Both humans and animals have long used plants as medicines. About 80 per cent of our pharmaceutical drugs are derived from plants and the World Health Organization estimates that more than 70 per cent of the world’s people still use herbal remedies as their primary medicines.
With knowledge of the uses of common plants you can deal with a large number of minor illnesses.
There are many useful plants you can grow in your own garden or even on a balcony — but you need to know how to identify, grow and use them to maintain your family’s health.
You may be growing many of them already and using them to spice up your cooking, not realising their hidden potential.
Traditional healers grew many plants for medicines and knew where to find the wild plants they also used. The wise women (the herb-wyves) had a store of plants that could keep their families — and often the whole village — healthy.
While knowledge of wild plants is still invaluable for a healer, today many of us live in large cities where medicinal plants are either rare or treated as weeds and poisoned out of existence.
To have a secure supply of these plants, you can grow and process your own. Growing your own first-aid “kit” and herbal preparations (known as “simples”) is an effective way to have the things you need at your fingertips and develop a sense of being in touch with your body and your environment.
Medicinal plants are often ones we are familiar with. Many of the plants we can use in a first-aid kit are those used to season or spice up our foods, the main difference being the dose, the frequency and sometimes the preparation method.
When we use herbs as foods, we consume them once or twice a week — for example, sage or thyme in chicken stuffing or turmeric in curries. If using them as therapeutic substances, they need to be taken more frequently: up to three to four times a day, often for several weeks, but in a more accurately measured dose and preparation.
When using plants as medicine, it’s critically important you have the correct plant as many have similar common names but entirely different activities. Some may even be toxic.
GROWING YOUR OWN HERBAL PREPARATIONS (KNOWN AS “SIMPLES”) IS AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO HAVE THE THINGS YOU NEED AT YOUR FINGERTIPS AND DEVELOP A SENSE OF BEING IN TOUCH WITH YOUR BODY AND YOUR ENVIRONMENT.
I have given the botanical names for the plants mentioned so you
