The early Polynesians brought this plant with them when they came here to Hawaii. Besides using the vines and tubers for food, different varieties were used for medicine for different kinds of sickness.

If a person felt like vomiting because he had eaten something bad -- or too much -- he was helped to vomit all this from the stomach with sweet potato, the raw "meat" of the tuber was scraped and put in water, along with scraped ti-stem "meat", and then allowed to sit in the sun to warm up. Then it was strained and drunk (no wonder the person vomited after having to drink that mixture!)

The tubers of other varieties were used to cure asthma, lack of sleep, and "womb trouble".

The young eaves of still other varieties were used (mixed with other plants) as a laxative, or to "strengthen" young children.

When mothers did not have enough milk for their babies, they would hang a lei made from a sweet potato vine around her neck, because the vine has a milky sap it was supposed to make her milk flow.