Reflections on the
Grassroots Healthcare Revolution

Part 3:

One of the fundamental concepts that William and I have emphasized in the Farm to Pharmacy series is the importance of having simple herbal gardens at home as the basis of grassroots healthcare. As our starting point, we identified about thirty species that meet the following criteria: easy to grow in most parts of the U.S., relatively safe and nontoxic, possessing a wide range of therapeutic benefits, and easy to incorporate into a home pharmacy and herbal lifestyle. The lectures, plant identification and medicine making workshops revolved around becoming familiar with these important plants. It is our belief that if families know how to incorporate these herbs into simple kitchen medicines and basic home remedies, as they once commonly were, that a vast amount of unnecessary toxic medications could be avoided and general immunity and health levels in the population increased.

The education about these species started with learning how to plant their seeds; it progressed by caretaking them as they grew, and culminated in making medicines from them. The lectures focused on learning how to effectively use this group of plants, which was supported by study of monographs. Our intention was to simplify this extensive and complex subject into a form that can be easily duplicated in every community, and accessible to everyone without a protracted education in medical herbology. In other words, our intention is to support the revival of folk medicine.

A central activity in every season, therefore, was to learn how to prepare the fresh or dried plants into simple medicines. Just as the harvesting was an ongoing daily event which strengthened the body by taking everyone outside into the elements, pleasant or not, medicine making was also a daily event that brought everyone together for collective exercises in weighing, measuring, grinding, mixing, and pouring. Starting with how to properly dry herbs for simple teas, progressing through the basics of making tinctures, into the subtleties of making infused honeys and herbal oils, and culminating in delicious elixirs, this was a time of both hard work, enjoyment, and simple discoveries.

Who would have known that goji berries are so difficult to grind into a paste, or how delicious they become when finally blended with herbs for the female nourishing honey? How to describe the color of elderberries after they are cooked down to a thick syrup, deep and dark yet somehow luminous and radiant swirling in the bowl? What are calendula flowers trying to tell us with their exuberant colors, as they settle gently into the smooth oil that will extract their bright healing powers? What mysterious alchemical marriage is taking place before our eyes as the alcohol and alkaloids slowly become a new tincture? How could everyone with college educations still find simple calculations of volumes, weights and percentages so perplexing?

This aspect of grassroots healthcare is not something that everyone will practice. It requires space, equipment, and works with larger amounts of plant materials. This is more the realm of traditional pharmacists, who stocked their apothecaries with their own hand made artisan products; these were often family recipes, and a doctor’s reputation depended on their quality and efficacy. This knowledge is valuable, however, for two basic reasons. The first is that the process of making medicine is empowering to individuals and families, as it concentrates the powers of the plants and therefore increases the range of what can be treated. The second is that even if one does not make them, one knows much more about what they are, what constitutes high quality in a product, and how they are to be used, thus helping people to be educated consumers in the confusing marketplace of natural products.

The medicine making sessions were always times of sharing experiences and knowledge, while simultaneously tasting and commenting on the new delicacies as they developed. One conversation in particular stands out in my memory from the fall session last year, as we were gathered around large pots full of elderberries, preparing them to go into the immune boosting elixir. We were blessed to have the presence of Dr. Jifunza Wright, an MD from Chicago who specializes in the use of natural medicines as well as the usual allopathic drugs for her patients. I asked her, on camera, “In your opinion, what percentage of antibiotic prescriptions for children with upper respiratory viral infections could be replaced by using this elixir?” Her reply, which deserves widespread attention, was “One hundred percent.” This is a strong testament coming from an allopathic physician, evidence that the grassroots healthcare movement is alive and well.

To be continued...