The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbal Remedies (Third Edition) (2 page)
Read The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbal Remedies (Third Edition) Online
Authors: Mary Killian
SOWBREAD, or CYCLAMEN. (See "Primrose.")
WHORTLEBERRY. (See "Bilberry,")
WOODSORRELL (See also "Docks.")
I am an ‘Inbetweener’ - a little too young to be a babyboomer; a little too old to be a ‘Generation X-er’.
But what I certainly am is a child of the First World in the late Twentieth Century and, with this, comes a certain amount of smugness; a feeling that we know everything already and that we are so, so much cleverer than our ancestors or anyone who didn’t have the good fortune of being born in the First World. We laugh at the primitive knowledge of our forefathers, thinking them little better than primitives. What would they do if they were to see an iPod, for example? Consider it witchcraft?
For many years, I thought that our generation knew just about everything worth knowing now - at least the vast majority of information that we needed to get through everyday life comfortably. These comfy thoughts were knocked back a little, however, when I started suffering from an irritating skin disease which I later found out to be psoriasis. As usual, I popped off to see my regular GP to show it to her, expecting to be on my way again five minutes later with a prescription for some kind of ointment which would have it cleared up within the week. So it came as rather a nasty surprise to discover that it wasn’t going to be as simple as that - there was no known cure that would make it completely disappear.
It didn’t make any sense to me at all that something so simple (and what I later found out was so common) was still considered to be incurable. Obviously my regular doctor was just an idiot and I would have to seek help elsewhere. This resulted in a fruitless search for a solution - a complicated (and expensive) search which saw me having consultations with Skincare Specialists and even University Professors who had written books on the condition. Although some of the treatments which they prescribed eased the condition a little, nothing was able to make it disappear completely, and I resigned myself to living with it for the rest of my life.
All this changed in 2003, however, when I went on vacation to visit a friend in Russia. The subject of my psoriasis popped up in conversation and my friend told me that I needed to see the
baboushka of the forest
.
Who?!
Upon further questioning, the
baboushka of the forest
sounded very much to me like some kind of witch from a fairy story. I rolled my eyes. If that failed, was I then to go and have consultations with Santa Claus and Bigfoot as well? They all seem to belong to the same realms of superstitious nonsense.
“These ‘remedies’ only work because ignorant people want them to work,” I said arrogantly. “It’s all in the mind. There’s no way that some kind of ‘witchcraft’ is going to work on a complete skeptic like me.”
I continued to argue that the whole thing was ridiculous and a waste of time, but my friend was very insistent. In the end, I gave in and agreed to go, just to make her happy. If nothing else, it would be an interesting day out and a funny story with which to entertain my friends when I got back home.
I was expecting to find that the
baboushka of the forest
lived in a house made of gingerbread but, to a strange mixture of relief and disappointment, I found that she lived on a very ordinary looking, Stalinist-era, farm in the middle of nowhere. I was quite surprised to find that there was a long line of people waiting to see her. I was even more surprised when my friend told me that such was the
baboushka’s
fame that people flew from Scandinavia and Germany just to meet with her. Now I was starting to worry that she wasn’t just a witch, but that she was also a sinister cult leader. If she offered me some Kool-Aid, I would have politely declined.
Eventually it was my turn to meet the ‘witch’. She had the warts which I was expecting, but wasn’t wearing a pointy hat or cackling maniacally as she stirred a large cauldron. My friend translated my problems to her because the
baboushka
didn’t speak a word of English and I showed her my psoriasis. Five minutes later and I was handed two small plastic bags - one filled with chopped up twigs and another full of grass. I was told to boil up the twigs and grass twice daily to make tea and drink it. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes once again. Twig and grass tea? Well that would make a change from my regular skinny latte at Starbucks.
My trip to Russia was nearly at an end. I thought about just dumping the bags of twigs and grass to save space in my luggage, but they weren’t that bulky so I took them anyway.
When I got back home, I told several of my friends about my encounter with the
baboushka of the forest
and they, like me, found it to be a hilarious anecdote. “So have you tried drinking the tea?” they all asked.
I hadn’t yet, but they all urged me to do it. And so I did - more so as to get to the punchline of a running joke than because I thought that there was any chance of it working.
However, the punchline of the joke wasn’t the one that I was expecting.
The joke was on me.
After a week of drinking the tea, the psoriasis had started to clear up. After two weeks, it had completely gone. I tried to look for some ‘rational’ explanations. I was almost embarrassed that it had worked after telling everyone how ridiculous the whole episode had been. But the proof was right in front of me - there was no more psoriasis. Now I was forced to eat some large servings of Humble Pie together with the twig and grass tea!
After a few weeks though, I ran out of twigs and grass. A couple of weeks after I stopped drinking the tea, the psoriasis started to reappear. Foolishly, I had never bothered to find out exactly what the twigs and grasses were so that I could get hold of a ‘repeat prescription’. It was just too much to ask my friend to go back to see the
baboushka
and ask because it was a long day’s exercise. There was no other choice for it - I needed to make some research of my own to find out more about the twigs and grasses, and this is what led me into the world of herbal remedies.
Although it started off as just a simple search for the identity of the twigs and grasses, my searching through books on herbs old and new led me on a more interesting journey than I ever could have imagined, particularly as I read some of the older books that I found. At times it seemed as if I had stumbled on a long-forgotten world where life was simpler. The information that I read about the different plants and trees reawakened some old, forgotten memories in my mind from my early childhood - of long hikes through the fields and woods with my grandfather and stories told to me by my great-grandmother, who died when I was only seven years old. It made me realize how we forget so much that we have learned in the past now that we are constantly bombarded with new information - from TV, from the Internet and from newspapers.
So, maybe as way of making a penance for my skepticism regarding the
baboushka of the forest
and herbal remedies in general, I would like to pass on the best of the information that I have uncovered during my research so that other people can benefit from the knowledge contained within and also learn some of the folklore and history that surrounds the plants and trees common in the countryside. This new Kindle edition, which brings this semi-forgotten knowledge back into the 21st Century, makes full use of the Kindle’s fabulous hyperlinking abilities and search functions, making this information far more convenient and easy to use than the dusty old tomes that it was compiled from. It also adds pictures of many of the herbs that are detailed inside for the first time.
I hope your journey of exploration into the world of herbalism will be just as interesting as mine.
.
This is the well-known fruit of our British Oak, to Which tree it gives the name--Aik, or Eik, Oak.
The Acorn was esteemed by Dioscorides, and other old authors, for its supposed medicinal virtues. As an article of food it is not known to have been habitually used at any time by the inhabitants of Britain, though acorns furnished the chief support of the large herds of swine on which our forefathers subsisted. The right of maintaining these swine in the woods was called "panage," and formed a valuable property.
The earliest inhabitants of Greece and Southern Europe who lived in the primeval forests were supported almost wholly on the fruit of the Oak. They were described by classic authors as fat of person, and were called "balanophagi"--acorn eaters.
During the great dearth of 1709 the French were driven to eat bread of acorns steeped in water to destroy the bitterness, and they suffered therefrom injurious effects, such as obstinate constipation, or destructive cholera.
It is worth serious notice medically that in years remarkable for a large yield of Acorns disastrous losses have occurred among young cattle from outbreaks of acorn poisoning, or the acorn disease. Those up to two years old suffered most severely, but sheep, pigs and deer were not affected by this acorn malady. Its symptoms are progressive wasting, loss of appetite, diarrhoea, sore places inside the mouth, discharge from the eyes and nostrils, excretion of much pale urine, and no fever, but a fall of temperature below the normal standard. Having regard to which train of symptoms it is fair to suppose the acorn will afford in the human subject a useful specific medicine for the marasmus, or wasting atrophy of young children who are scrofulous. The fruit should be given in the form of a tincture, or vegetable extract, or even admixed (when ground) sparingly with wheaten flour in bread. The dose should fall short of producing any of the above symptoms, and the remedy should be steadily pursued for many weeks.
The tincture should be made of saturated strength with spirit of wine on the bruised acorns, to stand for a fortnight before being decanted. Then the dose will be from twenty to thirty drops with water three or four times a day.
The Acorn contains chemically starch, a fixed oil, citric acid, uncrystallizable sugar, and another special sugar called "quercit."
Acorns, when roasted and powdered, have been sometimes employed as a fair substitute for coffee. By distillation they will yield an ardent spirit.
Dr. Burnett strongly commends a "distilled spirit of acorns" as an antidote to the effects of alcohol, where the spleen and kidneys have already suffered, with induced dropsy. It acts on the principle of similars, ten drops being given three times a day in water.
In certain parts of Europe it is customary to place acorns in the hands of the newly dead; whilst in other districts an apple is put into the palm of a child when lying in its little coffin.
The bark of an oak tree, and the galls, or apples, produced on its leaves, or twigs, by an insect named cynips, are very astringent, by reason of the gallo-tannic acid which they furnish abundantly. This acid, given as a drug, or the strong decoction of oak bark which contains it, will serve to restrain bleedings if taken internally; and finely powdered oak bark, when inhaled pretty frequently, has proved very beneficial against consumption of the lungs in its early stages. Working tanners are well known to be particularly exempt from this disease, probably through their constantly inhaling the peculiar aroma given off from the tan pits; and a like effect may be produced by using as snuff the fresh oak bark dried and reduced to an impalpable powder, or by inhaling day after day the steam given off from recent oak bark infused in boiling water.
Marble galls are formed on the back of young twigs, artichoke galls at their extremities, and currant galls by spangles on the under surface of the leaves. From these spangles females presently emerge, and lay their eggs on the catkins, giving rise to the round shining currant galls.
The Oak--Quercus robur--is so named from the Celtic "quer," beautiful; and "cuez," a tree. "Drus," another Celtic word for tree, and particularly for the Oak, gave rise to the terms Dryads and Druids. Among the Greeks and Romans a chaplet of oak was one of the highest honours which could be conferred on a citizen. Ancient oaks exist in several parts of England, which are traditionally called Gospel oaks, because it was the practice in times long past when beating the bounds of a parish to read a portion of the Gospel on Ascension Day beneath an oak tree which was growing on the boundary line of the district. Cross oaks were planted at the juncture of cross roads, so that persons suffering from ague might peg a lock of their hair into the trunks, and by wrenching themselves away might leave the hair and the malady in the tree together. A strong decoction of oak bark is most usefully applied for prolapse of the lower bowel.
Oak Apple day (May 29th) is called in Hampshire "Shikshak" day.