by symills | Oct 25, 2021 | the herbslinger posts
Practitioners from all old traditions of medicine agreed on one priority in managing illness: most trouble originated in the gut. To understand this focus it helps to explore some of the imagery our ancestors used for disease. In the ancient view the main enemy of...
by symills | Oct 25, 2021 | the herbslinger posts
We are coming round to the ancient view that the digestive system really is the seat (Latin: fundament) of many health problems. This should not be surprising. The gut wall is where we are most exposed to contact with the outside world (mainly our food). It is...
by symills | Sep 19, 2021 | the herbslinger posts
In the wake of Covid-19 an app was developed that turned out to be very efficient at diagnosing the infection by the quality of its cough. This continues a long tradition among older physicians of diagnosing different chest infections by the type of cough: they could...
by symills | Sep 18, 2021 | the herbslinger posts
In the earliest medical texts the spleen often features, with many important functions ascribed to it. In Chinese medicine it is literally central, known as pi and one of the major solid (yin) organs. It is the internal manifestation of the Earth element (tu),...
by symills | Sep 14, 2021 | the herbslinger posts
Look through any account of traditional medicine from communities living close to nature (eg Native American, African and Australian peoples, the Maori, ancient Britons and Welsh, middle European, and Siberian cultures, and island communities everywhere) and it is not...
by symills | Sep 7, 2021 | the herbslinger posts
The spices ginger, black pepper and cinnamon, sourced at great expense from southern Asia, were through much of European history worth more than their weight in gold. This spurred the widespread colonisations of India, East Africa and Indonesia by the Portuguese,...
by symills | Sep 7, 2021 | the herbslinger posts
Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) The brand name aspirin was derived from the former botanical name for meadowsweet, Spiraea ulmaria (now Filipendula ulmaria). In the late 19th century the German company Bayer was looking for a medicine that could replicate the...
by symills | Sep 5, 2021 | the herbslinger posts
In these posts we will look again at the plants that the first humans used to look after themselves and their families: the very first medicines. We dip into the healing needs of the hunter-nomads, and then the earliest farmers and villagers. Plants have common...
by symills | Sep 5, 2021 | the herbslinger posts
On the track of the First Medicines Stories from the interior Here we go looking at how humans learnt the ways of plants, and how we might learn these lessons again in modern times. There are some great stories to...
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