Gardens: A new project aims to keep alive knowledge of traditional plant-based remedies

Published on Sunday 20 December 2009 11:44

Feeling a bit under the weather? Why not chop an onion in half and pop a piece under each armpit? Upset stomach? Some tea made with freshly picked mint leaves might help. Want to get revenge on an annoying sibling? A few prised-open rosehips down the back of the jumper should do the trick. Plant remedies (and plant artillery) are all around us, but with pills for every ailment being available from the local pharmacy, what was once common knowledge is in danger of being lost.

There is a growing interest in keeping knowledge about the traditional uses of plants alive, however. Anne Barker is the co-ordinator in Scotland for the Ethnomedica Project. This study was set up ten years ago with a number of partner organisations, including Kew Gardens, The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Chelsea Physic Garden and the National Institute of Medical Herbalists. Barker first found out about the project as a student studying for her BSc Honours degree in herbal medicine at Edinburgh Napier University and in early 2007 she decided to sign up and become a collector for the project.

"The Ethnomedica Project is about oral history," she explains, "the oral transmission of simple remedies. It's not what people wrote or read in a book, it's what they remember their granny telling them or what they remember their granny doing." To collect these fragments of knowledge, Barker travels all around Scotland, talking to groups and asking for their input. She also holds monthly Remembered Remedies events at the Botanics in Edinburgh.

A question Barker frequently asks is, "what would you do if you got stung by a nettle?" The answer might seem obvious, but she is interested in where and when you found out about the remedy, and who told you. At one Remembered Remedies session she came across a dad who knew the answer, but his young son didn't. "The use of dock leaves to rub on a nettle sting is unique to Britain," says Barker. "No other country in the world does this." She says that in bringing dock up as a topic for discussion with groups, other uses emerge. Some people have told her that they used dock as a poultice for chest complaints.

The result of Barker's work is not just factual data, but rather a collection of stories that take us back in time. "I have a story that I collected in Leith from a 92-year-old," says Barker. "She grew up long before the days of the NHS, it was expensive to go to the doctor. When she was a little girl in the 1920s, living on Ferry Road, she had a sore throat. Her granny, who was from Caithness, chopped up a raw onion, put it into a woollen sock and wrapped it around the child's neck. That was the remedy for a sore throat and it worked."

Another fascinating story concerning onions was passed on to Barker by a 79-year-old from Staffin. He had been told by people in his village about the terrible number of deaths that occurred when the Spanish influenza came at the end of the First World War. There were three funerals a day in the village and people were so afraid of catching the flu that they stopped visiting each other. But one man was not afraid to visit other houses and he never got the flu. When it was all over, he was asked how he had survived. He answered that each morning he took an onion, cut it in half and put one half under each oxter.

"I can see how this would work," says Barker. "Onions and garlic contain sulphur compounds. What did we have before antibiotics? We had sulphur drugs. The sulphur drugs hadn't even come in at that time but this was a folk tradition and it worked. The thing about putting something under your armpit is that this is a really good way of getting medicine straight into the bloodstream."

Some of the sessions Barker runs come under the heading "war work", where stories include children being sent out to collect rosehips to be turned into syrup rich in vitamin C. In Edinburgh, she found out about people being bussed out to Balerno to collect red moss. This form of sphagnum moss was used in both world wars as a field dressing, because of its ability to absorb 50 times its weight in liquid and also because it is sterile and has antibacterial and anti-fungal properties.

Barker points out that since the beginning of the 20th century, ethnobotanists throughout the world have been keen to find out how native people use plants. "Britain was one of the first industrialised countries and they sort of forgot about their own backyard," she says. "The NHS was established in 1947 and since then people have become less reliant on local cures and more reliant on medicine."

Many of the most useful plants are ones we think of as ordinary. One recollection shared with Barker involved a boy being successfully treated for anaemia using a tincture made from dandelions. "Dandelion includes lots of useful minerals and the point about using the whole plant is that is it will have vitamin C and lots of iron, and you need both together. These plants are growing right outside your door."

The long-term plan for the Ethnomedica project is to create an online database. Barker has just finished writing a 60-page book based on her research and plans a major book on the project in the future. She is keen to hear from people who feel they might have something to contribute. "The people who remember what life was like before 1947 are not going to be here for ever," says Barker. "We're trying as a matter of urgency to gather recollections for the benefit of future generations – both because of their historical interest and for their potential medical value."

Ethnomedica Remembered Remedies sessions will be taking place at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on Saturday 16 January and Saturday 13 February (10am-noon), with further dates to be confirmed. Visit www.rbge.org.uk for details. To find out more about the project, visit www.kew.org/ethnomedica or write to Ethnomedica, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Surrey TW9 3AB.

This article was first published in The Scotsman on December 19