bill of health.

Once a child was shot in the abdomen; a bullet hit the spine, ricocheted, and made a second wound leaving the body. One of Dr. Christopher's herbal students, living next door, heard the shot and raced over, as she knew that the parents were not home and that the children, ages eight and four, would not be shooting guns. There was the eight year old gushing blood out both sides. She ran to the cabinet and mixed a tablespoonful of cayenne in a glass of water; she poured it down the boy and immediately called the ambulance, which was eighteen miles away. The emergency room attendant said that the boy would probably bleed to death, being that the distance was so great. The ambulance arrived and rushed the child (who had been playing “Cops and Robbers” with his fathers pistol, which he had found Under the pillow of the bed), to the Primary Children's Hospital eighteen miles away. When he arrived, he was the center of attraction, not because his ease was so dangerous, but because he was chatting a mile a minute—and there was not bleeding. The bleeding had stopped by the time they arrived at the hospital. The chief doctor said to the parents, “I have seen many accident victims in my life, but this is the first time in such an emergency operation that I have opened an abdomen to find no blood, except for a small amount that was there before the bleeding stopped so quickly. This has saved your boy's life.”

In that same year, Dr. Christopher treated four other gunshot victims, and each case responded the same, although sometimes the blood coagulates and comes out in clumps before it stops completely. By the time you count to ten, however, the heavy bleeding should stop completely after administering Cayenne. The Doctor even used tincture of Cayenne on open wounds and, as he put it, “There may be a bit of muttering about it,” referring to the burning feeling of the Cayenne, but the bleeding stops.

Dr. Christopher related the humorous story of a very fine student of his who had begun teaching herb classes on his own. This young man happened to precede Dr. Christopher's lecture one evening in Arizona. The young man said, “You know, ladies and gentlemen, that Dr. Christopher has always made me gasp. I've seen him drink two or three tablespoons of Cayenne in water; and I'd just shudder. But tonight I'm going to do something that he may have never done himself.” With that, he reached down into a container of Cayenne and threw a pinch right into his eye. Dr. Christopher thought that the man must have gone crazy and he was concerned that one of his students would do such a thing in public, although he knew that Cayenne can never hurt the cell structure, no matter how delicate it is. The tears ran down the man's cheek as he continued talking, and when he was finished, he opened his eye and invited everyone to look. The eye just sparkled; it was by far the brighter of the two, although Dr. Christopher said that he never had seen this antic performed again—and that he never dared to try it himself.

A lady who had been attending Dr. Christopher's lectures over the years told the story of her husband who had a severe ease of stomach ulcers. The doctor recommended that part of the stomach be removed, but the man preferred to suffer the pain rather than risk such an operation. But he also ridiculed his wife's recommendations to use Cayenne and other herbs. Whenever he would see Dr. Christopher in town, he'd bellow, “Hello, Doc! Killed anybody with Cayenne today?” Naturally, Dr. Christopher tried to avoid him, but one day he came directly to the Doctor; this time without any sarcasm, instead being very apologetic, telling this story.

He had come home from work one night, so sick he wanted to die, with stomach ulcers. His wife was not home, but he was in such pain that he decided to commit suicide. When he looked into the medicine cabinet to find some kind of medicine poisonous enough to kill him, he discovered that his wife had discarded all the old bottles of pharmaceutical medicines. All he could find were some bottles of herbs and a large container of Cayenne pepper. He figured that a large dose of that would kill him, so he took a heaping tablespoon in a glass of hot water, gulped it down, rushed into the bedroom, and covered his head with a pillow so that the neighbors couldn't hear his dying screams.

The next thing he knew, his wife was shaking him awake the next morning. He had slept all night, the first time in years, instead of waking every half hour or so for antacid tablets. To his amazement, all his pain was gone. He continued using the Cayenne faithfully, three times a day, and never had any more trouble with ulcers.

Once, when traveling with a business partner, Dr. Christopher recommended Cayenne to him, as the man had extremely high blood pressure and such bad hemorrhoids that he had to wear a belt. Dr. Christopher used the same reverse psychology on this man—”I don't think you are brave enough”—and pretty soon the man was taking the Cayenne and the wheat germ oil, too. In a few months, he did not have to wear a belt any longer, and his systolic and diastolic at his blood pressure examination were nearly perfect. He no longer had to go to the doctor; and he lived many long years, for he kept taking his Cayenne.

Early in Dr. Christopher's practice, he was called in the middle of the night by a woman whose husband had just passed out from a heart attack. The Doctor told the woman to heat some water, and he arrived at the house and mixed a teaspoon of Cayenne into the water, propped up the man, and gave him just a little. When he came to, he finished the cup, and within a few minutes felt much stronger. Soon he was well, and became converted to the use of herbs, even buying and running one of the health food stores in Salt Lake City for many years.

One young man had cut his hand deeply, fingers as well as the palm. The blood spurted out in streams. He poured a large amount of Cayenne into the wound, and within seconds the blood flow slowed down, congealed, and stopped. He wrapped with wound, covering it first with a goodly amount of Cayenne. He was so excited about these results that he could hardly wait to attend the next herb lecture to tell about it. But when he unwrapped the bandage to show the audience, instead of a deep, ugly scar, the area was healed and there was no scar at all!

Cayenne can be used on any part of the body and for anybody, Dr. Christopher claimed. He even saved the life of a six week old baby who was born with chronic asthma by giving Cayenne tea, from an eyedropper, until the baby was able to breathe again. He said that Cayenne could even be given by enema for chronic constipation (if you are brave!).

At the age of seventy, a few years before he died, Dr. Christopher was asked by a premed student if he could take his blood pressure. The lecture group saw the blood pressure reading of a healthy young man, not the average reading of a seventy-year-old. In addition to a healthy life-style and the mucusless diet, Dr. Christopher attributed this good reading to his thrice daily dose of Cayenne.

To show what a miracle worker Cayenne really is, Dr. Christopher related the experiment performed by medical doctors in the eastern United States—and printed in the medical journals. They put some live heart tissue in a beaker filled with distilled water, and fed it nothing but Cayenne pepper, cleaning off sediments periodically and adding nothing else but distilled water to replace that which was lost from evaporation. During the experiment, they would have to trim the tissue every few days, because it would grow so rapidly! Having no control glands (pituitary and pineal), the tissue just continued to grow rapidly. They kept this tissue alive for fifteen years. After the doctor doing the experiment died, his associates kept it alive for two more years before destroying it for analysis This shows the tremendous regenerative and healing power of Cayenne, especially upon the heart.

A HISTORY OF THE HEALING CHILI 

Capsicum was introduced to Europe by the historian who accompanied Columbus to the New World, Peter Martyr. He reported the use of these pungent peppers, and the ship’s physician, Dr. Chatica, reported their use as a condiment and as a medicine, an irony considering that Columbus was seeking the spices of the Far East (Heiser, op.. cit.) 

Later, scholars sent from Spain to the New World, notably to Mexico and Central America, chronicle the extensive use of chili peppers in the diet of the Indians. Next to maize, a certain Cobo wrote, it was the foremost plant in the land; and a Garcilaso said that the Peruvian Indians valued chilis more than any other plant, never cooking a dish without them. The Jesuit Acosta noted that it was an item of considerable value for trade in areas where chili did not grow, that it “comforted the stomach” when taken in moderation, and that some of the Indians made offerings of peppers to their gods (Ibid.).

According to sixteenth century historians, South American warriors would burn peppers to use the smoke against the invading Spanish (Ibid.). Interestingly, during the Viet Nam war, Buddhist monks armed themselves with spray guns filled with a mixture of lemon juice, curry powder, and Cayenne.

Cayenne peppers reached southeastern Asia a few years after the discovery of America, and today they are almost as important in tropical Asian cuisine and medicine as they are in tropical America. In fact, these peppers became so well established in India not long after their migration that early botanists thought they were indigenous. In India they are an indispensable part of curry, which is a universal ingredient in most Indian cuisine. Peppers are also widely used throughout Africa, and the African produce is thought to be the hottest in the world, perhaps due to climatic or edaphic factors, though it may be due to specialized breeding (Heiser, op. cit). In Ethiopia, the national dish, wort, or Cayenne portage, features this pungent powder. Salt and powdered Cayenne pods are mixed with a little pea or bean meal and made into a paste called dillock. This is kept in a gourd, often hung from the house roof, and used a little at a time, wort being made by adding water to the paste and then boiling the mixture (Ibid.).

Cayenne was introduced into Britain from India in 1548, and Gerard mentioned it as being cultivated in his time (Gri: 175). It is used in folk medicine in various parts of the world, notably Greece, Italy, and parts of Russia, where it is steeped in Vodka and drunk as a tonic in wineglassful doses (Hut:68). It grows and is used abundantly in the West Indies, where the Negroes value it as a certain remedy for many ailments (Klo:217). It is especially valued there for the deadly fevers, especially yellow fever, of which the native people have no fear as long as they have a goodly supply of Capsicum (Ibid.). As in Mexico, the children and adults alike snack on hot pepper pods, eating them one after another “as we would do so many doughnuts,” said Kloss.

Cayenne is one of the main foods of the Hunzas in Asia Minor, along with apricots and their pits, millet, and other such simple foods. They live to over a hundred years of age, sometimes play polo at the age of 150, and generally die not from diseases, but from falls or accidents 
(Herbalist:I:I:3 2 ).

Capsicum was early cited as growing in the Hawaiian Islands, cultivated and escaped varieties noted as early as 1897, though the fruits were small and very pungent. It was known as “Hawaiian Chili Peppers.”

In Mexico today, Chilis of various kinds supplement the daily diet and, in addition to providing spice and essential nutrients to an otherwise bland and repetitious diet of tortillas, beans, squash, pumpkins, potatoes and the like, they perform important medicinal functions. Visitors to Mexico often suffer from “Montezuma’s Revenge,” a particularly devastating kind of amoebic dysentery. However, if they will eat hot chill with their meals the way the native Mexicans do, they will not suffer this disease. Juliette de Bairacli Levy, when living in Mexico with her small children, did not hesitate to let them drink raw milk—a practice frowned upon by most because of the certainty of dysenteric infection. She spiked the milk with a generous dose of Cayenne and the children were never infected. She noted, too, that eventually the children came to relish the hot-tasting milk. It is reported that the Mexicans, who ingest such quantities of Chili that their bodies are infused with it, are not attacked by predatory birds, if they happen to perish by accident in the deserts; vultures won't touch the Chili-laden body.

Cayenne pepper is the name for the hottest form of Capsicum, which can take other forms. If its heat is 1 BTU, this mild Capsicum is called paprika; if it is from one to twenty-five BTU, it is called simply red pepper; but over twenty-five BTU rating is termed Cayenne. Therefore Cayenne is the strongest of the Capsicum family. In Mexico alone, many varieties (some claim fifteen or more) of peppers are grown, each with a distinctive flavor, and often very hot indeed. Other important varieties are grown in Japan (predominantly used, dried, in cooking), the United States, and Africa, the latter being valued as a high-quality medicinal Cayenne.

One of the United States varieties, imported from the Mexican state of Tabasco, has attained great renown. An American soldier, returning from the Mexican War of 1846-48, brought some pepper seeds to Edward Mcllhenny, a banker, who grew plants from them in Louisiana. McIlhenny found that the peppers made a delightfully piquant sauce. During the Civil War, he left Louisiana, but when he returned, finding his plants still flourishing, was persuaded to market his sauce. Since the war had left him without an income, he thought this was worth a try, and the venture proved successful; Tabasco Sauce is a gourmet treat throughout the world (Heiser: 12).

Cayenne pepper was a mainstay of the Thomsonian School of Medicine, Samuel Thomson, the original Botanic Physician, having featured it along with Lobelia in his healing routines. It was an important ingredient in his Composition Powder, and he also used it as a stimulant and an assist to the emetic properties of Lobelia.

Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, was said to have advocated the use of Cayenne. His successor, Brigham Young, eschewing the services of orthodox medical practitioners, encouraged the use of Cayenne and of Composition Powder, the latter even serving as a beverage in place of regular tea or other drinks. Many of the early Church members were well versed in botanic medicine, an interesting example being Priddy Meeks, who was a thorough-going herbal practitioner and whose journal we possess today. He gave Cayenne pepper to a young man who had attempted to journey from California back to the East. His feet were both frozen up to his ankles. Meeks felt, “as tho by inspiration,” that he should try Cayenne internally for the case.

Having given the man too much at first, Meeks reduced the dose as the frozen feet began to hurt terribly. When the dose seemed right, an unusual event occurred: the frozen flesh would rot and rope down from his foot, when it would be on his knee, then clear to the floor, and the new flesh would form as fast as the dead flesh would drop. It seemed to Meeks that the dead flesh was getting out of the way to make room for the new flesh. After sixteen days, the man was able to walk again, having lost only five toenails, instead of both feet—an unusual tale indeed! Meeks related many other cases he healed with Cayenne pepper; he was much in demand with these simple remedies.

In England, Cayenne was called “Ginnie pepper,” since it was purchased from “Guinea,” or the Indies. Being official in both the United States and British pharmacopoeias (even until the 1950’s), Cayenne was an ingredient in many of the cure-all remedies of the last century; in fact, it was often the main ingredient, along with aloes and a little soap. The British pharmacopoeia requires that Capsicum should yield not more than six percent of ash, and this will detect any adulterants, which include ground fruit stone, linseed, ground cereal products, oxide of red lead, and colored sawdust (Gri: 176).

Cayenne or Capsicum derives its name from the Greek kaptos, I bite, an allusion to the pungent properties of the fruits and seeds. Although the origin of the species is obscured in antiquity, as described above, experts believe that all the varieties of chilis originated in one species. For this reason the botanical classification of these plants is sometimes muddled, and Capsicum annuum is sometimes described as Capsicum frutescens (Stuart: 166). Some sources indicate that our valuable Cayenne is really Capsicum fastigiatum (Bar: 148), or Capsicum minimum (Hut:67). All of this confusion points to the point we made earlier, that the medicinal Cayenne is classed according to its BTU rating rather than its species.

Other names for Cayenne include African pepper, African red pepper, and African bird pepper, all alluding to the most pungent and superior product obtained from Africa, although this can be light brownish-yellow instead of red in color (Gri:176). It is also called American red pepper, Spanish pepper, and Guinea pepper, as it is obtained from these places. We are already familiar with its name, Chili, in Mexico; in French it is called Capsique or Poivre de Cayenne, and in German it is Spanisher Pfeffer or Schlotenpfeffer.