To early European colonizers, sassafras appeared to be a medical miracle. Indigenous communities had long used sassafras tea to treat fevers, digestive issues, and a wide range of other conditions. Through direct and indirect exchanges with these communities, early settlers learned of Indigenous applications of sassafras and adopted them in their own preparations of medicinal teas and tonics from the root bark. Seventeenth-century Spanish physician Nicolás Monardes described sassafras as a “universall remedy for all manner of deseases,” reflecting the widespread belief in its curative power for an array of ailments. Most notably, sassafras gained prominence as a treatment for “French pox,” or syphilis, a disease that devastated populations on both sides of the Atlantic. Its perceived effectiveness as a cure-all medicinal plant transformed its status from an Indigenous remedy to a transatlantic commodity. By the end of the seventeenth century, sassafras had become one of the primary exports of the early English colony of Jamestown, and the aromatic bark was harvested intensively for shipment to European markets.
Over the following centuries, sassafras remained embedded in North American medical practice, but its uses evolved through cultural exchange and scientific advancement. Enslaved Africans, drawing on both inherited African healing traditions and knowledge shared by Indigenous peoples, incorporated sassafras into their own systems of herbal medicine. In these contexts, sassafras bark tea was valued as a “blood purifier” and general restorative. The blending of these traditions solidified the plant’s role as a central element in African American herbalism and, eventually, in Creole cuisine, where it became an essential thickening agent (filé) in Louisiana gumbo.
Sassafras’s medical standing began to decline by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Western medicine became more formalized, physicians increasingly dismissed the plant, arguing it possessed no “special virtues” beyond those of other volatile, aromatic oils. The plant’s formal applications gradually reduced to little more than a flavoring agent, featured famously in root beer alongside sarsaparilla, juniper, and vanilla. Despite its widespread rejection in professional medical circles, sassafras remained a staple of household folk medicine in Appalachia and a cornerstone of herbalism in Black and Indigenous communities. This shift reflected broader tendencies through which knowledge rooted in Indigenous traditions was increasingly excluded from emerging definitions of “legitimate” medicine.
In the twentieth century, sassafras underwent a more dramatic reevaluation. Scientific studies identified safrole, the chemical compound responsible for its characteristic scent, as toxic to the liver and carcinogenic in laboratory animals. Following these findings, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of sassafras oil and safrole as food additives in 1960 and later prohibited the interstate shipment of sassafras bark for tea, effectively removing the plant from commercial products. One visible consequence of this administrative action was the reformulation of traditional root beer, which shifted from sassafras to artificial or alternative flavorings, often derived from wintergreen.