Nature's Remedies - A Popular Treatise on the Chemistry of Herbs - Their Curative Powers and use in Cosmetics, Culinary Preparations, Wine and Liqueurs, Etc

By J. W. Bell

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kirk Press
• Release date: May 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781528799690

Book preview

SECTION I

INTRODUCTION

ASK any man what he most desires; he will tell you Health (for what is wealth without it?). Hence the necessity that man should have the knowledge to maintain the essentials of physical life—perfect health. Even so, our hospitals are full, the sale of harmful drugs is on the increase, and, worst of all, the children of to-day nearly all have their tonsils removed, or are treated for acidosis; and yet health, and not disease, is our natural heritage. Many seek this goal, only to find that the most they can hope for is a patching-up by inoculation or some other craze from which the great essential is carefully omitted. The remedy is in Nature herself.

It is the violation of natural laws that brings about disease, yet Nature, the ever-bountiful, stands ready to rectify the damage done. A remedy for practically every disease is to be found among the herbs, and it is by the study of herbal properties that each of us can obtain health supreme. If we know how to be healthy, there is no limit to health—disease is due to ignorance and lack of knowledge of natural laws.

We have the right to live—let us live fully and banish disease. Good health and a fine physique should be the ambition of every one of us. In the study of Herbalism lies the solution of problems arising from ill-health. It is a study of absorbing interest; it presents no great difficulties, for the remedies are simple and the treatment rational; it is not experimental, as are so many scientific discoveries, but proven.

The ancients knew the value of herbs as remedies for disease; they passed on their knowledge by word of mouth, and it comes to us still through the centuries. Herbal remedies do not merely alleviate; they reach the root of the matter and can change a wrong way of living to a right; they supply the missing elements in a natural, and therefore lasting, manner. Herbalism means Health.

SECTION II

THE CURATIVE POWER OF HERBS

EVERYBODY knows full well that ever since the world began herbs have been used by Man to cure his ills, and that even to-day most of the medicines and drugs used by doctors are extracts or other preparations derived from plants.

I feel sure that many more people would use these splendid natural remedies and eschew the synthetic products of the chemical factories if they could only understand why and how herbs do their work.

It is therefore my aim and object in this little book to try to enlighten them in a simple and understandable manner.

There are roughly no less than 4600 medicinal herbs whose action and properties are known, and, as many are identical in their action, it is obviously unnecessary to describe them all.

I have therefore chosen about fifty of the commonest and most easily recognizable for description in this volume.

The curative power of herbs depends upon the salts and minerals which they contain and which they extract from the soil in which they grow, and these, being in a partially digested state, are far more easily assimilated by the human system than the crude substance mined direct from the earth or produced synthetically.

Take, for example, Silica or, in other words, flint. This is considered to be an insoluble substance and if administered in a crude state would pass