The Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook_ A Home Manual - James Green [51]
However, it is wholly understandable why vinegar fell into disfavor with the medical pharmacy establishment, for it is in the business of dissolving very heavy duty plant alkaloids and other intense and often highly toxic components into preparations, making the therapeutic use of the resulting drugs (as well as the survival of their patients) extremely dose specific. Responsible allopathic medical practitioners needed to be entirely sure of the strength of the extract, which in this case depended on the action of the acidic acid in the menstruum. So allopathic doctors did not discard vinegar because it was a poor solvent, but because it was (expensive and) relatively uncontrollable as almost all natural plant-derived things are. This is one reason why mainstream Western allopathic medicine does not use botanical medicines any longer. It has replaced these with chemical medicines and synthetically derived plant components. These are highly controllable and unvarying. Moreover, there are no longer any foreign, impure matters to contend with that might shorten the stability of the products.
For those of us, however, who are not dealing in toxic materials and don’t need an indeterminately long shelf life for our medicinals, vinegar remains an excellent solvent. We can revive its use because we are preparing tonics and therapeutic agents derived from gentler plants that are not dose critical. These plants may be extracted very well and are adequately preserved by vinegar and wine solvents.
It is important to realize that during the same era in our medical history, when the medical establishment made its decision to deal primarily with toxic botanical and non-botanical substances as their materia medica, the lay population concurrently surrendered its health and disease care to these same medical professionals and proceeded to lose their knowledge of self-medication using medicinal plants and stopped preparing herbal remedies as their grandparents and ancestors had done. We all lost touch with this (folk) technology of independence. As time passed, high-proof ethyl alcohol became the mainstream pharmacy’s solvent of choice rather than wines, vinegar, and glycerin to a large extent. In the 1960s, when we saw the revival of homemade herbal preparations and self-medication, herbalists began to make their plant concoctions available in stores. They used ethyl alcohol (and water) as their primary menstruum probably because of the powerful influence of mainstream pharmacy and a desire for long shelf life. I don’t think herbalists disregarded wines and vinegar as viable menstrua because they weren’t good solvents and preservatives, but because they weren’t as “strong” as alcohol, and therefore not the best menstrua to use for competitive commercial adventures. Glycerin, considered a “stronger” solvent and preservative than either wine or vinegar, has enjoyed a quicker revival in the modern herbal medicine-making world (maybe not as a star performer, but certainly as a popular supporting actor). So, although many herbalists today have experimented with and enjoyed making medicinal herbal wines and vinegars, not many have taken them very seriously. I think a greatly elevated regard for these (potentially homegrown) menstrua will transpire once we change our attitude to one that is based on experience rather than on the mainstream U.S. pharmaceutical history and literature. There is much to learn and appreciate about these excellent natural menstrua.
Lay herbalists (you and I) are in the process of reviving the foundations of Herbalism in our homeland. We have only just begun; we are relearning the language of Herbalism. Like aboriginal youths who return to their native homelands from the cities, it will take time to revive our traditional