Let the Herbs Heal You - A Guide to the Healing Herbs of Great Britain

By Mary Thorne Quelch

“Let the Herbs Heal You” is a comprehensive guide to the medicinal plants and herbs naturally found in Great Britain. It describes each herb in detail, providing information relating its habitats, uses, preparation, and more. Highly recommended for those with an interest in herbalism and alternative medicine. Contents include: “The Identification of Herbs”, “Adder's Tongue”, “Agaric”, “Agrimony”, “Alexanders”, “Anemone”, “Angelica”, “Avens”, “Balm”, “Barberry”, “Basil”, “Bistort”, “Bladderwrack”, “Brooklime”, “Borage”, “Broom”, “Buckbean”, “Buckthorn Alder”, “Burdock”, “Carrot, Wild”, “Catnep”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on herbalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gadow Press
• Release date: May 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781528799768

Book preview

LET HERBS HEAL YOU

A healthy body is the guest chamber of the soul; a sick, its prison.—BACON

The Identification of Herbs

An initial difficulty in the identification of our herbs is the extraordinary diversity of names by which plants are known in different parts of the country. As many of those local names as possible have been given here, and by the aid of the general descriptions identification should be possible. Yet it must not be forgotten that herbs of healing and poisonous plants may grow side by side, therefore the inexperienced and unskilled would be wise to buy the herbs they require from reliable herbalists.

Admittedly many herbs require to be freshly gathered for their full virtues to be extracted, but in the majority of cases, provided they have been gathered at the right season and carefully dried, very little, if any, of their healing qualities will be lost.

ADDER’S TONGUE

Ophioglossum vulgatum. N.O. Filices

Local names: Snake’s Tongue. Sometimes it is called Serpent’s Tongue, a name belonging to the American Adder’s Tongue, a completely different plant. The name Adder’s Tongue is shared with the Polypody fern.

This rather strange little fern flourishes in the Fen districts and in marshy land everywhere. The broad, ovate, barren frond enclosing the club-like fertile one, so that both seem to rise from the same stem, distinguishes it from any other native species.

In some remote parts of the country it is gathered still for the healing properties in which the older herbalists believed, but in modern herbal practice it plays little part. Gerarde wrote: ‘The leaves stampt [pounded] in a stone mortar and boiled in olive oil and then strained, will yield a most excellent green oyle or rather a balsame for greene wounds, comparable to oyle of Saint John’s Wort, if it do not farr surpass it by many degrees.’

AGARIC

Polyporus officinalis. N.O. Fungus

Local Names: Large Agaric, Purging Agaric, White Agaric.

Given in small doses, under medical advice it checks night sweats and diarrhoea. Also dries the mother’s milk after the child has been weaned. In larger doses it acts as a purgative. Not a home medicine.

AGRIMONY

Agrimonia Eupatoria. N.O. Rosaceae

Local Names: Church Steeples, Cockleburr (a name shared with Clivers), Sticklewort, Stickwort.

It is a common weed and flourishes on the sides of ditches and almost any waste land, growing two feet to two and a half feet in height with hairy leaves, and spikes of small yellow flowers. A gipsy woman, whose herbal lore I shall quote many times in these pages, told me her people had used agrimony for ‘dozens and hundreds of years’. She went on: ‘You knows the herb when you sees it growing by the wayside, lady, for ’tis common enough. And it be in flower right from the hay moon to the harvest moon, with golden yellow flowers what have a lemony scent, growing all up a long spike. But afore the hunter’s moon, all the flowers be gone to seed and instead there be little burrs as clings to your skirts as you walks through the grass. You knows it well enough, lady, and it be easy to make up a drink as will give ease to your poor chest if it be troublesome in the winter, or any other time, if it come to that.’

She went on to give me her favourite recipe—there were others, she said. A big handful of the herb must be well washed, then cut with scissors into pieces an inch or two long. To each ounce of the herb a pint of boiling water should be added and the whole sweetened with honey. On the honey she was insistent. Neither sugar nor golden syrup would do. The dose is a wineglassful to be taken four times a day, or whenever the cough is troublesome. Also, she assured me, this makes an excellent gargle for a relaxed throat.

Being tonic as well as astringent, the herb is prescribed to check leucorrhea, if used as an injection. Also many forms of indigestion that arise from general weakness will be relieved by an infusion taken in wineglassful doses four times a day. Rather more than a century ago a Dr. Hill recommended ‘an infusion of the crown of the root sweetened with honey’, as a certain cure for jaundice. The dose was a large one as not less than half a pint had to be taken three times a day.

In the old days the infusion was accepted as an eye lotion for the cure or prevention of cataract, a claim we consider absurd, though the astringency of the herb might cause an apparent improvement for a time. Some authorities went further, advising a ghastly mixture of agrimony, pounded frogs, and human blood, as a remedy for nearly all the ills the flesh is heir to.

In the West of England ‘agrimony tea’ is drunk as a table beverage, with very excellent results, a custom also followed in the rural districts of France.

An infusion of the entire herb, including the root, may be strongly advised for those suffering from impurities of the blood shown in abscesses and other sores. The usual infusion in wineglassful doses should be taken three times a day over a long period.

Culpeper advises the same infusion to relieve gout.

The tonic properties of the herb make it valuable to sufferers from anaemia.

As an outward application to heal wounds or to relieve strains and sprains, the herb is of great value either in the form of a very strong infusion (double the usual strength) or as a poultice of the leaves which have been steeped in a very little hot water. That use of agrimony takes us right back to the Middle Ages. When the corps of Yeomen of the Guard was formed in the fifteenth century, the men were armed with a hand-gun called the arquebus, and wounds inflicted by this weapon were considered far more terrible than those caused by arrows. To heal these wounds a special lotion known as ‘arquebus water’ was invented and enjoyed wide popularity. In France its fame lingers still. ‘Eau d’arquebusade’ is on sale at most chemists as an embrocation for strains and sprains. Though, probably, the original recipe has been forgotten, the preparation is a herbal one, and agrimony is one of the chief ingredients, as it was in the past.

ALEXANDERS

Smyrnium Olusatrum. N.O. Umbelliferae

Local names: Black Potherb, Monk’s Salad, Stanmarch.

It is a perennial herb, growing three or four feet in height with very large leaves, doubly or triply ternate, with broad leaflets. The sheaths of the foot stalks are very broad and membranous in texture. The yellowish green flowers are produced in close rounded umbels. The whole herb is of the yellowish green tint, but the fruit, when ripe, is almost black, whence the old name Black Pot Herb. Its more usual name is derived from Smyrna in Macedonia, the country of Alexander the Great, and seems to have been bestowed from a resemblance in its odour to that of myrrh. The latter name is a form of Smyrna, from which the herb was imported.

Alexanders is found abundantly on the sea coast, especially in Scotland, and inland grows in the neighbourhood of monastic ruins. Evidently it was imported into this country and carefully cultivated as a pot herb and vegetable, but changing taste, and probably the introduction of celery, which took its place in public favour, caused it to be neglected, and to-day it may be reckoned among our wild herbs.

ANEMONE

Anemone Pulsatilla. N.O. Ranunculaceae

Local names: Easter Flower or Pasque Flower (from the belief that it invariably flowers at Easter), Smell Fox, Windflower (Pliny says the flower never opens except when the wind is blowing), Wood Crowfoot.

Though familiar as cultivated in gardens, the anemone is found wild only in the southern districts of England. It grows about six or eight inches high, the leaves are finely divided, and, like the rest of the plant, are covered with long, silky hair. The large purple flowers open in April or May. Though a tincture prepared from it is used largely in medicine, in unskilled hands the anemone is highly dangerous. The leaves, if bruised and applied to the skin, lead to intense irritation, and in some cases a serious eruption, while even the smell of the plant has been known to cause colic and vomiting. A case is mentioned in which a man suffering from a wound in the leg applied pounded anemone leaves as a poultice. They produced violent inflammation and eventually gangrene. The whole plant has a strong, acrid taste, but is eaten freely by sheep and goats. Horses and cattle will not touch it.

Many charming legends cling around the flower, and one of the prettiest is inspired by the closing of the petals as evening approaches. The fairies sleep in the hearts of the anemones, say locai legends, and they draw the curtains before they go to bed.

ANGELICA

Angelica Archangelica. N.O. Umbelliferae

Local name: Garden Angelica.

The wild herb flourishes in marshy places almost all over England, a tall plant with a hollow stem, much appreciated by village boys, who make whistles from it. The leaves are purplish green, the flowers white with some traces of pink. It is not this wild angelica that is used in medicine, however, but the larger plant of our gardens, believed to have been first brought to England in the sixteenth century and given its name because a wise man dreamed Saint Michael came to tell him that the plant was a certain cure for the plague. Another version has it that its name commemorates the fact that it flowers on Saint Michael’s Day. Certainly the old herbalists had faith in it as an antiseptic, for Gerarde says: ‘If you do but take a piece of the root in your mouth and chew it between your teeth, it doth most certainly drive away pestilent air.’ Also we are assured by other authorities that those who carry a piece of the root in their pockets are protected from witchcraft, the evil eye, and ill spirits.

Undoubtedly it has tonic and digestive properties and the infusion, prepared by pouring a pint of boiling water over an ounce of the bruised root, taken in wineglassful doses three times a day after meals, will relieve flatulency. Also the same infusion, if taken hot, will