Hello there, im a new member - i'm new to the whole area of herbal medicine actually, and learning all the time. Fascinating stuff. Ive had a look at the forum and im delighted to see that you people seem to have plenty of herbal knowledge that i can tap into! Im still feeling a little lost in this area.. Though your website is great and it's inspired me to start planning a herb garden of my own.

I wonder if any of you know of any remedies (particularly traditional remedies) for Tuberculosis? Or for Leprosy?

Im actually a few months into a post-grad research degree and am studying herbal remedies for these conditions. I ordered some dried herbs from America and have had some success with them in the laboratory so far, but i am interested in investigating some more "old wives tales".

Most of the work ive done so far has involved steeping powdered herbs in different concentrations of alcohol, then examining what has disssolved into the liquid. Any other suggestions there? Ive been getting some very gummy concoctions which a bit awkward to work with, especially when it comes to cleaning up!

Thanks in advance, i'll keep you updated on any interesting discoveries!

Eibhlín

Hunt's "Anglo-Norman medicine" based on Frugard and Platearius, and published by D S Brewer 1994 is stuffed with treatments for leprosy. The curious thing is that leprosy more or less vanished from Europe somewhere around 1480. An even more curious thing is that one occasionally meets the odd person who believes that the disappearance and Platearius' "therapies" were not unconnected.
Perhaps so, these days we are always told to take Gotu Kola (Acenna asiatica) for leprosy which probably works as well or as badly as all the medieval stuff. Platearius of course had never heard of "spontaneous remission"
Anthony

Hi Eibhlin,
Welcome to the forum, it's always lovely to have new friends joining us.
What an interesting topic you have posted on.
Re the use of powdered herbs. Generally speaking, herbalists tend to use either the roots,leaves, petals,bark and seeds of a plant in their whole form rather than powdered when making tinctures , for the very reason you have mentioned. I hate having to make a tincture from powders and avoid it at any costs.
I'm intrigued by your comment, that you have had some succcess in the lab. It would be very interesting to find out more about your project.
I echo Anthony's comment about gotu cola. Although,I understand that Leprosy was only eradicated in the last century.
Regarding TB,in cases of pulmonary TB,Inula helenium ( elecampane ) has been demonstrated to inhibit the growth of tubercle bacillus.As TB is a notifiable disease, it is not something that herbalists really get the opportunity to treat.
Am I correct in thinking that you are researching both leprosy and TB due to the causatve factor of the Mycobacterium bacillus common to both?

Linda

Dear Herb Society


There is a lot of information about TB and Leprosy in Herbal Medicine Keys to Physiomedicalism including Pharmacopoeia. ISBN 095455180X

Hope this helps

Chris

Hello again and thanks for all your help so far!

Firstly, with regard to using powders - i originally thought it would be more 'scientific' to weigh out powders but yes Linda is right, in comparison to using the whole barks and petals i've got my hands on in the meantime, the powders are a nightmare.

Also (in reply to Sarah) i only ordered herbs from America when i was starting out because i just didn't know any better! I'm not sure how internet search engines work, but the searches i did at the start showed up very few suppliers of dried herbs (or very little choice, unless looking for tincture, balms etc.) in the UK or Ireland. I've since come across more, mainly by accident or through other websites. And yes i'm in Ireland, so making it to any workshops would be difficult.. I was in London in November though and visited the Chelsea Physic Garden which, even though i was even more clueless then than i am now, was very interesting.

I hadn't come across Gerard before, thanks for that.

And yes Linda the work is based on anti-mycobacterial agents, well spotted! The isolates i have are all from patients of an Irish hospital. Inula helenium has been used in my lab before - it was found to have impressive anti-bacterial properties allright. I have a group of 11 herbs under investigation at the moment, but the herbs i want to study more are:

Prunus avium (Wild Cherry)
Mentha Pulegium (Pennyroyal)
Verbascum thapsus (Great Mullein)
And i think i'll look into buying some Watercress, Calamint and Anemone. I want to stick to those native to UK/Ireland if possible, with a history of use in traditional medicine, which aren't too difficult to use in the lab. It's a lot to ask, i know! Next set of results should be ready in around a fortnight, i'll keep you posted.


2 more quick questions:

I assume Gotu Kola is not native to UK/Ireland?

And a friend of mine said he recently noticed in a health food shop that a lot of the herbs were '50% alcohol' extracts - does that mean the herb was extracted in 50% alcohol or has something been dissolved in 50% alcohol? Apologies if that's a very silly question!

Hi Eiblin

The word we normally use for extracting herbal componants from alcohol is tincturing. You macerate the herb in a menstrum i.e. you leave it to soak in a liquid medium for a particular length of time - usually 3 weeks (any time longer than this extracts tannins and suchlike). From this process those componants which dissolve in alcohol are extracted into the menstrum which you then strain and the resulting liquid is called a tincture.

When you tincture a herb you also want to get the water soluble componants as well, if possible, so to get the largest concentration of componants you would dilute the 100% alcohol with water to give you the best menstrum according to which plant you are using. Obviously, if you are using fresh plant matter you would need less water and different plants have different water percentages when fresh, depending on their structure, the weather, atmospheric pressure etc. Michael Moore has the definitive guide to alcohol/water ratios for different herbs on his website at http://www.swsbm.com/ManualsMM/HerbTinct3.txt.

For us poor mortals who do not have access to Everclear (100% alcohol), vodka just happens to be a 50% menstrum (if my memory serves me correctly)so you don't need to add water and mess around weighing herbs and measuring liquids.

I don't use Gotu Kola, so hopefully someone else will tell you where it comes from if you haven't already Googled it.

Best wishes

Sarah

Hi Eiblin,

This all sounds so fascinating. I really look forward to hearing what you discover and envy the time you're spending in a laboratory doing all those experiments.

I know very little about most of the things you're asking, but thought I'd contribute that Gotu Kola is Centella asiatica, a ground covering perennial from Asia, usually India or China and of great importance to Ayurvedic medicine. I'm not very familiar the its uses myself (traditional tonic for longevity and such like is all I know), but I have grown it indoors in the UK.

If you want to know more in the way of basic info about most medicinal or edible plants a great place to start is on the pfaf database. The Gotu Kola page is here:

www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Centella+asiatica

All the best,

Kristina