One of my passions in life is herbal medicine. For most ailments we try herbs first and then seek medical help when the herbs are not doing the trick. Now there are certain things we just go to the Doctor for. There is a balance.
These pictures are of one of my mullein plants. Its a common enough plant in North America, growing wild along roadsides in much of the United States. But this is a picture of one from my garden area. The leaves are used for lung problems and the blossoms are carefully picked, by tweezers and put in a bottle with olive oil to be used for ear aches. One picture shows some of the leaves being dried on my clothes line in the sun so that I can store them for the coming cold months when respiratory problems are most likely to show up. Now strange as it seems, you smoke the leaves for respiratory problems. Holding the smoke in your mouth to be absorbed by the mucus membranes and you do not inhale the smoke at all. Its gotten me through some bad coughs. Part of homesteading for me is being able to take care of some ailments with the things God has given to us. Plain and simple stuff growing along the roadside or in the pastures and fields around us.

Comments

Anonymous said…
While change and moving forward is good, many things are lost along the way - herbal medicine being one of them. I would have no idea at all what to use and when. It's a dying art (and I believe it is an art) which is such a shame. Modern medicine isn't perfect and a lot of the old methods would work just as well, or sometimes better, I'm sure.

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