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Anti-Cancer
Lifestyle ...
Wild Medicine
by simon the scribe
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Wild medicine and Tansy cakes
It started with the Tansy cakes. I had
to ask myself ‘Why would anyone eat anything so
utterly disgusting in taste’? Chrysanthemum Vulgare
is a common perennial in the British Isles and the name
Tansy is said to be derived from the Greek ‘athansia’,
meaning ‘immortal’. Reasons suggested for
this include the fact that the dried flower lasts forever
or that it has a medicinal quality contributing to long
life. Looking back to Greek literature, Tansy was given
by the Gods to Ganymede to make him immortal. In the
language of flowers the gift of Tansy means ‘Rejected
address’ - “ I am not interested in you”.
Its strange taste, not unlike the smell of ‘mothballs’
might have something to do with this.
Tansy certainly had a reputation as
a vermicide and vermifuge (killing and dispelling intestinal
worms) in the middle ages. John Gerard wrote in his
17th century Herball: “In the Spring time
are made with the leaves here of newly sprung up, and
with eggs, cakes of Tansies, which be pleasant to taste,
and good for the stomacke. For if any bad humours cleave
there unto, it doth perfectly concoct them and scoure
them downewards”.
Tansy was a common kitchen garden herb for medicinal
and culinary use, in place of expensive foreign spices
such as nutmeg and cinnamon. It was used to flavour
custard, cakes, milk puddings, omlettes and freshwater
fish. In Ireland it was included in sausages called
‘Drisheens’. Its use as a springtime ‘cleanser’
became ritualised into a part of the Christian religious
Easter traditions;
“On Easter Sunday be the pudding seen,
To which the Tansy lends her sober green.”
The consensus on this much written about herb is that
it was used at Easter to purify the blood after lent.
This consensus shows a problem though, in that in England
the plant does not show leaves until the end of May
- well after Easter. This is evidence of the assimilation
of natural ‘self-medicating’ herbalism into
a controlling religious patriarchy.
Observation of wild and domesticated animals shows that
they regularly self-medicate with wild plants. Sick
chimpanzees chew bitter leaves from a bush not normally
part of their diet, and then recover. Research by Michael
Hoffman shows that a particular nematode worm is common
in the monkey’s gut during the rainy season and
that their chewing of the leaves coincided with the
prevalence of this parasite, which it destroyed. This
was the same bush that local tribes use to get rid of
stomach parasites.
Dogs and cats self medicate by eating couch grass or
cleavers. Parrots, chickens, camels, snow geese, starlings
- all have been observed consuming substances normally
alien to their diet to remedial effect. Bears particularly
are venerated by North American Indian culture because
they symbolise the powers of ‘regeneration’.
North American Indians discovered the use of a root
called Osha from bears. It is so effective as an all
round painkiller, antiviral, antipeptic that it is now
on the endangered species list.
The Woolly Bear caterpillar has also been observed to
change its diet according to whether it is infected
by a particular parasite. Normally a Lupin eater, the
caterpillar increases its chance of surviving a particular
fly parasite by changing to a diet of Poison Hemlock.
Self-medication is not therefore a ‘rational choice’
in other species, but a carefully integrated part of
a survival mechanism against an invisible predator -
disease. Humans seem to have lost this sense of their
own health and are not usually informed as to the uses
of plants growing around them.
Humans often self-medicate though -
alcohol indulgence to deal with stress being an obvious
example of this or the ready availability of pharmaceutical
or street drugs. We often consume substances such as
caffeine or sugar drinks for easy energy. The natural
trait towards self-medicating may well be at the basis
of many of our unconscious ‘eating choices’.
Potatoes contain a form of opiate and all foods to some
extent can act as ‘alteratives’ to a unique
physiology. We talk about comfort foods and rewarding
ourselves with treats to eat. Sometimes we have a favourite
food that can help if we feel too ill to eat. Quite
often this is scrambled egg, which is a unique food
because it contains all of the amino acids we need to
digest it, or chocolate, the ultimate comfort food treat.
An extreme example of what we do is shown in ‘Pica’
where a person gets uncontrollable desires to eat certain
edible (and inedible) substances. This condition is
occurs in pregnant women and is thought to express the
need for particular minerals. Because our food sources
are often limited to processed food, and because of
the destruction of herbal folk-lore and access to wild
medicine, many of us have lost touch with our ‘health
sense’ or ability to use food or wild plants as
self-medication. But finally the wheel is turning and
people want access to this more holistic and gentle
sense of health that is prevalent in other medical philosophies
such as Chinese or Tibetan. If you like the taste of
mothballs you could even try Tansy cakes.
Article with thanks to Roger Phillips and Michael Hoffman
Simon Mitchell is an artist and
writer who lives in Cornwall UK. He has a role in
publishing at the edge of paradigm shift. He feels
that as a culture we are between two worlds, the
first a world in decline - that of ‘old rational
science’ - the second, a quantum world of
energy held back by the first, struggling to be
born in our consciousness.
The purpose of work at simon’s
publishing site is to help people shift paradigms.
So on simon’s sites you will find celebratory
material that promotes positive involvement with
holistic health at a quantum level. You will also
find material that is deeply questioning of established,
orthodox and ‘accepted’ wisdom.
simon’s new site is at http://www.simon-mitchell.com
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