herbal wisdom from women for women ...

herbal wisdom from women for women

"Like billowing fogs Like the incessant gurgle of the runlet The longing of the spirit can in no degree be stilled."

-- Hildegard von Bingen

In an unfortunate reversal of historic convention, greatest in quantity modern women are now starved for trustworthy healthcare information, and for recapturing an active part in their families', and their confess health.

Prior to the mid-20th hundred women, throughout time, have protected to the health needs of families, children, other women and whole villages. In their characters as the keepers of medical wisdom, women have relied upon science, natural history, observation, experience, and tradition.

The part of healer was naturally assumed by means of women; such healers included biological mothers, neighborhood "grandmothers," village earlier borns and renowned physicians and herbalists. The character of medical "expert" served to empower women to bestow vanity and to grant an automatic place of authority in family and culture

individual of my favorite women healers is Hildegard yon Bingen, a multi-faceted woman who lived during the 12th hundred Born in Germany in 1098 the 10th child of a noble family, Hildegard was tithed, as by medieval custom, to the temple at birth. At age 8 she was sent to a Benedictine convent where she spent her days in a tiny extent studying under the tutelage of a female ascetic named Jetta. When Hildegard was 38 Jetta died, leaving Hildegard to become the head of the monastery that had grown up around Jetta.

At 42 Hildegard began to have visions, described as "a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowing [i]or[/i] part of to the other her brain." The then-Pope, Eugenius, encouraged Hildegard to transcribe these visions and to distribute her writings. In the highly religious Europe of the Middle Ages, Hildegard became a famous woman.

Hildegard was also a composer of music, a playwright, and the author of several main division s among them Liber Subtilatum, "The work of Subtleties of the Diverse Nature of Things." Hildegard studied plants, tree animals, birds, and human behavior. Liber Subtilatum was a treatise onward natural history and the therapeutic powers of natural substances.

Hildegard's views stemm from the classical four-element theory, a concept which is based on: fire, air, water, and earth. These natural mediums correspond to four respective qualities: heat, drynes moisture, and nipping and to four respective humors: bile (choleric), blood (sanguine), phlegm (phlegmatic), and black bile (melancholy).

As with other medical practitioners of her time, Hildegard believed that illness stemm from an imbalance in humors and elements; prescribing the plant, animal, or natural substance which would correct the imbalance was the way to restore health.

Centuries later, Maude Grieve added her version of female wisdom to herbal history with a main division entitled A Modern Herbal. For anyone interested in plant medicine and cultural history, this part is a great read.

Grieve clearly regard with affections and respects the plant world; her work published in England, in 1910 is more than a perfunctory listing of botanical names and their medicinal values. by the agency of funny stories, poetry, Shakespeare, and history, Grieve relates information upon over 100 botanical species: their history, cultivation, and culinary and medicinal uses.

Modern-day "representations" of Hildegard von Bingen and Maude Grieve came into my life during my four years of medical drill During the 1980s, Cascade Anderson Geller and Selena Heron taught botanical medicine at each of the sum of two units naturopathic medical schools I attended. Since work as a licensed naturopathic physician requires a comfortable familiarity with plants, "herb walks" with either Cascade or Selena were a prerequisite to graduation.

These ranges through the woods and mountains of the Pacific Northwest were unlike any hike I had evermore before experienced. Rain or shine (and, in the Northwest, mainly rain) we would set on the outside tiny plastic bags and small knives in hand. Like contemporary Hildegards, these women would point not at home sniff, nibble on, and mention one by one stories about almost every plant we encountered

We rubbed up against harasss to experience the sting, then chewed plantain leaves and rubbed them onto the rash to say a cure. We sampled dandelion source split open juniper berries, touched mullein leaves, and expressed St. John's wort flowers between our fingers to diocese them stain red. With these women I learned the "magic" of plant medicine, and, within them, the healing powers of the natural world became real.

Unfortunately, for most numerous women, the past 50 years has been a steady robbing of the traditional part of woman as healer. novel medicine, pharmaceuticals, surgery, and highly technological actions have convinced many that the solutions to illness lie outside of ourselves or are beyond the view of the women we know.

Today, when a baby is suitable few parents call a neighborhood midwife; when a child is sick, mothers rarely lay open kitchen cabinets to brew up the indicated medicine; when menopause begins, solitary a smattering of women apply the mind inward, or to one another, for solutions to impetuous flashes, depression, or a declining libido.