The return of herbal medicine

Elfie Courtenay 's medicinal herb book contains a wealth of traditional knowledge for the home medicine cabinet and kitchen

In a time without medical care and health insurance, herbal medicine was a natural way to treat a wide variety of ailments and illnesses. Old customs and traditional healing knowledge can still help us appreciate and use the healing power of nature today.

Protecting biodiversity
Large parts of the landscape today have very little biodiversity. Many meadows are constantly mown and fertilized, and intensive commercial use leads to nitrate-rich, hardened soils. A large proportion of insects, such as butterflies, bees, bumblebees and beetles, find little food and habitat and nowadays have a hard time surviving.
On the other hand, precisely because of this threatening change, there are already many people who are seriously thinking about how to counteract the current development. In her wild herb tours and seminars, herbal educator Elfie Courtenay places great importance on "training the mindfulness of the participants in order to show them the importance of the connections in nature, in order to awaken or deepen in them an understanding and appreciation for the plant kingdom and everything that goes with it."
Her practical book “Medicinal Herbs – Traditional Knowledge for the Home Pharmacy and Kitchen” aims to show what wonderful abundance nature produces if we let it: “It then continually bestows upon us the most precious gifts, and it is up to us alone to discover everything that it has in store for us, to appreciate these gifts, to respect their true value and to use their healing power wisely!”

Medicinal herbs in folk medicine
What is now known as folk medicine was considered to be tried and tested and consistent a good 200 years ago and even earlier; it was an empirical medicine that was part of people's everyday lives and was credible because it had been continually developed, deepened and proven over many centuries. This folk medicine also included religious and magical practices, but a very important area was herbal medicine.
For our ancestors, it was something completely natural and self-evident to observe nature and learn which plants could be used and how. Knowledge of the healing power of herbs was passed down from generation to generation, mostly from mothers to daughters. In addition to the most important herbal knowledge, every family had a medicine cabinet, and otherwise people always knew where and who they could get help from. There were "herbal women" and "farmers' doctors" who you could visit or call, and when a birth was imminent, a midwife came to the house. The healers supplied a large part of the rural population with home-made medicines. They mainly used herbs and roots, and the ingredients that they could not find and collect in nature themselves they acquired from the numerous herbalists or from the pharmacist.

Renaissance of tradition
Even today, the boundaries between folk and conventional medicine are often blurred, as the inclusion of mushrooms and medicinal plants is now also accepted by conventional medicine. After being replaced by chemical remedies for decades, herbal remedies are now being rediscovered, as the effectiveness of the ingredients can now be proven through chemical analyses.
The natural practices of the widely used and respected folk medicine included washing wounds with herbal or bark decoctions, for example from ground ivy or oak bark, plant compresses, e.g. with yarrow or ribwort, applying wound ointments or wound oils, e.g. from St. John's wort, and bandaging was usually done with linen cloths. Also important were gargling or inhaling herbal infusions, such as chamomile or thyme, drinking herbal teas or medicinal wines, and making drops, e.g. with brandy and arnica. Disinfection with incense was also common practice, for example with juniper and mugwort.
With detailed portraits of medicinal herbs, the richly illustrated reference work invites you to develop a feeling for plants and for their use as medicinal and culinary herbs: "Look at nature and of course your own garden with completely new eyes! Many things that you previously considered 'poisonous' or 'superfluous weeds' will suddenly take on a completely new meaning," says Elfie Courtenay. She draws on the rich wealth of knowledge of her ancestors, but also on her own decades of experience.

Book tip:
Elfie Courtenay: Medicinal herbs. Traditional knowledge for the medicine cabinet and kitchen. Over 70 outstanding medicinal plants, more than 250 uses and recipes, extra: protected and poisonous plants. Mankau Verlag, 1st edition May 2017, flexi-brochure. 16.8 x 24 cm, 254 pages. 20 euros (D) / 20.60 euros (A), ISBN 978-3-86374-346-8.

Link recommendations:
More information about the guide "Medicinal Herbs"
To the reading sample in PDF format
More about Elfie Courtenay