Many early travelers, especially hunters and trappers, expressed joy at finding a large bog in the North in the fall months, covered with red cranberries and teaming with wild rice. They were known as a refreshing, invigorating food, which could be dried for winter. One of the most important early nineteenth century writers on American medicinal plants, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, described medicinal uses for cranberries in 1830. They are usually as large as cherries, and somewhat similar in shape and color . . . Useful in fevers, diarrhea, scurvy, dropsy, and many other diseases.
Cranberry tarts are one of the American table luxuries.
Their juice mixed with sugar or alcohol keeps a long while, and forms a fine acidulous drink with water, allaying thirst, and lessening the heat of the body. The diuretic use of cranberries was first reported in a 1787 Latin work on American medicinal plants. This knowledge trickles down from the eighteenth century literature to become common information on the brink of the twenty first century. Scientific evidence as it relates to the health of the urinary tract was first recognized by German physicians in the mid-1800s. They had observed that after ingesting cranberries, urinary excretion of hippuric acid was increased.