Posts Tagged ‘herbs uses’

There are two savories. One is called winter savory or Satureja Montana. It is a woody perennial and will last through a mild winter. It likes drier ground and is most hardy. If the ground around this plant gets wet and freezes, it will die.

The other is called summer savory or Satureja hortensis.it has a more fragrant aroma, but it can’t stand any frost.

Both savories look a lot alike only the winter savory is more woody with many more leathery leaves. Both plants have narrow leaves that have no stems and grow in opposite pairs around the stalk. Both savories grow a little over a foot high, but the summer savory is the taller of the two. They have a very small, white-to-lavender, and two-lipped flower that grows out of the axil or base of the leaf. Like most other mints, the bracts or smaller leaflets growing with the flower makes the opposite pairs of leaves look like they grow in whorls around the stalks or branches. The flowers bloom from June until September. For about the last seventy-five years, savory has been used primarily for cooking. However, it wasn’t always that way. For thousands of years, savory was mainly used as a healing herb. Even when it was used as a seasoning, it would help the body to digest food and get rid of gas on the stomach.

Culpepper, who was a seventeenth century herbalist, said savory was good for the respiratory system, asthma and other afflictions of the chest. He also said savory was good for ladies who had problems with their menstruation, because it was a tonic for the reproductive system. Culpepper added that savory was also good for deafness.

The early colonists brought savory with them when they came fro Europe. They said it was the best remedy for anyone who was taken with indigestion. They recommended it be mixed with bread crumbs to “breade the meate” that was eaten. They said it would give the meat, whether fish, fowl or flesh, a quicker relish, and make it taste better. This was especially true if the meat was a little tainted or had started to spoil.

Savory is somewhat astringent, so it is good for those with diarrhea. The tea is good for a gargle for loose gums and sore throat. If the juice of the leaf is squeezed on a mosquito bite or an ant bite, it will give quick relief to the itching.

Savory is said to be healing and somewhat antiseptic. It is used as a general tonic, an expectorant, a cough remedy and even as a vermifuge for those with parasites and worms. When the leaves are crushed and mixed with flour and applied as a poultice, they will relieve the pain of sciatica and palsy.

In almost everything I’ve read, it says wherever you cook beans, you should always use savory, which will cause them to taste like peppery thyme, so I tried it. The beans tasted great. They say you can use savory on almost anything, like snap beans, peas, rutabagas, eggplant, asparagus, parsnips, onions, cabbage, salsify, eggs, Brussels sprouts, squash, garlic, lentils and soups. It’s also good to season oils, vinegars and butters. I’d like to learn to season food. Looks like here’s my chance.

In the last days of his initial voyage, Columbus, had sailors who wanted to mutiny. However, when they smelled the fragrance of the sassafras tree, they knew they were close to land. So the sassafras tree saved a mutiny.

Later, when the Spanish arrived in Florida, they mistook the fragrant sassafras tree for a cinnamon tree. So, one of the names of the sassafras tree is cinnamon wood. As the Spaniards were exploring Florida, they saw the local Native American Indians use the bark of the roots of the sassafras tree to treat fevers, rheumatism and as a general tonic and blood purifier. The Indians said it increased urination, caused sweating and cleansed impurities out of the blood and cured many diseases.

These early enterprising Spanish merchants were quick to spread the news of this great medicinal discovery. They built special ships to haul sassafras to Europe. The sale of sassafras soon exceeded the sale of tobacco from the New World. After much was sold as medicine, they introduced it as a tea and as a flavoring for drinks. Despite all the hype and hoopla that was made over sassafras, it was still revered by most as a good herbal medicine.

The Rappahannock Indians made a tea from sassafras roots to bring out the rash to reduce fevers in measles. The Catawbas Indians showed the white man how to treat lameness by using the bark in a poultice to draw out the poisons and heal the wound. Many tribes used the root bark as a blood purifier. They figured toxic blood causes sickness. In other words, if you have toxins or impurities in your blood, they will affect the weakest part of your body and sickness and disease will settle in that part of the body.

To cleanse the blood from these impurities, some people have taken two or three antibiotic herbs, two or three cleansing herbs and two or three healing herbs that feed and build the body. They put all these herbs together and make them into a tea or a blood cleansing tonic. Then they drink this tea two or three times a day for quite a while.

It was supposed to clean the blood and help to rebuild the body. There are many other herbs besides sassafras that they used as blood cleansers, such as chaparral, sagebrush, burdock, red clover, and plantain.

The Native Americans used blood cleansing teas as antibiotics, much the same as modern day doctors use penicillin. However, blood cleansing teas feed, build and detoxify as they cleanse the blood and they don’t hurt the immune system as do the antibiotics.

The sassafras tree is a member of the laurel family. It is an aromatic deciduous tree that will grow from 10 to 40 feet tall. It has grey bark with bright green alternate leaves that are in three shapes. The outermost leaves are deeply lobed, the middle leaves are shaped like a mitten and the closer leaves are oval. The greenish-yellow flowers bloom from April until June and are sometimes used in soups. They mature into pea sized dark blue fruits that grow in clusters.

As stated above, the root bark has been used for a spring tonic. It is supposed to thin out the thick winter’s blood and clean out toxins like spring house cleaning. It is also a diuretic to increase the flow of urine, to help get rid of viagra stones, and for kidney problems. It’s good for gout, arthritis and high blood pressures.

The Native Americans used herbal blood cleansing to prevent many health problems and cure their sicknesses.

We all remember those first cowboy movies we watched as kids. All the tough, older cowboys would walk into a saloon and order their drinks and then they would tell the bartender to give a glass of sarsaparilla to the youngest cowboy who wasn’t old enough to drink liquor. For hundreds of years, sarsaparilla was the soft drink everyone drank. The sarsaparilla drink was made from roots. From that old-time drink came the birth of what we now call root beer. I remember when I was a young boy in our home, and at the ranch we would gather dark bottles. When we had enough we’d scrub out the washtub and we would make up a batch of root beer. Sure was good!

Similax sarsaparilla was another herb that came from the New World. It was brought to Europe by the conquerors. It was used by the natives as a healing herb for rheumatism. It was also used for those who developed gout. It was used for abscesses; it was widely acclaimed as a blood purifier or as a tonic; it was made into a poultice for an old, running ulcer and it was even used by many of the natives to treat syphilis. With all these claims, sarsaparilla was in great demand, and much of it was shipped to the Old World.

By the 1800s, sarsaparilla reached great popularity. Even today, sarsaparilla is still used for colds, flu, catarrh, skin eruptions, fevers, as a blood purifier, for the kidneys and for women’s problems. It is one of the herbs that is used in Grandma’s herbal Menopause formula.

Sarsaparilla is a tropical perennial vine. They say it was discovered in New Granada or the northeast tip of South America. There are many species of sarsaparilla. It can be found growing wild from the Southern part of the United States, all through Mexico and Central America and through most of South America. However, most folks say that the best sarsaparilla is found in Honduras in Central America.

Sarsaparilla got its name from the Spanish word “sarza,” which means “bramble,” or “stickers,” and ‘parilla,” which means “vine.” This vine is covered with little thorns or stickers, which makes it very hard to gather. The root or rhizome is the part of the plant that is used. The root, which will sometimes grow past 8 feet long, has a heavy bark which is brownish or grayish with a porous center section. The roots that have a deep, orangish tint are the best. These rhizomes or roots run horizontally, just under the surface of the ground and have many long, thin rootlets. The stalk or stem is woody and will grow erect off the rhizome into a stickery vine with tendrils that will climb a tree or a plant, or anything that is handy. The ovate leaf with pointed tips grows alternately on the stalk or vine and is almost evergreen. The flowers are a yellow-green and grow in umbels or flat-top bunches and mature into small red berries.

When I was attending an herb school, our instructor told of his mother giving all her children their annual spring tonic. She lined them all up and gave them a lot of tea made of mostly real strong sarsaparilla and a couple more herbs. She said it was to clean out all of the old toxins left in their bodies from a long winter. He said they might throw up a little and they might have a little diarrhea, but they sure felt better in the long-run. Then he smiled and said, “No one in the family ever got sick.”

We live in a society of abundance. We feast on unhealthy, rich, fat, overcooked, adulterated foods that are hard to digest. We stuff ourselves with sweets and goodies. Our bodies become fat, constipated and toxic. We expect to take a drug or medicine that will correct our over-indulgence. We really need to cleanse out our bodies, use herbs, eat fruits and vegetables and exercise more.

Some herbs have a very special history, almost an inherent greatness. Hypericum was held in high esteem as a very important herb by the Greeks and Romans and by other civilizations for many centuries.

The Christians associated hypericum with John the Baptist. They said it started to bloom on June 24, the birthday of John the Baptist, and it dropped red drops on its leaves on the day he was beheaded. When you squeeze the yellow blossom of the hypericum between your thumb and fingers, some glands release a blood-red juice on your fingers and on the yellow petals. So now, the common name for hypericum is St. John’s wort (wort, meaning herb). It was said that the plant had special powers against evil spirits. Down through the Middle Ages, many people kept St. John’s wort in their homes,or carried it on their person as a charm to protect them against witches, goblins or evil spirits. However, if you were driving along the road, it wouldn’t look so special. It is a shrubby, perennial plant that likes dry, gravelly soil in sunny fields or clearings.

St John’s wort has a creeping root with runners. The herb grows to about two feet high. The round stock has many branches. The leaves have no stem, but grow right out of the stock in pairs. They are oblong to linear and are covered with little oil glands that look like holes that have been drilled through the leaf. When you hold the leaf up to the light, you can see right through these little holes. That is where the genus name comes from perforatum. The flower is yellow with five petals and it grows in an umbel or cluster and blooms from June until September. The herb is the part that is used. The whole plant smells a little like turpentine.

St. John’ wort is an antispasmodic that will help to relieve spasms throughout the body. It is an astringent that contracts the capillaries to slow down the flow of blood; it is an expectorant that helps to get rid of phlegm and mucus from the nasal and bronchial passages; it is a nervine that helps with neuralgia; it is a vulnerary that causes healing of fresh cuts and wounds, it is an aromatic that has a pleasant odor and will stimulate the gastrointestinal mucus membrane; it is good for enuresis (bed wetting), or for people or children who a re troubled with incontinence of urine; for most bladder problems and some kidney complaints. (Caution: Too much tea can make you sunburn easily).

There was a lady who was bothered by facial neuralgia. She was told to take two cups of St. John’s wort tea each day. She made warm fomentations and kept them on her face for a couple of hours twice each day. A fomentation is a concentrated tea that is soaked in a cloth and applied to an area. She made some oil of St. John’s wort by gathering a pint jar full of the flowers. Then she poured in as much pure olive oil as the pint jar would hold. She set it in the sun, shook it each day, and then strained it off in 14 days. The beautiful red oil is a sedative and analgesic (pain alleviating). Jethro Kloss who wrote Back to Eden was very high on St John’s wort. He wrote that St. John’s wort is a powerful blood purifier. It is very good in case of tumors and boils. It can be used for chronic uterine troubles, for after-pain in childbirth; is helpful for suppressed urine; for diarrhea, dysentery and jaundice. It will correct irregular menstruation. St. John’s wort is good in hysteria, and nervous affections. It is excellent for pus in the urine. It is good used externally in the form of a fomentation and ointment for a caked breast, all wounds, ulcers and old sores. It will correct bed wetting when proper diet is given.

If Jethro Kloss was right, everyone should raise about an acre of St. John’s wort for their own use.

One day, when I was traveling across those broad, barren valleys of Nevada where all you can see is sagebrush, someone had put up a sign that read, “Free sagebrush, put some in your trunk and take it home with you.” You guessed it, there were no takers. However, if folks really knew just how good and useful sagebrush can be, there might have been cars parked along the road, with people picking sagebrush.

Now, sagebrush is not to be confused with garden sage. Although they both smell similar and have some of the same properties, they don’t even have the same genus or common ancestry, that is, according to some authorities. However, there are some who feel that there is a close tie between these two plants.

Sagebrush comes from the wormwood genus Artemisia which belongs to the Compositate family. This family has approximately 180 different species in it. History says that the word Artemisia comes from the word Artemis which was the Greek name for the great Diana, who used this herb to heal the sick.

Sagebrush is easy to identify. The most common species of sagebrush is tridentate, or three teeth. The leaf is about an inch or an inch and a half in length and a quarter of an inch wide, with three lobes on one end looking like three teeth. A lady I know calls this herb “bunny foot” because it looks like a long bunny foot with three toes. The leaf is silvery gray and covered with fine hairs. Veins run from the base of the leaf to the tip of each lobe. The flowers are small, round, silver-gray balls that grow off of an extended stem above the plant.

Sagebrush has many uses. It is very good all-around bitter tonic. It is an excellent tonic for the stomach and a digestant aid. As a diaphoretic, it will stimulate sweating in dry fevers. As a vermifuge, it will help to expel intestinal worms. As a emmenagogue it helps to suppress cramping, regulate the menstrual cycle and settle frayed nerves. It has also been used by the Native Indians as an agent to fight cancer.

One time when I was living with the Indians, I asked the Chief’s wife about sagebrush. She told me about a favorite dog sha had that had gotten sick. She said the dog had laid around for two or three days and that the dog wouldn’t move. She told me she was sure the dog would die that day and them she was inspired to gather a lot of sagebrush and put it in a wash tub of real hot water. When the water cooled down enough, she carried the dog to the tub and put him in it. She propped his head up on the side of the tub, and the dog just laid there. She checked him every little while, but the dog didn’t move. She said she was sure she would lose him. Just before dark an old truck drove past their place. She heard a dog barking and chasing the truck. She looked out and the sick dog was now well enough to chase that old noisy truck, thanks to sagebrush.

I also know of a doctor who had a tumor partially removed from her brain. She was told by her fellow doctors, who had operated on her that she had less than six months to live, so she had better get her affairs in order. Later on, she was told by a friend that herbs would help her but she would also have to change her diet from meat to a diet of fruits and vegetables. She was also told that she should get the stress out of her life and that she should drink sagebrush and chaparral tea every day. She stopped eating meat and started to drink sagebrush and chaparral tea. When the six months came around and she should have been dead, she was almost all well. Maybe the Lord knew what he was doing when He made so much sagebrush and chaparral. They are free, very accessible and about the best blood cleansers you can get.

I believe it was Shakespeare who said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

To most all of us, when we think of a flower, we usually think of a rose. Even Isaiah, way back in the Old Testament times, said that the desert would blossom as a rose. An herb can be a flower of beauty a still be a useful herb.

It’s sad thing when we think of all roses that are grown and as the petals wilt and fall to the ground, the rose hips are usually pinched off and thrown to the ground or in the garbage. It’s true some rose hips are better than others, but they are all good. We should save those rose hips, no matter the variety. After the hips are dry, put a few under a quart jar and press down. This will smash the hips. Save them in a dark jar with the lid on tight. When you need some good tasting Vitamin C, take a heaping teaspoon to a cup of boiling water. Put the saucer over the cup and let it steep until it’s cool, strain and enjoy.

We used to have a little ranch that had hundreds if different herbs on it. There were dozens of great big wild rose bushes. Each bush was bigger than a car. They must have been real old bushes. We picked several five gallon buckets of wild rose hips and give them to some of our friends. Those who used them really loved them and became much healthier. One-time, we had to move one of these big rose bushes. We tried everything we could. We finally cut and burned it. The next year it came back, twice as big and twice as healthy.

You can use rose hips for more than just a good healthy cup of tea. In bygone centuries, before the grocery store or the supermarket, things were not easy to come by. They used rose hips to make jams, jellies, conserves, purees and to flavor wines. They were used like cranberries, to flavor meats. Roses were used in soups, pies, tarts, muffins and many more things to tickle the tummy.

Everyone knows that rose hips have a lot of vitamin C in them. They are high in vitamins A, E and rutin. They also have vitamins D, P and a lot of B complex. Hips are high in organic iron and calcium. They also have some silica, sulfur, potassium, sodium and niacin.

Rose hip tea is an excellent remedy for colds. If some rose hip tea is drunk every day, it will lessen your chances of getting a cold, or catching the flu.

Native to the Middle East, roses have been cultivated for at least 3,000 years. According to the florist, more roses are sold every year than any other flower. On the average, there are few homes that have less than six rose bushes around it.

Besides being beautiful and decorative, the rose has many functions. Rose water has been used for hundreds of years as a skin lotion because it is nourishing to the skin. Some rose petals are used as colorings for foods and perfumes. The petals of the other roses are used in medicines and syrups. The petals of yet other roses are used in cough syrups, because of their astringent qualities to overcome catarrh, phlegm and soothe a sore throat.

About the best-loved fragrance is that of the rose. Its scent is found in oils, perfumes, colognes, bath oils and soaps. It takes over 50,000 roses to make one ounce of pure rose oil.

Early herbalists used roses, as well as rose hip tea, for healing. The rose has been used for kidney stones, as a blood purifier, for dizziness, circulation, colds, fever, flu, stress, infections, headaches, emphysema, and other health problems.

One final word: If you find that aphids are getting to your roses, plant a few garlic plants around your roses and the aphids will go over to the neighbor’s for lunch.

REMEMBER, OH REMEMBER, YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.

For great health and happiness, you need to eat fresh fruits and vegetables.

A few years ago, if someone mentioned cholesterol most folks wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Nowadays, most people know you shouldn’t eat a lot of fats, meats, rich or fried foods. If you do, you are likely to get cholesterol and plaque deposits in your arteries. Cholesterol causes heart attacks and strokes.

Everyday you hear people ask what they can do for the cholesterol deposits in their blood vessels. Well, lots of people know that lecithin niacin, garlic, cayenne and a dozen more herbs are all good for cholesterol. However, the other day, I read about some tests that were done on rabbits and other animals. They were fed fats and junk foods to make them have a lot of cholesterol. The writer said the elevated levels of cholesterol, triglycerides and lipoprotein decreased when the animals were fed a solution of rhubarb root. He went on to say that when you eat a meal heavy in fats, try to eat a simple dessert of delicious cooked rhubarb to help control cholesterol. Now I can just see someone eating a bunch of junk foods, then topping the meal of with a big piece of rhubarb pie or a cobbler to keep their cholesterol count down.

Well, I don’t know if rhubarb works that well on cholesterol, but I do know that rhubarb, among other things is a great laxative.

An ancient Chinese herb book over 2,000 years old told of the plant called “tahuang”—the great yellow laxative. It was shipped to Europe and other parts of the world over two caravan routes, one through China and the other through Turkey. One was called Chinese rhubarb, although they were the same plant. This plant would grow about ten feet tall, but it was not harvested until the root was six years old. The herb was grown just for medicinal purposes.

In the 17^th century, the rhubarb plant we know of became successful as a vegetable. It was called garden rhubarb. The stalks are used as a vegetable, although the root has medicinal properties. Garden rhubarb grows about three feet tall and has big green leaves and stalks that are green and reddish when ripe. The stalk is the part that is used medicinally. The big green leaf is loaded with oxalic acid, and to some people is to not eat the leaves. Rhubarb root is generally used as a laxative. However, in small doses it is used to overcome diarrhea and even dysentery.

After World War I, the people of Nairobi, Africa, suffered from acute bacillary dysentery and many died. Dr. R.W. Burkitt tried many treatments in vain. He said the only treatment that was successful was powdered rhubarb root, which he used for three years.

The Chinese say to use a small amount of rhubarb for diarrhea, and a large amount for a laxative. Also, for best results, rhubarb should be used in conjunction with other herbs. Rhubarb is one of the main ingredients in Grandma’s herbal Super-lax formula.

Rhubarb is used for many other purposes. In China, rhubarb tea and rhubarb juice is used to treat some forms of cancer. They also use it for tumors. Others use it for menstrual problems. It also helps to relieve the itchiness and pain of psoriasis, arthritis, eczema, herpes and some forms of hepatitis. Everyone agrees that rhubarb tastes good. I guess there isn’t anyone who hasn’t chewed on a stalk of rhubarb or had a big piece of rhubarb pie.

Someone asked if there is an herb that looks beautiful, tastes good and is beneficial to your health. Well, the first one that comes to mind is red clover. For hundreds of years, red clover has been used alone and in combination as an herb that would retard the growth of cancer. Most doctors, the F.D.A., and some herbalists have said that red clover is a hoax and won’t help cancer. However, researchers in the national Cancer Institute have found anti-tumor properties in red clover.

A lady in one of the classes I attended told of her father who had a cancer when she was a girl. She said the doctor didn’t give him much hope and told her mother to give him anything he wanted to eat and just try to make him as comfortable as possible. The year, I understood, was about 1918 and in those days, there were many more herbs and weeds and everyone knew something about how to use them.

“For awhile my father got worse until one of the neighbors couldn’t understand why we weren’t doing something to help him, like giving him red clover blossom tea and a lot of garlic and onion soup. We all knew what red clover blossoms looked like, so we kids were sent out to find and gather red clover blossoms.

It took quite awhile, but finally my father was up and around. He took long walks and sat out on the porch in the sun. Then, one day, he went back to work. He kept drinking the red clover tea and he changed his diet a lot. He lived a healthy life for another 32 years.

The red clover grows from one to two feet tall, and it has a pretty little red or purple flower that looks like a ball. This fragrant flower or blossom blooms from about late May until September. The dense petals that make up this terminal ovoid or globular head tend to wither in the late summer and the blossom turns rust brown. The palmate leaf is made up of three ovals to oblong-oval leaflets which are minutely toothed along the margins. Most leaflets have a “V” shaped marking in the center in the center, or a white blotch. The whole plant is somewhat hairy. Down through the ages, the red clover has been known as a depurative, or an herb that is a blood purifier. It is also known as an alternative that alters the condition of the body, as a diuretic that aids the urinary system and as a antiseptic which helps to inhibit bacteria. It is said to be adaptable as a poultice for burns and abscesses and as a relaxant for the nerves. The Indians used the plant for sore eyes and in a salve for burns. Some say it can be used as an expectorant for whooping cough and asthma.

Jethro Kloss, who practiced almost a hundred years ago, said that red clover is one of God’s greatest blessings to man; that it is very pleasant to take and is a wonderful blood purifier. If you combine it with equal parts of blue violet, burdock, yellow dock, dandelion root, rock rose and goldenseal, it is one of the most powerful remedies against cancerous growths and leprosy affections, and also against pellagra. He said, “When I was a boy, my parents had me gather red clover for their postmaster, who had a serious cancer. He lived to be an old man without an operation.”

Dr. Christopher said cancer is not a disease, it is a condition of the body—a condition where the body is drowning in its own filth and poisons, or toxins. The cancer cells are God’s little garbage men trying to eat the filth so we can stay alive a little longer. However, they have such a big job that they sometimes get carried away and eat good cells.

In searching many old herbal books from centuries past, we find that most herbalists agree that red clover is one of the best herbs to help fight against cancer.

viagra

A few years ago, I got a long distance call from our daughter. You could hear the baby screaming in the background. Her voice sounded desperate and she said, “I wish I knew what to do for the baby. I think she’s cutting teeth and she has been crying now for two days. I’ve tried everything that the doctor suggested, and that I can think of, but nothing works. I feel like I’m losing my mind.” My daughter was modern and not into herbs yet. I asked her if she had given the baby any of that red raspberry leaf tea that I had sent to her. She said “She won’t take anything.” I said, “Try to give her some red raspberry leaf tea and make sure she gets a good taste of it.”

We got a call back and she said somewhat embarrassed, “I think I’ve seen a miracle. When the baby got the taste of that tea, she grabbed the bottle out my hand and drank it all. She had stopped crying, but I gave her another bottle of the tea anyway, and she drank that, too.’ She called back later and said the baby had slept well that night so she gave her more tea the next day. That night, the tooth came through, thanks to the raspberry leaf tea.

Red raspberry leaf tea is very nutritious. It has more accessible and assimilable calcium and magnesium than can be had from almost any other available source. It is about the best thing an expectant mother can take to help her overcome morning sickness. It has most all the minerals needed to build a strong, healthy fetus. Red raspberry leaf will help her to maintain a strong healthy body. It will help her to guard against a miscarriage. It will help her to quiet and overcome premature pains. It will assist labor and make delivery easier, because it contains a uterine relaxant principle. It relieves after-pains, and red raspberry leaf tea is one of the best tonics for mother and baby while nursing. One of the old herb books spoke fondly about the red raspberry leaf and called it the panacea of pregnancy. That’s quite an endorsement.

There are many reports that red raspberry leaf tea will help to prepare the mother’s body so she will have an easier delivery. That is the reason this herb and others are in the five week formula that some expectant mothers take just weeks before the baby’s comes. In Dr. Shook’s book, he tells of an elderly nurse who called on him for some red raspberry leaves and she bore testimony to the effectiveness of red raspberry leaf tea. She said, “I have been a nurse and midwife for 37 years and during that time, I have taken (delivered) two thousand children (babies) without losing a single case. The only medicine I give during labor is red raspberry leaf tea with a little composition powder in it, which is very precious as you know, and even if the child is not right, it will cause it to turn and produce an easy and speedy delivery.

Red raspberry leaf, or alfalfa, will increase the mother’s milk flow. But if the mother’s milk is poor, the baby will be cross and hungry soon after feeding. An herb that will make the milk richer is marsh mallow (malva neglecta). Red raspberry leaf tea will cleanse and tone the alimentary tract, and help acanker condition. It is good for colic and will help to prevent or overcome thrush. It is good for an upset stomach and it will overcome diarrhea, especially in babies or children. It is soothing and healing for those who have ulcers or yeast infection. It is healing and has the ability to carry oxygen. It is one of the main herbs in Grandma’s herbal Cal-Herb formula.

Allergy sufferers: Red raspberry leaf tea builds up the mineral reserves in the body to help overcome allergies and arthritis. It is quite tasty, especially if blended with another herb, such as mint or camomile. Just use one teaspoon of the leaf to a cup of hot water. What a great herb!

It seems like every time you open a magazine you see another article on garlic. I’m glad that we are becoming aware of how great garlic really is. However, most of us maybe didn’t realize that garlic has a little known cousin named ramsons is kind of shy and doesn’t live in the desert or in cities or in a lot of flower gardens. Ramson lives in the damp moist forests under the shade of trees. Now when you’re trompin’ around in the woods and smell garlic you will know that there is some ramsons growing nearby.

Early in the spring in damp woods you will find dense patches of ramsons. It grows about two feet tall from a bulb that has cloves like garlic, only the bulb is a little longer and not so big around. There are two or three shiny green elliptical leaves that are a lot wider than garlic. In fact they look like lily of the valley leaves. The flower is tall and round with many little blossoms and it looks like garlic.

Most folks in this country know this plant as wild garlic but in Europe it is known as ramsons. They used it as a cleanser or the digestive tract, a spring tonic and as a blood cleanser. Some old times tell about when they were kids their mothers would send them out to gather the bright shiny leaves. Sometimes they would chop the leaves up quite fine and eat them on bread and butter. They would also use them in a spring salad or put them in soups or use as a pot herb. The leaves work a lot better when they are fresh.

The wild bears out in the forests and woods know all about ramsons. They use it as a spring tonic and as an intestinal cleanser. After the bears hibernate all winter their bodies are full of waste and are very toxic. One of the first things they do when they crawl out of their den is to find a patch of ramsons, or wild garlic, and eat their fill. This sweetens their stomach and cleans out their digestive tract. I think this is why nature put ramsons in the woods and the forests so the bears could have easy access to it when they woke up from their long winter’s nap.

Ramsons are very good for the stomach and the intestines. It is real great bowel tonic if you are constipated and even if you have diarrhea. It is also good for pimples, acne or rough dry skin or any kind or chronic skin disorders.

Ramsons is a great blood purifier. It will help to overcome herpes, eczema, scrofula, and even rheumatism. It will purge cholesterol and plaque out of the blood veins and helps to increase the flow of blood to all parts of the body. This will help to overcome hardening of the arteries, high blood pressure, dizziness, worms and parasites and even help the memory.

In the Bible there is a passage that says, “COME NOW AND LET US REASON TOGETHER—“ Perhaps we should reason on what makes sickness and what makes health. I think we all agree, “WE ARE WHAT WE EAT.” The longer foods stay in the warm moist environment of our digestive tract the harder it becomes to eliminate and the more toxic and poisonous it becomes to our bodies. Fruits and vegetables contain a lot of moisture. They digest easily and eliminate quickly, also they are very healthy. Meats, breads and processed foods lack moisture. They are stickier and contain more mucus. They are more difficult to digest and are much more difficult to eliminate. They cause constipation, then sickness.

In olden times, mothers gave their families sulfur and molasses as a spring tonic to clean out their systems.

Ramsons is heavy in sulfur and is great spring tonic. If you can’t find ramsons, try using garlic. It works too.

P.S. Don’t drink liquids with meals. It dilutes digestive juices.