Part II An Herbal Medicine Chest

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Creator of All Good Things. . .
We thank you

for the beauty of the plant,
for the strength of its healing,
for the goodness of its color,
for the strength of its smell,
and the cleanness of its spirit.

— from Song of the Seven Herbs , byWalking Night Bear

by Olivia Boyce Abel

In the last issue, I told you about seven of my favorite medicinal herbs: comfrey, echinacea, garlic, angelica, valerian, chamomile, and calendula. I described how to grow them, each one's medicinal functions, and an array of ways—such as in teas, poultices, and oils—to use them.

This time around, I'm going to share how to make my favorite forms of herbal remedies—tinctures and salves. While I still steep teas and make poultices when need be, more and more these days I'm using the medicines I'll describe in this article. I like herbal remedies that are already made up, because they're so easy to use when I'm sick. (There's nothing worse than having to fix up an elaborate preparation when you're hardly able to get out of bed!)

What's more, tinctures and salves last much longer than dried leaves, flowers, or roots stored in bottles. I can make up a batch of rosemary headache tincture or all-purpose healing salve that will last me three or four years. Actually, my homemade medicines would last that long, except for one thing: So many other people find them useful that I end up giving a lot of them away! Try out some of the following preparations yourself—you'll soon see what I mean.

TINCTURES

Tinctures are highly concentrated liquid extracts of herbs. (Don't get these confused with commercially available fluid extracts or essential oils. Those are made through a process of multiple solvent extraction and are up to ten times as potent as homemade tinctures.)

To make a tincture, combine four ounces of powdered or cut herbs with one pint of alcohol (I use vodka, but brandy, gin, rum, or even glycerin would also do). . . let the mixture sit for two weeks (shake it a few times daily) . . . strain off the liquid . . . and bottle it. That's all there is to it! The alcohol extracts both the volatile oils and themedicinal alkaloids of the herbs.

Let me go step-by-step through the process the way I do it. First I grind up the herb or herbs I'm going to use—either with a mortar and pestle or in an electric coffee grinder. (By the way, if you're going to use store-bought herbs in a tincture, buy whole, not powdered, ones for their greater medicinal potency.) Then I mix herb and alcohol in a jar, seal the container, and cover it with a dark cloth to keep out light. I leave it on a kitchen shelf so I'll see it and remember to shake the jar a couple of times a day. Two weeks later, I strain off the liquid through a double layer of cheesecloth. Then I pour the finished tincture into dark dropper bottles (you can purchase these at a drugstore) and label them. I use one-ounce bottles for most tinctures, but two-ounce vessels for my echinacea tincture because I tend to take large doses of it. And I always label my jars right after I bottle them, or else I may forget altogether.

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