The Pharmacy In The Forest

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What follows are nine of my favorite natural remedies with a history of usage that may go back hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Unfortunately, we've largely distanced ourselves from many of them as they found their way onto drugstore shelves as active ingredients of highly sophisticated (and very often artificially expensive) medicines. Yet the plants and the cures are ours to grow.

Yarrow

One quite versatile and commonly encountered wound healer is the yarrow plant, botanically know as Achillea millefollium. Belonging to the Composite family, it carries such common names as bloodwart, milfoil, sanguinary, stanchgrass, and thousand-leaf. Yarrow is native to Europe, but has been naturalized in most temperate regions of the United States, and can be found in fields, roadsides, and other open places. Its usage in medicine goes back to the ancient Greeks, who employed it in the treatment of cuts, wounds, burns, and bruises. Its genus name, Achillea, refers to the hero Achilles in Homer's Iliad, who is said to have used it on his soldiers's wounds. Yarrow was also used in the Middle Ages and appears in many English herbal notebooks of that day. The Navajo of the United States have also employed it for healing purposes.

You can prepare a poultice of yarrow by mixing ground-up yarrow tips in onequarter cup hot water with a few teaspoons each of glycerin, boric acid, and oil of wintergreen. This results in a soft semiliquid that, when applied to an infected area, tends to draw the infectious material from diseased tissues because of its absorptive properties.

Pumpkin

In autumn across a large part of North America, cultivated pumpkins are seen in fields, heralding the start of fall. The pumpkin belongs to the gourd family and is a cousin of squashes and zucchinis.

When the first explorers arrived in America, they noticed the pumpkins in the cultivated corn fields of the Indians who had long since discovered their medicinal value. Although native to tropical America, the pumpkin has been cultivated almost everywhere in the world.

According to the American Pharmaceutical Association, pumpkin seeds are a proven anthelmintic, which is a substance that kills intestinal worms and expels them from the body. An excellent preparation that is not only excellent for tapeworms but also as a diuretic promoting regular passage of urine can be made by grinding up several ounces of pumpkin seeds and placing them in a small cup of corn syrup, which is flavored with oil of cinnamon.

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