• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

13 Tincturing by Percolation

14 Wine Infusion

15 Vinegar Infusion

16 Glycerin Infusion

17 Oil Infusion

18 Ointment, Salves, & Balms

19 Lotions & Creams

20 Suppositories and Boluses

21 Herb Jellos

22 Syrups, Honeys, Oxymels, and Electuaries

23 Baths for Water Therapy

24 Poultices and Fomentations

25 Complementary Techniques, Terms, and Other Considerations

26 A Perspective on Medicine

APPENDICES

A—The United Plant Savers List of “At-Risk Medicinal Plants”

B—Welcome to the Garden

C—Eight Principles of Excellent Medicine-Making

D—Extract Information Chart

E—Harvesting Information Chart

F—First Aid for Poisoning by Alkaloids

REFERENCES

RESOURCES

PROLOGUE

A WORD BEFORE THE MEDICINE SHOW

“The day you decide to appreciate yourself is the day you begin to dance.”

—T. ELDER SACHS

Herbal medicine-making is much like dancing; it’s easy, it’s natural, and it’s undeniably delightful. To say the least, it is a lucid expression of one’s distinct character. If you have never worked with medicinal plants or made herbal medicines for yourself, you will have to take my word for this. However, as you experiment with the procedures suggested in this manual, I promise that during some private moment, maybe when “shaking your tinctures” or while “garbling” some dreamy Mugwort, you will find yourself thinking, “Hey, that Green guy was right. This is more damn fun! I think I might even go dancing tonight!” And like dancing, once you find the rhythm of the music and begin moving your body with it, you’ll never want to stop.

The ever-engaging green-melodies of herbal medicine-making are sung by the seductive voices of your neighboring leaves, roots, barks, rhizomes, flowers, and seeds, while the rhythm you move to is composed entirely within yourself, by the cadence of your creative enjoyment. You’ll find yourself swinging to the pleasures of simple fun, personal independence, and a renewed connection with Earth’s natural beauty and perpetual abundance. And that’s feelin’ good, which is the essence of health. The making is the taking of herbal medicine.

Keep in mind that herbs, the principal ingredients in homemade herbal medicines, are basically free once you learn how to correctly harvest them for yourself (which we will cover in Chapter Three). Therefore, I can assure you that herbal medicine-making performed in the home-kitchen is not only simple and fun, it is universally affordable. This makes perfect sense, for the art and empirical science of Herbalism were engendered eons ago by the wit and enduring ingenuity of some remarkably intelligent, resourceful, and visionary people—our ancestors. This is our cultural heritage.

Herbalism is one of those people’s things. It is indigenous to all communities of our globe, which is why it thrives so harmoniously in our homes. To manifest high-quality, health-pumping herbal preparations, you can take this plant lore in hand, make your own preparations, and thereby liberate yourself, your family, your community, and your monetary resources from dependence on others. Why pay others to frolic in the luscious gardens of Earth, picking flowers and enjoying themselves making herbal products? You can do all that frolicking, immersing yourself in wondrous herbal beauty, and uplifting your mind and spirit. Making your own herbal medicine both enhances your happiness and boosts your immune system. And the herbal preparations you make can be every bit as excellent as those you bring home from the store. Actually they will be better, profoundly better; this I can also promise you. Ralph Waldo Emerson, another born-again herbalist, expressed similar feelings, “When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have been doing with my own hands.” I always suspected that Waldo was in the garden.

Another word, if I may; then we’ll get on with the medicine show. For much of my life, I have focused