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Medicinal Garden

Your Medicinal Garden

When diet is mentioned as a part of shiatsu therapy, or Traditional Chinese Medicine in Acupuncture, Thai, Ayurvedic medicine and others it really means gaining the right nutrition or healing properties from plants used for food and medicine. 

There are herbal data bases online, including copies of many of the old herbals. American Botanical council have a good data base - find website link towards the bottom of the page. Most basic herbals will list anywhere from 200-300 plants and their properties, but there are thousands.  

Sometimes to get into better data bases and publications there may be a charge, or subscription.  The online resource Natural Standard (http://www.naturalstandard.com), the "Authority on Integrative Medicine" has a pretty extensive data base on herbs.

Before self medicating, you'll definitely want to check on your medicinal plant of interest for toxicity or interaction with other drugs.  Even something as simple as parsley tea for reducing edema is probably going to be trouble if you are already taking a diuretic.    

A person can look in a knee deep stack of herbals before beginning to get a more complete picture of how a medicinal herb of interest was historically used, also the many ways that one herb may have been combined with others.  Then, there are botanical names and common names and language translations and recipes, traditional use vs modern research, also different traditional perspectives on use.  So, can't ever have too many sources to cross reference.  Here's one that I ran across the other day trying to exhaust everything out there on using golden rod instead of calendula in the balm that I make up about this time every year (July/August): http://www.herbalremediesadvice.org/goldenrod-plant.html

I'm really liking a couple of books I found at Costco recently (Aug 2017) Midwest Medicinal Plants - Identify, Harvest and Use 109 Wild Herbs for Health and Wellness and Midwest Foraging - 115 Wild and flavorful edibles from Burdock to Wild Peach, both books written by Lisa M. Rose.  I like how the author describes life getting too busy for gardening and gave that up for letting the garden go and seeing what comes up, and the wonderful recipes and attention to sustainable harvesting.

You may already have a nice little first aid garden growing right in the yard. Mustard, dandelion, plantain, clovers, sorrels, wild violets, burdock, amaranth, shepherd's purse, purslane, wild lettuce, heal all, motherwort, black raspberry, wild grasses, chickweed, eyebright, cleavers, Solomon's seal, lobelia, mullein, the environment your plants of interest thrive in, such as soil, light, shade or sunlight and then try to create a similar environment at home.  There's a lot about health of the soil and water sources. 

Some plants like to be near each other and some don't, or they prefer not to be in the same area with each other, and this can change due to a number of different reasons, and suddenly they are back together again.  Weird, but while some plants are very adaptable to most conditions, other plants seem to thrive in certain conditions, so it's always good to give all the space they need and prefer.  This is not to say that any one group is less important than another, it's just that they all have preferred requirements.  Some plants may be an antidote for another, often found in the same vicinity, in the wild anyway - why it's so important to protect natural habitat from ocean, wetlands, streams, rivers, plains, mountains to old growth forest, wherever there's any left! 

If you watch some of these plants, they seem to have their own crop rotation thing going on.  They can come in one place one year, and then different the next, move to a spot they like better, or disappear altogether for a couple years, and then show up again with new companion plants.

Catalog knowledge of some medicinal herbs of interest, like what family they are in - there's about 45 or so different families of plants, what medicinal properties they have, where you found them, when you picked them.  Label the year seeds were collected, note the weather and any growing conditions that might have affected the plant, photo and note any special germination requirements.  One plant can fill up a file cabinet in a hurry, so take your time, get to know them, their families and communities and pretty soon you'll have your own favorites list that are probably going to be good for you in some way if you feel an affinity for a certain plant.  Start a plant journal.  There may be a blog out there on the topic.

The important thing is the mindfulness of experiencing that connection with the great outdoors at a micro level, noticing the smallest flower, the pollinators that work so hard, how seasons, weather and environmental impact affect plants, and mostly to just relax, discharge static electricity, absorb healthy electro magnetic energy and breathe fresh air.  

 

Below is a collection of information I've put on this page, and never really sorted out yet, so feel free to browse and enjoy.  Thank you to all the websites I've used throughout!! 

In the news:

How Healthy is your yard? NASA's orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) launches July 14th, 2014 to observe fluorescence from chlorophyl in plants: https://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/  (haven't figured out how to use this yet!)

www.iNaturalist.org keep track of endangered species. 

 

Earth, the New Wild premiered Feb 4, 2015 on PBS (channel 2). We can live with nature. The first episode is on the plains and how researchers are taking a new look at how large predators like wolves and cats keep herds moving and tilling up grass lands, highlighting the research of Alan Savory (www.savoryinstitute.com).

 http://www.pbs.org/earth.a-new-wild/episode-plains/

Minnesota Conservation Volunteer magazine - Wanted:  New Outdoor Readers   July/August 2015  Become a Minnesota Conservation Volunteer - Department of Natural Resources

To sign up or contribute go to www.mndnr.gov/mcvmagazine.com

November-December 2015  - The Sense of Place issue:  Let Nature be Your Teacher.  The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary in Minneapolis (part of Glenwood Park,  15 acres, almost 550 plant species that grow in wetlands, woodlands, savannas, and prairies - today the garden has some 60,000 visitors a year.)

"In 2010, garden curator Susan Wilkins and Marilyn Garber, founder and director of the Minnesota School of Botanical Art, joined forces to start a project known as the Eloise Butler Florilegium.  A florilegium is a visual record of plants present in a given location.  When this multiyear project is completed, students and teachers at MSBA will have painted representative images of 130 native species, chosen by Wilkins to portray the garden's range of natural habitats.  Wilkins sees the project as a way to invite more people to learn from the garden's living library of plants.  Garber sees this as a legacy project for the school, as well as a contribution to the community."

There are 10 drawings included in the article and more can be seen at www.mndnr.gov/magazine

Website of the Minnesota School of Botanical Arts:

http://www.minnesotaschoolofbotanicalart.com/styled-5/index.html

Get back out there:

State Parks Reservation:  1-866-857-2757  www.mndnr.gov/reservations  

 

January 30, 2015  Anoka County Union Herald - Pollinators in decline, but there are ways to help by Master Gardener Bob Vaughn for Garden Views.  Nice stats: over 200,000 pollinators,  including bird, bats, moths, butterflies, beetles and bees, and there are over 20,000 different species of bees.  To learn more about integrated pest management: www.umn.extension.edu

 

Need more help with bees?  Call the Bee Squad:

http://beelab.umn.edu/BeeSquad

 

Need bugs?:

http://www.arbico-organics.com/product/assassin-bug-zelus-renardii/beneficial-insects-predators-parasites

Love this site.  The Zelus bug is for spider mites, click back to home page from there.   

 

Of the 750,000 or more known plants, of that number many are well known plants that have medicinal properties used in pharmaceutical preparations today, or copied synthetically.  Some are still used traditionally around the world as food and medicine, and many herbs have yet to be studied further for medicinal or nutritional properties. 

Naturally, there is a lot of romanticism surrounding use of herbs.  Medicinal plants can be so profoundly influential when it comes to health and healing. The first herbals were recorded 4,000 years or more ago.  

Somewhere back in the 1970s when visiting friends in Mobile Alabama, I walked downtown one morning and discovered Kirby's Herb Shop, filled with shelves of glass jars full of dried herbs where I was introduced to snake root.   Snake root is native to North America as well as other countries.   Rauwolfia serpentina is the botanical name. Snake root is a food for the nerves, and has been long used in India, also by Native American traditional healers.  Romancing the product always helps.  Kirby told me that Gypsies burn it under their fortune telling tables to make their customers more likely to believe fortunes, which was a captivating little story for a teenager then, but later on I started to read more about the influence on the nerves.  Rauwolfia serpentina is a food for the nerves. 

Around the same time in the early 1970s it was widely held by natural health practitioners that 99 percent of all illnesses were causes by nervous disorders - this concept was about 70 years out from a revolution in medicine, the fight to be known as a regular doctor around the turn of the century, also about 30 years out from the "regular doctors" take-over of the birth and death business sometime around the mid to late 1940s.  In regular hospitals.  And today the pharmaceutical industry is a 300+ billion dollar a year industry in the United States alone, and many generations away from remembering most of the old standard home wellness remedies.  That is really good romancing when a trend to influence popularity of modern medicine winds up practically ghosting domestic knowledge of medicinal plants!

 

India is using Ayurveda right along side modern science today, especially massage, so much so that growing pains of Ayurveda's constant popularity with the people include you might be standing in line at Narayan Murtha's place (practicing his specialty in herbal medicine coming from his family line for 800 years) with about a thousand other people lining up for some of his cancer busting bark remedies, many of the people standing in line are couriers for others. 

No one ever thought the lush wilds of India with treasure troves of medicinal plants and trees could ever be exhausted, but even this little village has been so swamped they are worried about the surrounding forests being plundered for their natural resources. He spends most of the week collecting and processing and gives it freely under the yogi tradition of doing good works.   

There are plenty of great medicinal plants right here in North America.  Hopefully we don't ruin every last wild space where they flourish. 

Native American Indians who knew plant medicine had to be hidden among their society (thought to be too influential!). 

Surprising to find www.herballodge.com out of upper Michigan since 2009.  I like the looks of their Chaga Mushroom tea.  Anti-candida for one. 

Candida is a generally happy little intestinal flora usually far outweighed by good intestinal bacteria  (80/20ish) until the candida go rouge and bore through the intestinal walls - called leaky gut syndrome, take over the body as a parasitic collective and use the body like an avatar to find fuel they like (created a processed sugar monster).  One cancer theory is that cancer is nothing more than the body's inability to encapsulate and keep contained clumps of candida that have gone wild throughout the body.  Would killing the immune system with antibiotics be the answer, or giving the body what it needs to strengthen the immune systems ability to fight it's way back to a normal happy balance? 

 

In May of 1988 Barbara Crossette for the New York Times News Service reported on an international conference that was held in the northern city of Chiang Mai,  The conference was sponsored by the World Wildlife Organization and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and in a declaration experts at the conference expressed concerns about the loss of medicinal plants and traditional formulas before their uses become widely known,  also calling for increased conservation of natural areas.

According to one of the organizers, Hugh Synge, a British botonist as many as 60,000 plants with valuable medicinal properties were thought likely to become extinct by 2050, meaning one in every four of the world's medicinal plants threatened.  At that time 80 percent of the world's people relied on medicinal plants.

In this report from 1988 Peter P. Principle, an American researcher said  "In the United States, 25 percent of the prescriptions that are being filled are derived from plants. The percentage is higher in terms of anti-cancer drugs; 35-40 percent are derived from plants."

"One substance that is (then - 1988) already endangered is reserpine, an ingredient in certain tranquilizers that is derived from the Rauwolfia serpentina plant, found in India.  Other plants like cinchona, whose bark produces quinine, and foxglove varieties, which are used in the heart medications digitoxin and acetydigitoxin, could also run out experts said."

"These shortages are intimately linked with the decline of forests and vegetation," Synge said, adding that most of the tropical forests were in developing nations that needed help with conservation.

 

So, what is the status of endangered medicinal plants today?

Medicinal Plants at Risk, Natures Pharmacy, Our Treasure Chest: Why we must conserve our Natural Heritage.  A Native Plant Conservation Campaign Report. By Emily Roberson, Native Plant Conservation Campaign Director of the Center for biological Diversity.  March 2008

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/publications/papers/Medicinal_Plants_042008_lores.pdf

One report from Botanical Gardens Conservation International, head office in the UK, with affiliate in US at Chicago Botanical Gardens, this was published in 1996:

www.bgci.org/wellbeing/CITES_and_Med_Plants_Summary/

 

Botanical gardens play an important role in researching and protecting native plant species. 

I've always kind of wished the old State Hospital grounds in Anoka could be turned into botanical gardens focusing on Minnesota native plants used for food and medicine, a research campus for the use of healing gardens, one source here:  https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/explore-healing-practices/healing-environment/what-are-healing-gardens  

By the 1930s many of the State Hospitals were having success with sustainable farming-and-gardening occupational programs, but this was possible by way of patients providing labor as part of the programs.  Later on, when labor laws were changed concerning patients rights many of the state hospitals could no longer afford to stay in operation. 

After the 1930s, new treatment therapies began to include electric shock treatments, lobotomies and drug therapies. 

The old Anoka State Hospital had one of the better layouts for workers and patients alike and for a while the occupational farming program really had it's moments.  Busy hands, plenty of enjoyable exercise good for the mind and body. 

One of the success stories that is coming to the forefront of healing therapies dealing with mental illness and other behavioral challenges, is working with plants (occupational therapy); healing gardens and horticultural activities are proving to be good therapy. 

The antidote for anger is creativity. 

Starting a botanical garden is no little project, but somewhere between historic preservation, research and education, and natural resources preservation and interest in behavioral sciences, there should at least be some chance of gaining enough cross interest to help get something started for public use, research, education and enjoyment that might have a chance at one day becoming sustainable.  Nice nature trails out there already.

The old Anoka State Hospital buildings were turned over to Anoka County from the state some years ago when it was estimated that it would cost one million dollars each to demolish the buildings.  There were originally 12 cottages around the circle with a tunnel connecting the cottages. 

The tunnel is in working condition since much of the wiring and plumbing running through the tunnels to supply the cottages and other buildings still needs to be maintained.  The power plant is still operational. Currently there are 3 cottages (#2, 3 & 4) on the Rum River side that are empty and in need of repair and restoration work. 

The cottages (massive brick structures, built to house something like 300 patients each) are architecturally and historically interesting, and would certainly be cheered up with botanical gardens and greenhouses for a little full circle healing. Or healing gardens. 

Imagine a research center, art gallery, juice bar up on the old sun patios, museum with health and wellness therapy research library, greenhouses and gardens connecting the cottages, campus physical and occupational therapy recovery center for trying out exoskeleton equipment and winter playground in the tunnels for getting around by scooters, art on the walls of the tunnel, full spectrum grow lights, handicap accessible gardening and greenhouses, and historical restoration and preservation projects going on all around the campus. 

The old State hospital grounds are not quite big enough for anything in the way of equestrian related therapy, but check this site out to get an idea of how out-of-the-box physical therapy can be today, on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Caisson-Platoon-Equine-Assisted-Programs-CPEAP-183622258346286/

It's the Caisson Platoon Equine Assisted therapy program, where soldiers help soldiers recover from injuries and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder using the draft horses that perform Military Honors in Arlington Cemetery to balance on and help with exercises.  But, there's always horse yoga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8CA6fUG9Do

July, 2017 Anoka Union Eagles Healing Nest from Saulk Center interested in using the cottages for housing military veterans and families: http://www.eagleshealingnest.com/

Native ginseng might be reestablished in the woods. 

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens www.selby.org is a botanical garden in Florida that focuses on tropical orchids.  Minnesota has about 43 different native orchids. 

Or, other wild plants on the grounds that may have been used medicinally, displays of types of kitchen and medicinal gardens used at the State Hospitals when they were sustainable farms.  One big outdoor classroom.  And that's not such a bad thing by the way.   www.oda.edu, is the website of The Out of Doors Academy in Sarasota Fl.  History: "Since 1924 oda has offered an innovative program focused on educating the whole child in a caring and supportive community." They used to have overnight camp outs on the beach and go sailing.

Well, the thing about ideas is they might not even be good at first, but they have to get started somehow, even to shoot down, that's all kind of part of the process. 

 

Notes on Occupational Therapy:  Robert K. Bing, EdD, OTR, FAOTA in 1981 wrote a rousing lecture; Occupational Therapy Revisited - A Paraphrastic Journey examining " ancestral roots of OT and subsequent grafts".  In his lecture he talks about George Edward Barton, the architect who landed in the hospital in the early 1900s with tuberculosis, and from this experience a desire arose in Barton to formulate an early prototype of how a rehabilitation center might operate.  Barton became one of the pioneers of the new occupational therapy movement.

In a speech once given to a group of nurses Barton said " If there is an occupational disease, why not an occupational therapy?" ..."the first thing to be done ... is for occupational therapy to provide an occupation which will produce a similar therapeutic effect to that of every drug in Materia Medica.  An exercise for each separate organ, joint and muscle of the human body"  

 Barton saw occupational therapy as purposeful exercise to recharge the dynamics of the desired occupation.

Materia Medicas by the way were wonderfully comprehensive for looking up plant medicines.  At least an 1851 Beck's Materia Medica - Lectures on MM & Therapeutics delivered in the college of physicians and surgeons of the State of New York by John B. Beck, M. D., Late professor of Materia Medica and Medical Jurisprudence, prepared for the press by his friend C. R. Gillman, M. D. professor of Obstetrics, etc., in the college of physicians and surgeons, N. Y.  (Samuel S. & William Wood, publishers, 261 Pearl St 1851) show that the collective knowledge of plants and their history of therapeutic use and action was huge.   

Today Music, dance therapy and Sound Therapy, Color Therapy, Massage Therapy, Hydrotherapy, Nutritional Therapy, Light Therapy, Oxygen Therapy are all back.   Natural movement related therapeutics that produce a healing effect.     

Do it Right This time, or DIRTT www.dirtt.net use a sort of Farmville-like space design software called ICE (www.ice-edge.com) to develop ideas with and for the customer to deliver ready to put in place unconventional construction projects.

 www.earthship.com

www.ossabawisland.net  Ossaba Island is a sea island retreat project that has a use agreement with Georgia's DNR.  The island is 20 miles off the coast of Georgia and amazing as a place of solitude to think and dream, to heal the soul and become inspired.  The Project, or Foundation also hosts public education programs.  

Probably at least one of the more outstanding original ancient peaceful gathering places in North America would be Hot Springs Ark National Park area, a place where rare medicinal herbs grew in abundance, was boarded up about 200 years ago and promoted as a mecca for wealthy spa goers. The Story of Manataka:  manataka.org

 

American elderberry plant, Sambucus Nigra (canadensis L.  the kind with the purple berries might be something worth looking into.  It's classified as a shrub and grows to be be about 6-10ft high.   Not  entirely impossible to find., www.anokawcd.org have them on their annual tree & shrub sale in the spring some years.- they change up their order each year.     

 http://minnesota-elderberry.coop/

Natura Farms about half way between Scandia and Forest Lake: 19060 Manning Trail N, Marine on St Croix, MN 55047 have a wholesale elderberry operation. Also you-pick organic raspberries, and vegetables can be purchased there at the farm during season.  The Elderberry is a cane plant, it spreads like raspberry, best dug up in the spring.  Natura Farms harvest elderberries and sell wholesale. Natura farms is an education farm.  They sell the harvested fresh frozen elderberries, also their associated farm in Missouri make elderberry products.  Find more info at the coop website. Out of this world organic onions by the way. 

For home made ginger "bug" and fermented herbal sodas. In the same blog are recipes for elderberry syrup and other berry syrups to use in home made sodas: https://blog.mountainroseherbs.com/diy-homemade-ginger-bug-fermented-sodas

 

Anyway, I think a good project to dream about is almost as good as what a person physically intakes as any type of herbal medicine, supplement or food is important. 

A video tour of St Peter State Hospital museum:

http://discussions.mnhs.org/mnlocalhistory/blog/2011/02/28/video-tour-of-the-saint-peter-state-hospital-museum/

 

Some perennial plants were grown during wartime in MN and are still coming up like milkweed (to stuff life-vests/Monarch butterflies love) and hemp (for rope).

Daniel Boone was said to have made his fortune by gathering and selling wild ginseng.  North American Ginseng is valued by the Asian market for it's yin, or cooling qualities.  Chinese ginseng is considered yang or warming.  Most of the wild ginseng in Minnesota was over harvested by 1917.

This link is to Welby R. Smith's Botonist, MN DNR 1993 "Preserving Wild Ginseng in Minnesota"  Minnesota Natural Heritage Program MN DNR.

http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/natural_resources/ets/ginseng.pdf

 

Julliette de Bairacli Levy, known for her love of natural habitat, following gypsies around England to find out their secrets of how they managed such beautiful and healthy horses, and eventually her devotion to restoring native herbs and grasses for grazing animals, wrote this note in a later edition for readers in Great Britain concerning the protection of natural habitat in The Complete Herbal Handbook for the Dog and Cat (first published in 1955 as the Complete Herbal Handbook for Dogs):

"Since this book was written, the natural habitat of many wild plants has disappeared and some herbs have become rare in the world because of building developments, intensive farming, and other pressures on land use.

In an effort to prevent these rare plants from extinction, the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 and its Variation of Schedule Order 1988 make it an offence for any unauthorized person to pick, uproot, destroy or offer for sale almost a hundred wild plants in Great Britain.

It is also an offence for an unauthorized person to uproot any wild plant, whether or not it is on the protected list.

The author strongly advises readers to grow their own herbs or obtain dried herbs from health food shops.

The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and the Wildlife and Countryside act (Variation of Schedule) Order 1988 can be obtained through HMSO bookshops.  Alternatively, a list of the fully protected plant species can be obtained from the Department of the Environment, Tollgate House, Houlton Street, Bristol, BS2 9DJ.

Readers in countries other than Great Britain should check local regulations before gathering flowers in the wild."

 

The above is a good general rule, even though a plant in the wild may not be on an endangered list, that's maybe only because no one noticed it yet!  With most National State Parks and State Parks it's usually advisable to look and enjoy, but do not touch or take. 

Uniiversity of Minnesota Agricultural Department is another good source for information: 

 

If you really want to take your gardening skills to a whole new level you might have to learn how to cross check different websites (medicinal properties, traditional uses, food for wildlife, toxic properties, etc.) to get ideas of what kind of wild spaces you maybe interested in creating.  For restoring a shoreline check with the MN DNR: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/restoreyourshore/pg/index.html

Check out some good local organizations like:

www.anokamastergardeners.org

Minnesota Native Plant Society:

 http://www.mnnps.org/

 

Minnesota Wild flowers:

http://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/

 

Minnesota geological society  for some good field trips and interesting lectures for a little side interest in what kind of geology plants like to grow around for some landscaping ideas:

http://www.gsmn.org/

 

Check local nature centers for field trips, and with local master gardeners and garden clubs for tips on growing native plants.  Many ornamental herbs and plants have toxic, carcinogenic, or other dangerous properties, so it's always best to really do the homework, especially if pets or children will be frequenting your new healing garden!

A good book to get started with is "Herb Gardening" compiled by Cornell Plantations, U. of California Botanical Garden, and Matthaei Botanical Gardens, in consultation with five other botanic gardens and arboreta (The American Garden Guides) 1994.

There is a local farm up around Lake George: 2365 Lake George Dr, NW Cedar MN 55011  that grows a good selection of medicinal herbs (they make products from their plants including a beautiful lavender massage oil that I use in my studio) as well as garden vegetables for sale - the best greens..  Visit their website at www.willheal.com  In the summer months they are at St Timothy Church near Northtown: 707 89th Av NE Blaine 55434  from 7am-noon Saturday mornings selling some of their products, also at Coon Rapids Ice Arena: 11000 Crooked Lk Bld weds 3-6pm.

 

You'll have to go to Eau Claire Wisconsin to visit Sunbow Farm to find about 55 elderberry products including an Elderberry Tonic!  www.sunbowfarm.com

Some other distant favorites:

Singing Springs Botanicals in Colorado make a good Osha root (Ligusticum porteri) product in honey "Osha Chews" for bacterial & viral respiratory infections; bronchitis, common colds & the flu. It stimulates the immune system & helps relieve congestion in the sinuses & lungs.  It is also used to soothe & anesthetize sore throats.  www.singingspringsbotanicals.com (avoid during pregnancy - a good rule for many herbs!)

 

www.herballegacy.com  Dr John R Christopher's herbal  formulas (www.schoolofnaturalhealing.com in Utah, also where Christopher furthered his education www.dominionherbalcollege.com near Vancouver BC.

Note: Dr John R Christopher is often called the father of herbal medicine in America because of his persistence to use herbal medicine over allopathic medicine.  First in the Army WWII  to use herbals. He took a lot of heat!  His lecture series is on www.youtube.com, starting with Lecture One; Elimination. at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oBQBdXCwj4

Then follow, Lectures 2: Bloodstream, Lecture 3: Liver; heart; Brain.  Lecture 4: Stomach; Heart. Lecture 5: Pancrease; Nerves; Insomnia, Lecture 6: Diuretics; Skin; Pregnancy.  Lecture 7: Allergies; Mucus-less Diet; Obesity; Reproductive organs. Lecture 8 Eyes, Varicose Veins.  Lecture 9: The Cold Sheet Treatment; The Incurables Routine.  Lecture 10: The Incurables Routine; Comfrey Paste; Plague Remedy.

 Most poor health begins in the plumbing.   This is an older lecture series and many of the treatments are pretty involved.  All of this lifestyle that Dr Christopher spent so many years in practice with is not an overnight concept that comes easy.     The body can take a year to clean up for some before even getting around to strengthening the system.  Dr Christopher was always promoting the idea that there should be an herbalist in every home and a master herbalist in every city.

Dr Richard Shultz #52 talks about making tinctures at www.youtube.com/watch?=VAUQG2Lp3zw    

Jason Winters Tea is still available.  Winters was an actor and watched the Indians on western sets take their break making chaparral tea.  Later when he was diagnosed with cancer and left to die after nothing more could be done allopathically, set out to research herbal treatments.  He came up with red clover from the bible, herbalene from the Orient, chaparral from the South West, can't remember what tall else and tried these separately, nothing.  Went into Mexico for Laetril treatments (B-17).  Little improvement, but enough to keep him going long enough to keep trying his formula.  Finally, exasperated mixed all his single herbs together and made a decoction, or a tea, drank some.  It seemed different, then drank about a gallon, and the rest is history. Certain herbs work better together.

Hoxey remedies may be available somewhere, note, Hoxey rolled more like Juliette Bairacli Levi in that a whole supporting diet is essential.  Hoxey's grandfather had come up with an herbal formula after watching what his prize horse ate after pasturing the horse due to cancer.  Bairacli Levi was always working at promoting grazing pastures having a full range of grasses and herbs in the English country side.  Hoxey's old clinic in Mexico is still operating.

Essiac formula is still going strong up in Canada, and more recently some people in Montana are trying to create habitat on Montana land for some of Rene Caisse original ingredients.  Her first original ingredients may have included 8 ingredients, but now pretty much the formula is made with 4 ingredients (Burdock, sheep sorrel, turkey rhubarb and the inner bark of slippery elm).  Youtube has a demonstration by Mali Klein on how to make the tea.  At least one of the other ingredients was Red clover.

Dr Hulda Clark was researching cancer and viruses and found that with every disease there was an associated parasite, even cancer.  Clark liked black walnut hull for getting rid of parasites.  Black walnut hull needs to have the green part on it.  You'll even see in nature when squirrels stock up on them in the fall, there's a lot of times chew marks on the outside green part.  Clark found that freeze drying was better than alcohol tincture.  Wormwood and cloves are usually in any kind of parasite remedy, and in this combination too, but she said if you use the black walnut hull in the right way, you won't need as much clove and wormwood.  Clark worked with electronic magnetic frequencies too and has a "zapper" called the Syncrometer.  So, Clark liked herbal approach to cleaning up the liver with a pre cleanse diet, then almost easy breezy like quark and flax Clark had a salt, olive oil and citrus drink to finish off parasites (stones and other gunk).  And then if you use the Syncrometer along with the protocols, look out.

For electronic engineering and physics fans you'll probably appreciate the work of another researcher in the field of electro magnetic pulse (PEMF/ICES) research scientist Dr. Robert Dennis who has a couple of different websites where you can learn about his work and purchase some of his latest generation equipment:  www.micro-pulse.com  I think his gen 6 ($629) is the most current, or least most currently available one for home use.  Runs off a 9V rechargable battery.  Also see: www.corticalmetrics.com where Brain Gauge is now available ($499).

Some of the big PEMF machines can range in the price of many thousands of dollars, and some exceed legal frequency ranges, so are not available here in the United States.  Some are good others are hit and miss.  Some people are working on making their own Rife, or PEMF (pulse electro magnetic frequency) or zapper devices.  The Colloidal Silver Guy has put together his own Rife like instrument and now combines Rife tech and Colloidal Silver. The early problem with Royal Rife in the 1920-30s when he was doing his research was magnetic fields are unstable depending on fluctuation in the environment, equipment and other contributing factors, and so if he couldn't nail down a precise number every time, no way he couldn't get a patent on a gazillion variations. 

To go on your own wild edible roam, you might want to purchase an app from www.brigittemars.com called iplant ($2.99), not sure it it's android ready yet, but works with iphones.  Brigitte Mars has published a number of books on herbs and promotes wild foraging and has nothing good to say about using a third of the nations water to water grass, but everything good to say about weeds.

 

 

To find out if a plant is endangered or threatened:

http://ecos.fws.gov/tess_public/pub/listedPlants.jsp

 

Or, ITIS search and report (Integrated taxonomic Information System)

http://www.itis.gov/advanced_search.html

Their (ITIS) list of other resources:

Additional off-site resources may be available for this taxon.   ITIS will build search links for all of the following that return results:

 

  • Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Data Portal
  • BioOne Journals
  • National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Entrez Life Sciences Search
  • Google Images
  • Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora Search
  • United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) Search
  • Threatened and Endangered Species (TESS) Search
  • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Search
  • Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) Search
  • USDA PLANTS Database Search
  • NatureServe Explorer Search

 

There are 4 plants listed below (US Fish & Wildlife) for Minnesota as being endangered or threatened (at least bush clover and roseroot may have been used traditionally as food or medicine):

Orchid, Western prairie fringed (platanthera praeclara)

Prairie bush clover (lespedeza leptostchya)

Lily, MN dwarf trout (Erythonium propullans)

Leedy's roseroot (Rhodiolaintegrifolia ssp. leeyi)

 

Also check data bases at: www.natureserve.org

 

A few links for identifying and enjoying wild plants used for food and medicine:

http://wildfoodsummit.org/  More resources within.

http://foraging.com/

Stream side Edibles: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/volunteer/marapr01/edibles.html

http://www.trails.com/list_3439_wild-edible-plants-minnesota.html

http://www.tacticalintelligence.net/blog/how-to-identify-wild-edible-and-medicinal-plants.htm

Nice warning about poisonous look-a-likes, also good photos:

http://www.wildwoodsurvival.com/survival/food/edibleplants/troutlily/index.html

 

Foraging for wild berries (berries have been used medicinally forever - make sure to leave some for the wildlife):

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/edible-wild-plants.aspx#axzz2YfJOuAR9

 

Some botanical gardens to visit in Minnesota:

http://botanic-gardens.findthebest.com/d/a/Minnesota

 

A list of Minnesota public gardens:

http://www.ilovegardens.com/Minnesota%20Gardens.htm

 

The American Botanical Council (HerbalGram):

http://abc.herbalgram.org/site/PageServer

 

ABC have a beautiful data base of 241 herbs by botanical name and common name.  Members have access to a better data base.  Click on to any of these and a whole range of research open up for that item:

http://cms.herbalgram.org/herbmedpro/index.html#param.wapp?sw_page=@herblist%3Fletter%3DAll

 

Other good data bases for plant information:

 

http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/queries.pl

 

 Jame's A Duke's (America's chief Herbalist) Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical data bases:

http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/

 

Lengthening Telomeres - oriental plant used for:

http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1380815579_Baeshen%20et%20al.pdf

 

 

Duke's Home page:

http://www.greenpharmacy.com/

 

USDA Food and Nutrition Information Center:

http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/

 

USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main.htm?modecode=12-35-45-00

Good reading (Occupational Therapy):  Eleanor Clarke Slagle Lectures: www.aota.org

Asylums, Treatment Centers and Genetic Jails - A history of Minnesota's State Hospitals, Psychiatric Treatment & Mental Health in Minnesota by Michael Resman (the author is retired occupational therapist)

A delightful Halloween history including a haunted twist on Anoka's old State Hospital: History and Hauntings of the Halloween Capital by Roxy Orcut 2014.  Enjoyed it from cover to cover!

Grow Your Garden Grants, National Recreation & Parks:

www.nrpa.org/garden/

 

Essential Oils  

In my studio I use Jodi Baglien's essential oils and custom blends whenever appropriate. Jodi is a local aromatherapist in Osseo who takes great care in using high quality materials and creating blends in small batches.  Visit Jodi's website at www.jodibaglien.com

 

Quality of essential oils can vary.

Jade Shutes, author of Aromatherapy for Bodyworkers (www.theida.com) personally recommends using these companies for high grade essential oils:

Lunaroma Aromatic Apothecary www.lunaroma.com

Essential Aura Aromatics www.essentialaura.com

Original Swiss Aromatics www.originalswissaromatics.com

Florihana Inc.  www.florihana.com

Fragrant Earth www.fragrantearth.com

 

www.cropwatch.org is a site devoted to the world of aromatic plants.

 

 

Updated 11/10/22

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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