Herbal medicine: not just a thing of the past

Paula White’s days were spent foraging. When she was little, she picked rosehips and hawthorn from the bushes. They had carrots and bites of cabbage from the farmer’s field, and they ate vetch and honeysuckle, blackberries and watercress.

“I remember eating sorrel sandwiches with a friend when we were really young,” White says. “I guess someone must have pointed it out and told me it was okay to eat. We used to taste the sloes and pick watercress at the beach.”

She collected gorse and elderflower with her dad and her grandfather, and he used them to make wines. “My parents’ generation grew up knowing about the herbs around them, what was in season and when.”

We're sitting at her kitchen table, which looks out on to rolling fields and woods leading down to Blessington Lake in Co Wicklow. I accuse her of making this idyllic childhood up.

Laxative

Surprised wonder shoots across her face, followed by a kind laugh. “My parents would have castor oil as kids. It’s a strong, albeit crude, laxative. Mum went through a period of making nettle soup for us. I don’t remember her using gloves and scissors; it didn’t last. This was our nature. None of it was alien to us.”

It’s no surprise that White developed an interest in herbs and health, and that’s she passing her inherited knowledge on to her two sons, Arlo (6) and Cael (3).

“Momma fell and hurt her knee,” Arlo tells me. “It was bleeding, so I gave her a leaf to put on it.” It was plantain, White tells me – one of the most common folk remedies for cuts and grazes.

Across Ireland, thousands of homes like these are the starting point for Irish herbal medicine: readily available plants, picked in the locality and which we casually use for treating illness and minor ailments – everything from the most commonly understood such as dock leaves for nettle stings, thyme for coughs, nettle soup for general health to St John’s Wort for mild to moderate depression or more serious illnesses such as hawthorn for heart conditions.

Specialist knowledge

Some people learn more and become recognised in their community as having specialist knowledge; some of these, especially those who study it, become professional herbalists.

White has a degree in science from Maynooth University as well as diploma in horticulture, but her enthusiasm for herbal medicine is widely shared, including in the National Folklore Collection at UCD.

Evidence suggests, however, that herbal medicine is not an ancient relic kept alive by a romantic idealism; instead, people who use it are concerned with life and health in the here and now.

Next week: So what do doctors think about herbal medicine? And we meet a practitioner.