THE WAYS OF HERBS AND THE BLACK OBSIDIAN is a simple article about using 'Simples' - the Herbal Medicines and Treatments that grow in your own region of the planet...to heal...to help...to cure: to make Life a Better Place for you body when it needs help....

THE WAY OF HERBS AND THE BLACK OBSIDIAN


"I take my place with the Woman in the West"...this line is from a song of the late Kate Wolf's, a song honoring the four directions...I love the the lines of this verse from that song, that ask, "Show me...the Way of Herbs, and the black obsidian"...for the "medicines" of my childhood through this very day have been the 'Simples', the farm-wife herbs, the 'old-wives'-tales herbs of the European tradition. Spreading seed and folklore, by wind and by anecdote, these herbal ways, and the herbs themselves, traveled and covered the whole colonized continent I live in.
I am grateful that they did, for had they not, I may not be well and alive today...

I was a "Navy Brat"...that is, I spent all of my early developmental years as a child of a naval officer. We traveled all over the USA to bases on which my Dad served, and all of our medical care came from those excellent naval hospitals and clinics. This was good, and not so good. We had the best of technologies used for us, but many of these were new, post-WW2 medicines and procedures, in the civilian population...especially antibiotics. I was sick often as a child, and many, many high doses of antibiotics were used to cure me. I was only around ten when I had my first massive reaction to an antibiotic: Penicillin.

A hospitalization for respiratory distress was the result, with hives all over my body being my main focus: painful stuff! Oatmeal baths! Calamine lotion painted all over me! Fun!...Every antibiotic after that episode was a crap shoot! One made me vomit, a lot...another gave me blurred vision and a rash...it was clear that I was not going to do well with antibiotics too often...
Although my mother always gave us chamomile tea and honey with lemon when we had "colds. and Mellisa leaf tea with sassafras for fevers. and cod liver oil for vitamin A....we otherwise had no other medicines that I can recall, except these antibiotics...o, except Aspirin for pain every so now and then...

I was eighteen when I had a massive reaction to Penicillin. I had a urinary tract infection, a 'bad' one, that was cultured as being susceptible to Penicillin. My doc decided that my first reaction may have been dosage related. He decided to give me a small dose in the emergency room, where they could monitor me in case I had a reaction, and they'ed be able to treat it at once. I agreed. The infection was very 'bad'... So, they gave me the dose, and I sat waiting in the gurney...a nurse was with me...a very serious case came into the ER...the nurse asked how I felt...I felt fine..she asked if it would be OK to check if they needed her for the people coming into the ER - it had been a car accident...I said sure. She left...

a few minutes later, I was not feeling fine. I was feeling horrible! The room was closing in on me. I couldn't breathe! I scooted off the end of the gurney...and fell at once to the floor, straight forward, with a crash! The crash brought in the whole team, they told me later. I had 'coded'. In other words. I was dead. They were on me at once, and shocked my heart back into life and gave me breath again. I woke up with tubes in every which way all over me. The doc came in and looked at me soberly. "You're very allergic to Penicillin.", he said gravely.

So, what were my options for treating infections going to be?...I decided to try to go the herbal medicine route as much as possible...to use alternative medicines and treatments and preventive substances and techniques as much as I could. This wound-up being a Very Good Call...most of my life, these practices have served me well...except when I've needed surgeries...but this is a bit of the story of how these wonderful plants, these herbs, have aided me and even cured me over the years....

Infections...fortunately, very few...the couple of further Urinary Tract Infections I ever had were treated well with goldenseal and cranberry juice...I made it a point Never to 'sleep' with any one who had ever had a sexually-transmitted disease, in case they were a carrier. If this sounds a little harsh, just think about the thought of an antibiotic killing you...sobers you up real quickly, huh! Though I have a positive PPD - meaning, I am carrying a walled-off TB bacillus or two inside of me somewhere, (having been exposed as a Public Health RN), I have kept my respiratory health as good as possible with prevention and immune-boosting herbs through the years...and have been lucky the little TB Devils haven't found lodging in me yet! The 'cure' is antibiotics...I need to avoid these as long as I can! I use goldenseal and calendula creams for local infections of skin and mucus surfaces, like cuts, and in the mouth and so on...so...so far, so good...

I raised my kids on all the herbs I was using as well...especially after they all had Penicillin for the first time, as little tykes..they all had mild rashes from the stuff...I decided to try to avoid antibiotics with them if at all possible. When they had ear-aches, they were treated with warm herbal oils, when they had 'colds', yes...chamomile tea with honey and lemon. fevers?...yes, mellissa and sassafras...the whole routine I practiced for my self...amazingly, they were very, very healthy for most of their childhood. Their food was simple and nourishing, and Western herbs kept their infections at bay....

Once, I decided to prove to an MD that my herbal ways worked as well, in the right situations, as his modern medicine could...maybe even better!

I had cut off part of the end of my left thumb in the jointer, doing woodworking...it was a clean cut, with healthy granulation tissue...I decided to treat it with raspberry leaves, comfrey leaves, and calendula cream. Here's what I did:

I washed the wound very well with soap and water. Then I packed the wound with clean raspberry leaves and held them in place to staunch the bleeding for a half hour. When I removed them, all the bleeding had stopped. I packed the wound with crushed boiled comfrey leaves. then I applied calendula cream over the packing. Then I applied a sterile 4 by 4 with pressure tape...Before I dressed the wound, I showed it to my MD friend, who had come by to see Pop's and my Woodshop...he was very, very concerned.

He informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I needed a skin graft on the thumb wound, and infection control to prevent the graft from breaking -down. I bet him a year of one-lunch-a-week-'treat', if my methods didn't do a better job than a graft ever could. I bet him that there would be no scar...he took the bet, and made me promise to see an MD at once if the skin integrity got bad...I promised...

Of course, he lost the bet...Daily dressing changes and reapplication of calendula cream each day was all I had to do. I didn't even have any pain in the area. None at all! The comfrey leaves slowly flaked off. under where they had done their work, was pink, clean, unscarred lovely thumb! When I showed him my herbal magic cure, he just shook his head...and told the story to everyone who would listen! My skeptical Expert Witness!

To this day, I still use herbal tinctures and teas and tablets and capsules...Difficult as my health picture continues to be, the European herbs have been kind to me...I really believe they have prevented infections and pain and illness over and over again for me...that belief has been key to what health and energy I have...and I have had more than my share of good, healthy, energetic days!

I've read a great many books and articles on Herbal Alternatives and even took a course in Herbal Ways and Practices here and there in California...I learned enough to know: use what grows in your part of the world...and use only clean, healthy, safe plants and their parts....

A word about the Obsidian in this story...I see that deep, black-glassy mineral shard as all the harm that could come my way...a metaphor for all the pain and illness and roads to death that have happened and are possible in my life, as in any human's....

The Herbs I see as the green hope of Life, standing warrior-like against the sharp shards of darkness that profound disease and pain could bring. Living Breath Of Heaven in each leaf, each stalk, each seed, each twig...

Gratitude is what I feel...
To the Way of Herbs -
Sisters Standing with me...and, as an all too earthly counter-balance...
The Black Obsidian....