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for soft contacts and pet fish) and depositing its elements back into the earth for the use of ongoing generative cycles. When we learn to stop making such large messes (and we are learning) and figure out how to clean up our neighborhoods, our ground water will become suitable again for extemporaneous use. Meanwhile, we often need to purify water by using assorted filtering and distillation techniques. This increases the cost of a gallon of water for consumption from when it was once abundantly free to currently around the average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline. But aside from this pollution confusion, water is the best solvent we have. Its basic nature is absolutely consistent and reliable. We have used it from the very dawn of simple Homo sapiens’ pharmacy, and its use as a primary menstruum has remained unchallenged on into the current alchemical shenanigans practiced within the labyrinths of today’s high-tech pharmacy and commercial herbal product manufacturing.

ALCOHOL

Alcohol is the second most relied upon menstruum for most medicine-makers. It too is stable (at plus or minus room temperature) and is also reliably consistent in its actions as a solvent and preservative. As a solvent, it is so predictable that it is relied upon in pharmacy both for what it will eagerly dissolve as well as for what it definitely won’t dissolve. And whereas we can depend on the fact that water acts the opposite of a preservative, medicine-makers know that alcohol is probably the best preservative. Aside from human party animals, not many life forms or enzymes can thrive for long when immersed in a volume of alcohol or even in diluted alcohol, and therefore changes due to disintegration and decomposition are greatly slowed down; shelf life is significantly increased.

Set the tone for the new millenium, be a lay herbalist. Water, spirits, wine, vinegar and oil, culinary and medicinal herbs, common kitchen equipment, and one’s unleashed passion are the shakers and movers of herbal medicine-making … that’s all one needs to cook as a community herbalist.

WINE AND VINEGAR

The next two common menstrua that we will discuss, which have in other eras been eagerly employed by medicine-makers, are wine and vinegar. Both of these liquids do what water does, for H2O is primarily what they are, but their total chemistry includes a couple of embellishments to their water body. Wine boasts of a mild touch of stimulating alcohol, and vinegar a little touch of sour-tasting acid. The amount of these “touches” from batch to batch is variable and therefore to a small degree inconsistent in different lots of these products. These variations are mostly determined by the nature of the vegetation used for production and the specific manufacturing process. The presence of the alcohol in wine and the acetic acid in vinegar supply a degree of preservation action to the waters of these liquids and also add a little different “bite” to their water-like solvent action. The inherent natures of wine and vinegar, however, also carry with them some other “uncontrollable” vegetable matter which during shelf time can begin to change their nature, affecting the chemistry and the preservation of the herbal components that have been dissolved in the extracts. The results are that the overall blend of these “variables,” “uncontrollables,” and “inconsistencies” renders these two menstrua less reliable in relation to sustaining long-range permanence. This is a feature which has greatly disturbed some medicine-makers in the past, especially those whose commercial preparations, and the marketability of such, demanded control, permanence, and a great deal of solvency predictability. This preoccupation with predictability, control, and permanence is orchestrated principally by the intensity and toxicity of the particular medicines they are manufacturing, whereas smaller quantities of gentler more benign medicinal and culinary preparations (which is what we will be making) don’t demand such rigidity.

There is the story of two nineteenth century pharmacists, Lea and