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3. Place the herbs and the cocoa butter into the top portion of a double boiler or into a small glass beaker and mix them lightly with a stirring rod or a thermometer. (You’re going to be using the thermometer to help monitor the temperature soon anyway.)

4. The amount of herb you use in relation to the amount of binder will depend on the nature of the herb. You will have to work with this. Make notes. Try to get as much herb into the mixture as you can while allowing enough base material to easily bind and hold it all together.

NOTE: Using glass beakers allows you to observe the mixture better, and most importantly, the thin walls reduce the chance of overheating. Metal pots and double boilers work fine, but they offer more of a challenge when it comes to heat control.

5. When using a double boiler, place the top of the boiler containing the mixture of ingredients into the bottom, which contains water that has been brought to a boil and removed from the fire. While stirring, let this heat melt the cocoa butter. When using glass beakers, place the smaller beaker full of the ingredients within a larger beaker of hot water. Stir the mixture with the thermometer and watch the temperature. The mass will soften at about 89° F. (32° C.) and should be kept at or below 92° F. (33° C.).

6. When the mixture reaches 92°, separate the beakers or pots. Stir until the mixture of powdered herbs and cocoa butter appears to be uniformly blended and fully melted.

7. Pour the thick mixture into a mold that is room temperature. When using the narrow tube of aluminum foil described above or any other narrow-shaped device as a forming mold, a very small plastic funnel will be of great assistance for this step. After a couple of minutes, the mixture will become somewhat firm.

8. Place the mold full of the bolus mixture into a freezer for about 2 minutes.

9. After this brief cooling, remove the bolus from the mold.

10. Cut the boluses into desired lengths, shape them as you will, and store them in the refrigerator in a small jar which is labeled. (If you don’t label the jar, inevitably someone will bite off a piece of one of the boluses thinking it is candy. Actually, about the only difference between a cocoa butter bolus and a piece of candy, aside from its social status, is the addition of a sweetener, and of course the orifice of insertion.)

11. If something doesn’t work out, re-melt the mixture, and do it again.

In spite of the above precautions, I should assure that this warm process is fairly low-pressure medicine-making. It is while percolating tinctures and making lotions that the brow and palms tend to get a little sweaty. The key here is to melt the cocoa/herb mixture at a minimum temperature and use a room temperature mold into which you pour the warm mixture. If you use a previously cooled mold, it causes a super-cooling of the cocoa butter and the resultant crystallization (rehardening) makes for a lower melting point. If you do overheat the mixture, complete the project, and then let this batch of boluses age in the refrigerator for a month. Upon aging, they (both the overheated and the super-cooled boluses) eventually recoup their normal melting point characteristics.

I praise the medical pharmacists who figured out the intimate dynamics of this cocoa chemistry and all the other excellent medicine-making knowledge they have amassed throughout the years. The members of this inspired profession avidly pursued this kind of pharmaceutical investigation in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s while most herbalists (and herbal lay-pharmacy) in the U.S. had withdrawn into a deep slumber. But, one by one, we lay-pharmacists are returning to the medicine-making arena; like recently kissed enchanted frogs, who have awakened to their original nature, we are emerging from some strange cultural spell, and can now contribute our peerless perspective to the evolving art and science of herbal pharmacy. One acquires deep green insight and unique capabilities being a frog for a while.