Natural Remedies

Cultivating a natural garden

Many herbs and plants are grown in gardens for their use as a natural remedy.

Copyright Irish Times

Cultivating a natural garden
Copyright Irish Times

Cultivating a natural garden

Many herbs and plants are grown in gardens for their use as a natural remedy.

Copyright Irish Times

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Long before writing, the first hunter-gatherers realised that certain plants could be used to their advantage. It was the beginning of what one ethnobotanist – a person who studies the use of plants in human culture – described as “the longest clinical trial in human history.”

For the vast majority of human history, across the world, folk medicine was the only medicine available. In the great Irish myth of the Battle of Moytura  a physician healer known as the Dian Ceacht, who may have been an earlier healing god, helps to cure a sick king, and recognises a variety of stomach disorders. The early Irish Brehon laws, a civil legal and medical code which lasted into the 16th and 17th centuries, contained a prescription for how to treat a person with mental illness – duine le Dia, or a “person with God” was to be afforded rights and protection, and their community had a duty of care towards them. The early Irish Christian tradition saw the emergence of leper houses, when treating the sick became a monastic concern.

Much medical knowledge was hereditary, passed down within certain families: the O’Lee’s of west Connaught, for example, were regarded in the 15th century as almost akin to medical magicians; they drew on folk tradition, formal learning, and both Continental and Classical sources.

Onions are used as a natural remedy

Onions are used as a natural remedy as they have antiseptic properties.

Onions are used as a natural remedy

Onions are used as a natural remedy

Onions are used as a natural remedy as they have antiseptic properties.

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Folk medicine was not always held by specialists: many laypeople also practiced cures. In the same vein, today, not all medical knowledge is held by professional doctors. A widely known folk cure is the use of a dock leaf to cure a nettle sting, as is the application of baking soda, onions, garlic, or even urine for a bee sting.

Although life expectancies were significantly shorter before the advent of official medicine, folk healers did not blindly stab in the dark – they observed what appeared to work and what did not. Folk knowledge of the plant world has, for example, played an important part in the development of anti-malarial trials.

In Irish folk medicine, honey has long been put forward as a cure for the common cold. It was mixed with lemon juice and cooked into a thick paste with flour. It was mixed with dandelion leaves and roots as a sweetener in a tea to treat diseases of the urinary tract. This cure for stones in the gall bladder or urinary tract was collected from Co. Galway: “Roots of butcher’s broom boiled for eight hours, a pint of whiskey added, honey added to sweeten, the mixture is strained and bottled. Three glasses daily.”

Honey products feature in folk medicine

Honey products feature in folk medicine. Honey has a natural antiseptic property and a natural sweetner.

Copyright of The Irish Times

Honey products feature in folk medicine
Copyright of The Irish Times

Honey products feature in folk medicine

Honey products feature in folk medicine. Honey has a natural antiseptic property and a natural sweetner.

Copyright of The Irish Times

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Another Irish remedy involving honey is used to treat aphthous ulcers, which occur on the mucous membrane inside the mouth. In Leitrim, they are treated with a swab of honey and borax (a salt of boric acid). It is used as a preparation in the treatment of childhood eczema, mixed with an equal part of thick cream, or mixed with thick buttermilk. Honey was until recent times used as a means of treating boils.

While traditional Irish medicine is, arguably, in decline, traditional Chinese medicine has emerged as a successful industry in Ireland, with practitioners opening shops around the country. In this way, the story of natural “Irish folk medicine” is continuing, albeit in a commercial vein, and with “folk medicine in Ireland” as perhaps a more suitable title.