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Image of wide green leaves of a plant growing low to the ground.
Plantago major, one of the plants in Caeser's antidote.

An enslaved man named Caesar is "given" his freedom in exchange for his cures.

Date: 1749

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Plantago major, one of the plants in Caeser's antidote.

Caesar is released from bondage and given an annual pension of £100 for his cures for poisons and snakebites. His remedies, which are a mix of African, Indigenous, and European medical traditions, will be shared throughout the British Atlantic.

Caesar's antidote for poison includes wild horehound, a species indigenous to North America, and plantago (plantain), a European plant that followed settler-colonists so consistently that Native people called it ‘‘white man’s foot.’’ The remedy known as "Caesar's cure" will be used regularly until late into the 19th century.