Natural Remedies (eBook)

The Basics

Before we launch into a discussion of the specific usages of plants and other natural home remedies, it is a good idea to consider overall what exactly a home remedy is. We also need to look at the benefits and side effects, the pros and cons, of following this method of treatment. This section is directed towards providing you with the basic knowledge behind the use of home remedies. In this way, this chapter hopes to make available to you the information through which you can make an knowledgeable choice on when to use and when not to use a home remedy.

Defining A Home Remedy

There are several different definitions of the term “home remedy.” The common perception is of a type of treatment derived from the past and used by someone, generally female, specifically the mother or grandmother, to bring about a cure. The kitchen is the origin of most home remedies, according to this definition. This takes into consideration 2 aspects of the term: home and remedy.

According to a formal legal definition, a remedy is “a medicine or treatment that cures, heals or relieves.”  The word “home” indicates the origin of the treatment. As a result, home remedies refers to a “practical cure or treatment that cures, heals or relieves” using certain common substances such as spices, vegetables, fruit, herbs and modern materials, e.g. duct tape, petroleum jelly. All items used tend to have some other use within the household. Moreover, the practitioner of home remedies can easily locate the specific substance.

Home Remedy Or Folk Remedy?

Home remedies is often confused or made synonymous with another alternative form of medical treatment – folk medicine. This is understandable since both types of medicine use herbs and other plants. Both rely on non-conventional medicine to bring about a cure or to treat the patient. Yet, whereas folk medicine tends to restrict itself to the use of herbal remedies, home remedies expands its field to utilize other natural and even human made substances.

For example, folk medicine may use the sap of the milkweed plant or a dandelion to remove a wart. Home remedies may use either plant’s sap or cover the wart with duct tape.

Folk remedies rely on tradition. The knowledge of herbs is passed on within the family. It has a history a provenance within a family, a group of families or a district. Originally, home remedies operated on a similar system. A mother passed the information on to her daughter. Her daughter then passed them on to her own child. This often involved writing the recipes for health and successful (or at least accepted) cures down in diaries, recipe books and similar tomes.

In fact, cookbooks from before and after the Victorian era, as well as books on plants, describe the curative powers of certain plant substances. The Book of Household Management by Mrs. Isabella Beeton is a classic Victorian work on the subject of how to run all aspects of your home. Mrs. M. Grieve’s book A Modern Herbal is a combination of botanical information as well as plant lore and common medicinal uses of the plants. This fount of herbal home remedies is dated 1931.

To an extent, home remedies ran alongside the herbal wisdom of the time. Throughout history, people relied on medicine or physicke gardens to provide cures for their ailments much as they depended on the kitchen garden for food. Monasteries retained such gardens to supply the remedies for the nearby villagers. Their herbalists treated the ailments and meted out the right prescription for the problem. The medieval books on herbs by Culpeper and Gerard served lay practitioner and doctor alike. In the cities, doctor’s relied on these works. In the villages and countryside, folk remedies from the wisewomen and wisemen did its best to combat illnesses and diseases.

Home Remedies Or Herbalism?

Yet, you should not confuse either folk medicine or home remedies with herbalism. While all forms of medical treatment turn to herbs, there is a co-relation, not an exact replication. Folk medicine is closer to herbalism in application. Modern herbalism, however, often prefers to abandon the lore of folklore to concentrate on the particular medicinal properties of the herbs.

Home remedies do utilize herbs. They do employ herbalism and can draw on the wisdom of herbalists. Yet, home remedies do not rely solely on herbs to arrive at a cure. They do not restrict themselves to herbs to cure an individual. Duct tape, petroleum jelly, fruits and vegetables are part of a philosophy that includes herbs but does not exclude other substances.

The Divergence Of Home Remedies And Medicinal Cures

In the colonies of Canada and the United States, such information was essential. Doctors were scarce and their services expensive. Medication, where available, was costly. Plant remedies were readily at hand. They were also inexpensive. Home remedies, sometimes combined with the local folk knowledge of the indigenous people, provided the only form of medicine available in some regions. The MicMac in Nova Scotia, the Iroquois, the Huron, the Cree, the Mohawk, Shawnee, the Natchez, the Arapahoe, Seminole and other tribes had their own doctors and wise folk knowledgeable in the ways of natural healing. In the United States in 1742, those who could read could turn towards the wisdom of The Williamsburg Art of Cookery or Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion by Mrs. Helen Bullock.

As modern medicine made in roads, arriving at cures for common diseases and other health issues, there was a shift away from traditional folk medicine and home remedies. During wars, the lack of medical supplies and doctors resulted frequently in return to home remedies, folk medicine and herbalism. Although the governments during World War I and World War II encouraged the growing of Victory gardens – including medicinal herbs, scientific advances resulted in several major breakthroughs in the medical field.

The growth of such new knowledge after the Victorian era combined with the philosophy of “new or modern was better than traditional” to create a decrease in the old system of medicine. Individuals jettisoned and pooh-poohed home remedies. Medicine gardens, the application of herbs and home remedies became signs of an obsolete and old-fashioned way of life. People left them behind, opting for the new synthetic versions of drugs. Home remedies were something that Grandma had believed in – not civilized humans. Herbalism and folk medicine and home remedies were part of the Third World, the less developed countries of the world not the civilized nations, and certainly NOT North America.

This philosophy was not to stand. In the 1960s, the revolution against all that was new as being right began to take hold. By the 1980s, the movement towards alternative medicine had taken shape growing more concrete in the 1990s as literature began to substantiate some of the benefits of using herbs and other home remedies. The Green Movement, increasingly educated society, and increased comprehension that medicine was not without its flaws created reconsideration by various individuals and groups of the way medicine was practiced.

The standardized traditional forms of western medicine fought against the renewed interest in the alternative medicines. This included herbalism, reiki, acupuncture and acupressure. Many people turned towards these ancient Oriental or Asian types of treatment. They saw in these a different way of healing themselves without chemicals and side effects.

The end result of this interest in different forms of medicine resulted in a renewed look at the overall practice of medicine by the medical profession itself. Several doctors began to practice what is known as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). This embraced different forms of non-traditional as well as traditional western medicine. CAM, while focusing on some of the more common types of Asian traditions, does not neglect herbalism as part of various types of alternative medicine including home remedies.

What Is A Home Remedy?

Yet, as noted earlier, home remedies is not restricted to herbalism. The use of herbs is but a single aspect of home remedies. While a home remedy may use plants, it also can draw on substances found in the refrigerator or the kitchen cupboards. You can use the powers of fruit, vegetables, spices and minerals as well as certain human-made substances to produce a cure. In other words, home remedies can combine the use of the plants of folklore cures with the knowledge of herbs in herbalism. Home remedies can incorporate these related aspects and traditional beliefs of healing of healing with modern concepts, tools and substances.

As a result, the use of home remedies requires diverse knowledge. It is a skill as well as something you can learn. In order to be a true and good practitioner of home remedies, you need to know some of the basics about it. This includes the pros and cons of usage as well as the knowledge of the benefits and side effects possible from use. Since you will not learn this orally or from a book written by a relative, it is in your best interest to read further.

Why Home Remedies are Popular?

Home remedies have proven time and time again that they are incredibly popular.  The major benefits that home remedies tends to offer to people means that it is possible to learn some great ways to save money, improve your health and also live a bit of a greener life.  In order to really get all of the benefits...