Wild medicine and Composite cakes

It started with the Composite cakes. I had to ask myself 'Why would-be anyone eat thing so utterly distasteful in taste'? Chrysanthemum Vulgare is a common perennial in the British Isles and the name Composite is aforementioned to be derived from the Greek 'athansia', meaning 'immortal'. Reasons advisable for this include the fact that the dried flower lasts forever or that it has a healthful quality causative to long life. Looking back to Greek literature, Composite was given by the Gods to Galilean satellite to do him immortal. In the language of flowers the gift of Composite means 'Rejected address' - " I am not interested in you". Its strange taste, not unlike the smell of 'mothballs' power have thing to do with this.

Tansy for certain had a reputation as a medicament and anthelminthic (killing and dispelling enteral worms) in the middle ages. John Gerard wrote in his Ordinal century Herball:

"In the Spring time are ready-made with the leaves here of fresh sprung up, and with eggs, cakes of Tansies, which be pleasant to taste, and nice for the stomacke. For if any bad humours cleave there unto, it doth dead concoct them and scoure them downewards".

Tansy was a common room garden herb for healthful and cookery use, in place of costly foreign spices such as nutmeg and cinnamon. It was used to flavour custard, cakes, milk puddings, omlettes and fresh fish. In Ireland it was enclosed in sausages called 'Drisheens'. Its use as a season 'cleanser' became ritualised into a part of the Christian religious Easter traditions;

"On Easter Sunday be the pudding seen,

To which the Composite lends her sober green."

The accord on this more written just about herb is that it was used at Easter to purify the blood after lent. This accord shows a problem though, in that in European nation the plant makes not show leaves until the end of May - well after Easter. This is evidence of the assimilation of natural 'self-medicating' herbalism into a dominant religious patriarchy.

Observation of wild and domesticated animals shows that they on a regular basis self-medicate with wild plants. Sick chimpanzees chew bitter leaves from a bush not commonly part of their diet, and then recover. Research by Archangel Hoffman shows that a particular roundworm worm is common in the monkey's gut during the rainy season and that their change of state 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 consumption couch grass or cleavers. Parrots, chickens, camels, snow geese, starlings - all have been determined intense substances commonly alien to their diet to remedial effect. Bears particularly are reverenced by North American Indian culture because they symbolise the powers of 'regeneration'. North American Indians discovered the use of a root called Agency from bears. It is so effective as an all round painkiller, antiviral, antipeptic that it is now on the vulnerable species list.

The Woolly Bear caterpillar has as well been determined to change its diet according to whether it is infected by a particular parasite. Commonly a Ligneous plant eater, the caterpillar increases its chance of extant a particular fly parasite by dynamic to a diet of Poison Hemlock. Self-medication is not therefore a 'rational choice' in different species, but a with kid gloves 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 commonly advised as to the uses of plants growing about them.

Humans often self-medicate tho' - alcohol indulgence to deal with stress being an obvious example of this or the available accessibility of pharmaceutical or street drugs. We often consume substances such as alkaloid or sugar drinks for easy energy. The natural attribute towards self-medicating may well be at the basis of many a of our unconscious 'eating choices'. Potatoes contain a form of narcotic and all foods to several extent can act as 'alteratives' to a unique physiology. We talk just about comfort foods and bountied ourselves with treats to eat. Often we power have a favourite food that can help if we feel too ill to eat, like disorganised egg. This is a unique food because it contains all of the amino acids we need to digest it. Chocolate is to many a the ultimate comfort food treat.

An extreme example of what we do is shown in 'Pica' wherever a person gets uncontrollable desires to eat certain edible (and inedible) substances. This condition occurs in pregnant women and is thought to express the need for particular minerals. Because our food sources are often limited to processed (and demineralised) food, and because of the destruction of flavouring folk-lore and access to wild medicine, many a of us have lost touch with our 'health sense' and an ability to use food or wild plants for self-medication. A regular preventative 'detox' was an essential part of our diet at one time and if you like the taste of mothballs you could even as try Composite cakes.

Article with thanks to Roger Phillips and Archangel Hoffman

Simon Mitchell

The Wild Flavouring at http://www.simonthescribe.co.uk/wildflower.html