HERBS--- Traditional uses
Traditional folk use of herbal remedies is familiar to everyone in some form or another. This is the way in which information about herbal usage has been passed from generation to generation, but it is also this empirical and unquestioning use that gives herbalism a bad name amongst the scientific community. Their loss! Folk wisdom is of inestimable value and relevance. Generations of experience and accrued insight are not to be taken lightly.
As an example consider that it is this very folk knowledge from around the world that is often pointing the way in the pharmacologists search for new and powerful medicines. The use of Wild Yam (Dioscorea spp.) as a source of hormone precursors and the Madagascan Periwinkle (Canthareus spp.) for anti-leukemia drugs are examples.
The bulk of the world's health care is still based in the traditional use of local herbal remedies. The relevance of this world wide traditional folk use is recognized by the World Health Organization and promoted through their Traditional Medicine programme. All cultures of the world have a herbal tradition. It may be a thriving aspect of their modern life or an apparently more or less moribund historical memory.
A visit to any market in Italy will demonstrate the vitality of the herbal tradition there. In contrast, by the early 1970s traditional use of plant medicines appeared to be almost past in Britain. However with the renewal of interest in herbs, as part of a wider re-awakening to the natural world, it was soon discovered that much of the tradition was alive and well.
Remedies and recipes for herbal teas had been handed down from generation to generation and are still remembered. The change in social atmosphere regarding herbs has given permission for people to recollect such gems of knowledge.
Wales has a strong modern herbal tradition with clearly recognizable roots in the flowering of Welsh culture in the days of the old Princes of Wales. In the rural areas are many people who know one or two herbal combinations that are specific for certain conditions. An often encountered one is an ointment for eczema. They are usually very effective, but the people using them rarely know why and often know no other herbal information.
These herbal recipes usually have their origins in the medieval, doctors at the court of the rulers of Wales. These physicians possessed a deep and profound knowledge of herbs and the healing process, well in advance of what was available in England and the rest of non-Islamic Europe at the time
The continuity of the tradition is paradoxically due to the attempts to destroy the culture that supported the Physicians. When the English invaded and conquered Wales, the royal court was destroyed.
The knowledge and wisdom of the Physicians of Myddfai was in part dispersed throughout the people, in a successful attempt to preserve it. It would appear that certain families were given specific remedies to keep safe and pass on from generation to generation.
The recipes and information were never given to anyone outside the family, but the medicine was given freely to anyone who needed it. This wisdom can still be found in the hills and valleys of Wales.
Usually, however, folk traditions in the west are vestigial or have been recently revived by well meaning adherents. This makes changing or developing herbal treatments problematic. Unless the herbalist is part of an actively living tradition, it is unwise to question or change the handed down knowledge as the basis of that knowledge is no longer extant.
An example may clarify this.
When in practice in West Wales the author came across a hill farmer who made an ointment for the treatment of shingles, a painful and intransigent viral infection of nerve ganglia that is experienced as effecting the skin. On two occasions it was observed clearing trigeminal shingles in 3-5 days, a feat that allopathic medicine or modern herbalism would be hard pressed to duplicate.
When in practice in West Wales the author came across a hill farmer who made an ointment for the treatment of shingles, a painful and intransigent viral infection of nerve ganglia that is experienced as effecting the skin. On two occasions it was observed clearing trigeminal shingles in 3-5 days, a feat that allopathic medicine or modern herbalism would be hard pressed to duplicate.
However, the farmer died childless, without imparting the secret recipe, and especially not to an upstart English herbalist from the town!
All attempts to identify the many herbs used failed, apart from one herb out of the whole combination. This was Biting Stonecrop (Sedum acre), an herb that is hardly ever used today and which the 17th. century herbalist Culpepper insists must not be put in any ointment.
Formulation involved using pigs urine as an extraction vehicle. Apart from practical questions about how to collect the urine(!), modern sensibilities and hygiene considerations would probably suggest using water instead. However, from a therapeutic perspective using pigs urine in this way should not be discarded for hygienic reasons alone.
When shaman in Siberia were studied in the early 20th century it was found that during visionary rituals involving the psycho-active fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria), they would drink their own urine. This lengthened and deepened the experience because there are metabolites of the alkaloid muscimole present which are also psycho-active.
Is it not possible that some complex process between herbs and pigs urine produced an anti-viral metabolite that was absorbable through the skin?
Whilst this might sound far fetched, but there is no denying that the ointment worked.
Unless one knows why something is in the mixture, can it be taken out without losing the desired effect, and if the recipe is changed in that way the formulation is no longer the traditional one?
As fundamentally valuable as traditional folk knowledge is, it has limited application within modern holistic herbal practice.
As fundamentally valuable as traditional folk knowledge is, it has limited application within modern holistic herbal practice.
The use of herbal remedies in this way, relating specific plants to a specific disease or symptom is little more than what we may call 'organic drug therapy'. Simply using remedies for such symptomatic relief ignores all the insights of holistic medicine.
The ancient folk traditions of the world provide a wonderful foundation upon which the Medical Herbalist may build the holistic herbalism of the future.
PAUL O' SULLIVAN.....INFROMATIONMEMBERSHIP.COM
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