Healing plants can help fight swine flu

TO tackle the looming scourge of swine flu maybe we need to take a few leaves out of the books of our ancestors. Before the advent of chemical cures, antibiotics, etc, the prevention of infectious diseases was of prime importance as epidemics were capable of wiping out vast numbers of the population.

Plants were used not only for their curative properties but also for their powers of prevention. Much knowledge of the use of plants has been lost.

But some has been passed on to us not only by word of mouth and the written word but also through poems and nursery rhymes such as ...

“Ring a ring a rosy.

A pocket full of posies.

Atishoo! Atishoo!

We all fall down.”

A pocket full of posies refers to the practice of carrying healing plants in the pocket to protect the person and curb the spread of illnesses such as influenza. As well as being carried on the person, plants were chewed, ingested, boiled for teas and distilled for inhalation and spraying. They were also burned to purify the air.

People made posies, pomanders and potpourris from plants that grew in their gardens and the surrounding countryside, surviving the Great Plague while others died around them.

Records show that labourers in lavender fields, gardeners tending herbs and even tanners who used plants to perfume the leather in glove factories were spared due to the bactericidal and anti-viral properties of the plants.

The Australian aboriginal people used eucalyptus and tea tree as a preventative. The Molucca islands were swept with waves of previously unknown epidemics after Dutch settlers destroyed all the clove trees.

Prevention is better than cure. When visiting friends try giving healing plants such as rosemary and lavender, a sachet of healing herbs or a few pomanders such as oranges studded with cloves as a healing gift. Taking one clove of garlic a day and, with a sachet of cloves, pine needles and a few eucalyptus leaves in our pockets, we might just help to ward off infectious airborne swine flu bugs.

Margaret O’Riordan

Well Lodge

East Hill

Cobh

Co Cork