When it comes to minor ailments, we are all doctors – especially if we’re mothers and fathers of young kids. Modern medicine produces successful first aid medicines, but there are other, ancient options. I can guarantee that remedies are nestled in your lawn. When you’re surrounded by benevolent healing plants, it seems a little absurd to drive 12 miles to a CVS.
Our foremothers and forefathers sampled every herb in the forest and meadow to assess its effects. Some of the experimenters perished, murdered by white snakeroot. (Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln’s mother, died just from drinking milk of a cow who had eaten this innocent-looking plant.) Others survived to prescribe health-giving herbs – and to invent their colorful names: sneezewort, turkey corn, toadflax, mother-in-law’s tongue.
Ibuprofen is always a pill, but an herb may be imbibed in many ways. You can nibble its leaves like a rabbit, boil its roots like a Latvian peasant, tincture it in alcohol like a 19th-century chemist, juice its leaves like a millennial athlete, serve it in tea like an aging Saugerties hippie.
Last week, my friend Ana Silva gave me a bottle of calendula oil she made, by suspending calendula flowers in olive oil and exposing them to sunlight. In reply to an email, Ana wrote:
“We’ve used it in one form or another for many years for cuts, rashes, dryness. With my late mother, my stepdad used to make a Calendula salve with mortar and pestled fresh flowers, stovetop heat, beeswax and sweet almond oil that my mother’s family swears by.”
Ana also sent me a photograph of the joyful yellow calendula flowers drying in a wicker basket. Wicker is perfect for herbal collecting, allowing for liberal airflow. Stick blossoms in a plastic bag and they can easily mold.\
I moved up to these parts 22 years ago because my wife was an herbalist. Violet gave “weed walks” to homeowners curious about the beneficial plants around them and made her own tinctures.
Generally, the fresher a plant, the better. As you become more advanced in herbal study, you learn when a plant is perfectly mature. I suggest you wash every herb before using it. Even in the crystalline purity of the Hudson Valley, car exhaust and acid rain intrude.
The willow weeps for humanity and offers its skin as a panacea. The bark of the willow tree produces the medicine we call “aspirin,” which the Algonquins called “kinnikinnick.” It’s used as a pain reliever, for headaches, and for weight loss.
A common weed in lawns is plantain. I’m not talking about the species of banana; this is plantago major, whose broad leaves and narrow green flower spikes are familiar to anyone who’s ever sat in a field of grass. If you have a cut or a scrape, chew a leaf or two, place it on the wound, and tie a bandage over it. The young tender leaves may be eaten in salad.
My favorite flower is the loyal and vigorous chicory, found beside roads throughout our valley. In fact, I fell in love with this radiating blue flower while hitchhiking throughout the USA in the 1970s. Only later did I learn that the leaves and root are used as tonics, strengthening the kidney and liver. (You may know the root as a coffee substitute.)
Jewelweed is the “antidote” to poison ivy, and often grows near it. Crush the hollow stem and rub the sticky, clear sap on your skin, and the itching will disappear. (It also alleviates stinging from nettles, and is recommended for athlete’s foot.) The name of this plant may come from droplets of rain that glisten on its leaves like diamonds.
Mullein is useful for a wide range of illnesses: whooping cough, tuberculosis, bronchitis, hoarseness, pneumonia, earaches, colds, flu, asthma, migraines, joint pain, diarrhea. I boil a leaf in water and use it for steam inhalation. I place the steaming pan of water, with the leaf still in it, on a table, drape a towel over my head and inhale for five minutes.
Right now, it’s late in the season, but a few thriving plants remain. Red clover and chicory are still in bloom! Let me quickly mention several herbs that are not common locally but well-suited to first aid. A number of essential oils work as insect repellents: pennyroyal, lavender, eucalyptus, citronella. Echinacea tincture strengthens the immune system. Thyme essential oil is helpful for toothache or sore throat – and used externally, repels lice and other parasites. “Rescue Remedy” is a combination of five flower essences that clarifies the mind after a small – or large – mishap.
And don’t forget your spice rack. Ginger alleviates stomach aches, menstrual cramps, morning sickness. (Fennel is also recommended for these conditions.) Cayenne will stop bleeding – though it stings.
Today I burned my finger on a hot roasting pan of zucchini, and immediately appealed to my wife for help. “I’m not too good with burns,” she said, then typed a few words into Google and announced: “Aloe!” We both ran to the kitchen, where a large aloe plant is growing. She cut one leaf, squeezed the inner juice on my finger and… my pain disappeared.
Of course, some accidents happen in the woods, particularly on hikes in the Catskills – and often we forget to carry a first-aid kit. Leaves may be used in place of bandages, plantain leaves possibly being the best. Secure your leaf-bandage with two or three strands of long grass tied in a knot.
A cup of herbal tea may be a calming finale to a first-aid intervention, even if you use entirely CVS-sourced materials. Personally, I like to brew extremely weak teas – made from hand-picked wild herbs – which have a subtle but exhilarant effect (unless it’s all my imagination).
Please don’t take this essay as definitive medical advice. Be sure to consult your doctor before making any health decisions. [Note: This is a disclaimer, to ward off crippling lawsuits.]
Sparrow’s latest book is Small Happiness & Other Epiphanies (Monkfish). He lives in Phoenicia.
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