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 ...