This is Echinacea….maybe one of the best known medicinal plants, with a reputation for helping to boost the immune system. If I ever get a cold or flu, I take Echinacea daily until it’s gone. I don’t remember where I read it, but back when I was a GP I remember reading a few studies which seemed to show that taking Echinacea during viral illnesses could be associated with less severe symptoms and a shorter duration of illness. I’ve adopted the practice ever since.
I have quite a fascination for medicinal plants. There’s something extra special about finding or growing a plant with reputed healing powers. I was pretty excited last year to discover “self heal” suddenly growing all over the garden, and I do like to see plants like Echinacea, Chamomile, and Pulsatilla growing nearby. I even like the poisonous ones with potential powerful pharmacological effects (even though I don’t actually swallow any of them!) – Foxglove (Digitalis), Aconite, Belladonna, and Trumpet flowers (Brugmansia) – although the only ones I’ve managed to grow so far are the foxgloves.
I can’t remember when I first encountered the term, ethnobotany, the study of the place of plants in human lives, but I’ve often thought that, in another life, I’d probably have enjoyed studying ethnobotany at university. One of my favourite books on my bookshelves is “Plants of the Gods”, subtitled “Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers” by Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann.
When I learned homeopathy as a young GP it fired up my interest in the potential healing powers of plants many fold, and I still think that’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed learning homeopathy so much. To be able to enjoy the beauty of a plant, to be fascinated with its growth, but in addition to know stories about human beings have interacted with it over the centuries seems, to me, to deepen and expand my enjoyment.
Many years ago I went to an ethnobotany exhibition at Inverleith House in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. In the middle of each room were plant filled stalls laid out like a street market, with explanations about each plant. I remember thinking, how on earth did nomadic tribes discover that one particular plant was good for treating diarrhoea, whilst a different one was great for dyeing your clothes purple? I mean, was it decades of trial and error? How many purple people died from diarrhoea?
That still absolutely fascinates me. How did the tribes in South America discover that a particular tree was good for treating fevers, only for us to discover decades later that it contains quinine, a great malaria treatment? And how interesting that when Samuel Hahnemann read about that in Cullen’s Pharmacopeia, he decided to take some of the tree bark himself, leading him to come up with the idea of “like treats like”, and, hence, the whole therapeutic method of homeopathy?
Heroes Not Zombies 