My work as a community herbalist with Movement in Thyme CIC sees me working with disadvantaged communities and people seeking sanctuary.  We run workshops empowering people to help themselves with herbal remedies at a time when the medical system seems overburdened and adverts on the radio advise patients to treat themselves at home before attending the hospital.  This is all well and good, but the NHS has become a victim of its own success.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a big proponent of the NHS, I think it is a testament to the social support of our country, and hate to think of Britain’s health service being carved off and privatised following along the lines of America, where only money talks. Being an herbalist does not mean that I am opposed to medicine and its advancement, on the contrary, the advancements we have made have been amazing and saved many lives. However, the rise of the medical establishment has also corresponded with the demise of our own capabilities and beliefs to heal ourselves.  As medicines have taken over, we have been told that the remedies, once passed on mother to daughter, are more or less useless, and so many have been forgotten.  Life has a cyclical way, though, and our present doctors are beginning to tell people to use things like honey for a cough.  We are slowly beginning to realise that home remedies had some merit, that they had their place and their use, and that in this day and age with overstretched doctors and disrupted supplies of medicine that they may even be essential once again.

If we look at the history of medicine, particularly the role of folk medicine – medicine used in the house mostly by women – herbs were the main ingredients.  Herbs were also the mainstay of much of what became authorised medicine, with plants being an ingredient within much of the chemical medicines the apothecaries made.  Even to this day, much of our medicine started off its life as a component part of a plant, which was then isolated and recreated in a chemical format.

It is comforting to imagine that herbs were the only ingredients of folk remedies, but when we look back through time, they weren’t the only ingredients used.  Dung, snails, frogs, fried mice, spider webs, wood lice, dirty socks, unicorn, powdered mummy, red thread, and breast milk were just some of the other ingredients used in home and practitioner remedies.  Now we have a slight disgust for these ingredients in medicine, having moved so far away from them and from nature in general, but its also not wise to completely dismiss them all.  There have, in recent years, been scientific research done on the efficacy of some old remedies, and some of these have been shown to be effective, that is not to say that you should go around collecting dried sheeps dung and start making your own remedies with them.  However, if you travel to other countries, which we have in our “glory of empire” days termed “backwards” or “savage” you may find that some of these ingredients are still being used. 

An ancient remedy, for example, in Traditional Persian Medicine, is dung from a female donkey, called “Anbarnesa,”which is smoked like incense for conditions like bronchitis, ulcers and ear infections.  Scientific studies are now being done, which show the surprising benefits of it.

Then there were also the charms, which were an important part of remedies.  These days, people often look at them in disbelief. “How could they believe in magic?”  But if we look at charms and spells using modern terminology as ‘positive intentions’ or ‘positive mindset’, we see them in a different light.

Research shows that mindset or expectations to heal, similar to placebos, can trigger specific neurobiological correlates including the immune, cardiovascular, and neuroendocrine systems.  In fact, placebos are driven in large part by the mindset that the pill is effective.

The research also shows that medicines are more effective when the physician tells the patient the benefits of it before or while administering it.  We are just finding this out now, although if we look, healers knew this through history.

The greatest sanction which the Romans used against dissidents was to brand them as magicians and sorcerers, for which the penalty was death. Women healers often met this fate. Caligula’s insanity was attributed to drugs and magic used against him by his wife, and she was executed. The early Christians were similarly branded as magicians and executed, and it is no coincidence that some of the early Christian martyrs, like Theodosia, Nicerata and Thekla were principally sagae or midwives….The conversion of the Roman empire to Christianity crystallised attitudes towards women and women healers….Thus men were confirmed in their role as official healer and Galenic medicine – the most prominent Roman medical ‘school’ – was confirmed as Christian medicine…..For the poor had little choice but to continue with home remedies and unorthodox practitioners. This duality of medical practice remained a feature of European medicine until the twentieth century.

This duality existed despite the fact that the church and male physicians sort to discredit women healers.  Part of the reason women healers and domestic medicine continued was the fact that they helped the poor, their neighbours, their family, and the community.  Doctors, on the other hand, charged large amounts of money for their services and so were out of reach for the majority of people.  There were also not enough doctors to doctor everyone, and the majority of doctors did not want to work with the poor anyway.  Normal people, on the whole, thus continued as they always had looking after themselves using domestic medicine, things they could find in their houses, in the hedgerow, or could be grown in the garden.  There are numerous recipt books from upper-class women who were able to read and write, which shows the role of women as healers of their households. They also show how women shared this knowledge and passed it on between them.

This then brings us back to my original point, that we have lost this knowledge and yet have come full circle where it is needed once again.  We need to look back at our history to find what we have lost and bring this teaching to people so that we can look after ourselves for basic needs and don’t “clog up the hospitals unnecessarily.”  And it is the everyday person yet again who needs this knowledge as the upper classes are as usual less affected.

As a historical herbalist, my role is to uncover the traditions of our past, preserve our knowledge, and ensure that our wise women, our grandmothers, and their struggles, are not forgotten.  When we see what seems to be happening in the States with what appears to be the reversal of democracy, womens liberation, and the rise of Christian nationalism we can see the circle of history repeated, even as they try to delete it.  In these times of uncertainty, the knowledge that kept us alive for millennia seems ever more important.

But why dress in historical clothes?  As historical herbalists, our aim is to practice living history.  Recreating the clothes and techniques of the era to help us to better understand how people might have thought or felt, what the challenges were, and how they practised healing.  And it’s fun!

To take a few obvious examples: communities speak languages that are inherited from the past. They live in societies with complex cultures, traditions and religions that have not been created on the spur of the moment. People use technologies that they have not themselves invented. And each individual is born with a personal variant of an inherited genetic template, known as the genome, which has evolved during the entire life-span of the human species.

So understanding the linkages between past and present is absolutely basic for a good understanding of the condition of being human. That, in a nutshell, is why History matters. It is not just ‘useful’, it is essential.

The study of the past is essential for ‘rooting’ people in time. And why should that matter? The answer is that people who feel themselves to be rootless live rootless lives, often causing a lot of damage to themselves and others in the process.

I guess in essence this blog post is me trying to connect my two roles as community herbalist and historical herbalists, which can on the face of it be two very different roles, but are in fact two sides of the same coin.  Rooting myself in the knowledge of the past helps me to see the cycles that are being repeated, and equally helps me to help marginalised communities just as our grandmothers (and some grandfathers) before us always have.

Movement in Thyme is a non-profit you can find more about our work and support us here: https://movementinthyme.com/

The Historical Herbalists have just become a non-profit too! You can find out about our work here: https://www.historicalherbalists.com/

References

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7608684/

Old wives tales: the history of remedies, charms and spells.  Mary Chamberlain

https://archives.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/why_history_matters.html