The Herbslinger

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Practitioners from all old traditions of medicine agreed on one priority in managing illness: most trouble originated in the gut. To understand this focus it helps to explore some of the imagery our ancestors used for disease.

In the ancient view the main enemy of health was damp (the Ayurvedic translation āma, is a common suffix for diseases in that tradition). As in everyday experience dampness is associated with mould, rotting, and things ‘going off’. To reduce this we still like to give things ‘an airing’. So ‘damp’ was what people used to understand what we now call infections and inflammatory conditions.

Again in the ancient view, there was ‘cold-damp’ and ‘hot-damp’. The first is easy to appreciate by anyone living in cold and damp climates (Julius Caesar complained that his Roman troops suffered from bronchitis and arthritis when they invaded Britain).

The second is best understood as a reflection of humidity, which is also sickening for some. The strong association made here was with liver-bile problems including hepatitis and intolerance to fats and alcohol, as well as many gastrointestinal infections, and some urinary infections.

The deep insight across history is that both forms of damp emanated from an under-firing digestive system. It was therefore ‘drying’ digestive remedies that were the main recourse: ‘heating and drying’ spices for ‘cold-damp’ conditions (for example try ginger, cinnamon and raw garlic for bronchial problems), and ‘cooling-and drying” (generally the bitters) for hepatic and gut symptoms of ‘damp heat’.

We are coming round to the ancient view that the digestive system really is the seat (Latin: fundament) of many health problems. This should not be surprising. The gut wall is where we are most exposed to contact with the outside world (mainly our food). It is therefore where by far the greatest part of our immune system is based (thought: our gut IS our immune system...).

Gut-associated tissues also generate more hormones and brain-active chemicals than the rest of the body together (thought: our feelings mostly come from the gut ...). It is also of course our main channel of elimination.

Above all it is the home of our biggest microbiome, the trillions of organisms, bacteria, fungi, viruses and others, that live moreorless peaceably within us. We are certainly realising that the gut microbiota have huge influences on the rest of the body.

So we find digestive and gut factors involved in more and more chronic diseases, especially inflammatory and immunological ones. Faulty diets are an obvious factor (half the food consumed in the UK is ultra-processed) though there are other factors that prevent digestion performing well.

Many of the first plant medicines in human experience have their main impact on the digestive system, and are actually often poorly absorbed into the body. They are opening up new avenues into the management of some very complex and hard-to-treat diseases and even degenerative conditions like dementia.

A GUT-centred approach to improving health has prospects. Many future pasts will come back to this!

Cough? What sort of cough?

There is now an app that can diagnose Covid by the quality of the cough. Physicians often used to diagnose this way: they could differentiate pneumonias, bronchitis, tracheitis, pharyngitis, pleurisy, bronchial asthma and tuberculosis just by the quality of the cough. A stethoscope might just be for checking.

However anyone can apply some basic principles and get quite clever in choosing the best cough remedy.

The first question is whether the cough is ‘wet’ or ‘dry’. A wet cough brings up phlegm, sputum or other fluids. A dry cough does not bring up much, or maybe tacky globs. The difference goes to the heart of lung defences and how to support them.

We have an amazing quiet mechanism (the 'mucociliary escalator') that works constantly to trap dust and germs on the airways mucus lining, and then moves them out. However if it becomes overloaded, then cough is the back-up defence.

1) If the lungs are provoked to produce more mucus, this accumulates in the airways, for example with bronchitic chest infections. Coughing is then required to heave it out and is then ‘productive’ or wet.
2) By contrast the lungs can dry out. The result is a ‘non-productive’ or dry cough. This is often seen in children, and in allergic or asthmatic conditions. More seriously it is a sign of pneumonia, pleurisy, tracheitis, or lung cancers and was a classic feature of tuberculosis.

‘Expectorants’ are remedies which help a cough on its way so that it finishes the job. In the case of a wet cough heating and drying remedies like ginger, cinnamon and garlic were favoured. Older ‘stimulating expectorants” like ipecac, squills and lobelia were emetic in larger doses.

In uncomplicated dry coughs ‘moistening’ expectorants with high levels of mucilage, such as marshmallow, the plantains and slippery elm were used.

Licorice root can help both type of cough and features in many herbal cough prescriptions.

Check the post on plantguides.net to find out more.

The spleen story

In the earliest medical texts the spleen often features, with many important functions ascribed to it. In Chinese medicine it is literally central, known as pi and a major solid (yin) organs. It is the internal manifestation of the Earth (tu), responsible for assimilation, processing and nourishment (overlapping a lot with what we consider is the liver’s role), and associated with healthy food, motherhood and empathy.

In Graeco-Roman or Galenic medicine the spleen also holds the Earth element in the body, it is associated with autumn, cold and dry weather, and is the receptacle of black bile from the liver. In Greek black bile translates as melan cholia and so the spleen is also the seat of depression.

And yet in modern medicine the spleen has a supportive role processing red and white blood cells. It sits quietly in the back of the upper left abdomen, dark red in colour, about the size of a cricket ball or baseball. If it is damaged it may be removed to avoid haemorrhaging, and people can survive well without it. How could our forebears have such a different view of it?

In the early years of medical training we learnt that we could not palpate the healthy spleen (ie. locate it by pressing with our hands over the abdomen). With a firm shove under the left side we might sometimes feel it bumping against the other hand – but we were not sure if we were imagining it. However we also learnt that in liver disease (hepatitis or cirrhosis) the spleen does become palpable. Why? The reason is that the spleen is on the portal circulation: its blood drains into the liver. If the liver is damaged the portal circulation backs up. An early sign is an enlarged spleen that is palpable from the front.

Early physicians must have noticed this: the spleen ‘emerging’, and then associated that with what we now call the liver. These were canny observations, but without modern investigative techniques led to different interpretations.

Wounds - the first medical priority

Look through any account of traditional medicine from communities living close to nature (eg Native American, African and Australian peoples, the Maori, ancient Britons and Welsh, middle European, and Siberian cultures, and island communities everywhere) and it is not surprising to see that wound-healing remedies dominate. Firstly this was one of the most urgent health priorities and secondly plants are very good at this!

Prominent in these lists are plants rich in tannins, found in barks, woody parts, broadleaf tree leaves and in many other plants. Tannins give their name to leather 'tanning': when animal skins are soaked in rich-red tannin solutions (especially popular are from oak bark and oak galls) their proteins coagulate (like boiling an egg) and they harden into tough leather. Washing an open wound with tannin-rich herbs boiled in water will similarly form a seal (eschar from the French for scar) that prevents infections, stops discharge and allows healing underneath. If you get wounded or burned out on a trail with no mobile phone reception, knowing this can save your life! In emergencies wash the open wound with water that has cooked leaves or twigs from any broadleaved tree (oak is the best but most will do): it should be dark rich reddish brown in colour.

Field of aspirin?

The brand name aspirin was derived from the former botanical name for meadowsweet, Spiraea ulmaria (now Filipendula ulmaria). In the late 19th century the German company Bayer was looking for a medicine that could replicate the traditional benefits in arthritis of willowbark (Salix spp.), without the stomach-harming properties of the chemical initially derived from its original derivative, salicylic acid. Walking by the river one day one of their scientists reputedly squeezed the flowerbuds of meadowsweet, with a longstanding reputation for healing stomach problems, and noticed the strong aroma of methyl salicylate (familiar from wintergreen oil): it gave him an idea. Back in the laboratory Bayer revisited the earlier work by the French scientist Charles Gerhardt who first generated acetylsalicyclic acid in the laboratory, and marketed it as having comparable properties to salicylic acid without as much harm to the stomach wall. They called their new medicine after the Latin ‘a spiraea’ (from meadowsweet). Meanwhile the original plant remains an effective and safe remedy for stomach problems, including the consequences of acid dyspepsia, though that is mainly due to its high levels of tannins (see next post) with its salicin tucked in behind.

The first wonder drugs

The spices ginger, black pepper and cinnamon, sourced at great expense from southern Asia, were through much of European history worth more than their weight in gold. This spurred the widespread colonisations of India, East Africa and Indonesia by the Portuguese, British and Dutch. The Spanish rediscovery of the Americas and their native chillies while looking for a shortcut to Asia from the other direction, gave them their own monopoly in the spice trade into Europe.

Why? It wasn’t just to spice up the cooking. These were the leading ‘heating’ remedies, used around the world as antidotes to cold. Cold was universally seen as disease causing, the antipathy to life and health (anyone who has touched a dead body will know what they meant). Many symptoms of diseases were clearly worse in the cold, more likely to happen in the winter, and improved by hot packs, drinks and baths. The obvious way to improve these ‘cold diseases’ was to support the body’s natural heat-generating defence measures (fever and inflammation) by adding more heat so that they would get the job done faster. (This is the opposite of the conventional wisdom that you stop these things with anti-inflammatories – a theme of a future post.) The hot spices did this better than anything else. They still do!

Mix ginger and cinnamon in a tea and sip when you next get a 'cold' and see for yourself! plantguides.net

The survivors guide to using plant remedies

People have always been clever. They had to survive in nature on their wits and needed quick solutions. They had little time for theory: treatments were valued when they saved your life or fixed a problem.

If our ancestors could see damage they would put a salve on it – plants are good at that.

If the damage could not be seen then good healers applied the wit of the hunters, sailors or farmers they lived with: they navigated by closely observing nature’s signs.

They read the person more than the disease – symptoms were pointers more than targets, mostly showing how the body was fighting back.

Their remedies fitted well with this approach: plants are good at nudging the body to perform better. Traditional medicines were valued less for targeting symptoms than by how well they corrected poor functioning, so as to support the body in its efforts to clear illness.

The result was a completely different approach to common health problems that deserves being adapted and brought back into the mix today.

On the track of the first medicines

On these pages we look again at the plants that the first humans used to look after themselves and their families: the very first medicines. We dip into the healing needs of the hunter-nomads, and then the earliest farmers and villagers.

Plants have common qualities that meant that people used them in similar ways wherever they were in the world. These core approaches consistently feature in indigenous folk medicines and were later distilled into the classic medical texts from India, China and Europe thousands of years ago.

First medicines have always been there, for humans, and for animals too. They were there before cultural and spiritual healing traditions, shamanic medicine, dreamwork, energetic or religious-inspired interventions. And they are still there for us.

When humans learnt to use plant medicines life was an immersion in nature, and survival depended on working with it. Early health practitioners applied what they knew of nature’s ways to interpret the signs and symptoms of the body’s fight against disease and used the first medicines to nudge better self-healing.

We will share some of these insights in future posts, with links to pages on plantguides.net. What we will discover is that they may be as relevant now as they were then.

Welcome to our new page. From September 1, 2021 you can join this herbal elder in tracking the first medicines, and bringing the most effective into everyday modern use.

We will be linked to a new website https://www.plantguides.net also launching on the same date, along with a range of social media activity.

See you then!

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