Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Potentilla and Cinquefoil

Hey, y'all, welcome this week's podcast. Today we're going to talk about a nerve called potentilla. Potentilla is a member of the rose family, and there's a sort of an abbreviation that some herbalists use called yarfa ya r fa. What that stands for is yet another rose family is stringent, and what that means is that all members of the rose family have astringent qualities in certain in varying degrees. I mean, the rose family is huge. The rose family includes blackberries, it includes apple trees, it includes geraniums. I mean, you'd be amazed what all is in the rose family. But depending on the species of potentilla used, it can be extremely astringent. Tormenta potentilla recta. Okay, I should clarify that potentilla is the Latin name potentilla erecta that means upright, and the folk name European mostly used, but you'll see it in the old herb books is tormental t O R M E N t I L. But potentilla contains more tannin than oak bark, and we've talked before how oak bark is like one of the most tannic substances on the face of the earth. Right, I can help stop bleeding, whether externally or internally. It's stopped diarrhea like very few other things possible, really very astringent. Potentilla is actually more a stringent than oak bark, so this makes it just extremely good. It's just a nice little garden flower. You can grow it in pots, you can grow it in your garden in a hoa or poa. People just think it's a nice little flower. This makes it absolutely essential herbal medicine to have on hand for first aid purposes. So potentilla has been used for centuries. Diascordi's about two thousand years wrote about it. Let's see he describes it, and he mentions the flowers pale white or yellowish like gold, and it's a very pretty flower. It does tended like moist places in nature. It grows by rivers and creeks and such. So if you've got a little a spot in your garden it's a little bit wetter, a little more shade, be a really good place to put it, or keep in pots and sit up a porch where it's going to get filtered sunlight and just water regularly. So he said it a coction of the root reduced by one third by simmering. So put okay, so if you were like simmering two cups, well it was a pint. Let's see, you were simmering a pint of water with a handful of potentil roots. You boil it down to a decoction until one third of the water is steamed off. That is all that means. It's not a very exact measurement. He said that after it was done held in the mouth is able to relieve toothache. That's the stringency is going to pull down the inflammation very markedly. Doesn't necessarily get rid of a broken or rotten tooth at all, but it will pull that swelling down, so it takes the pressure off the nerves. And that's how that works. I said. Uses a mouth wash. It stops rotten ulcers in the mouth, and it does have some antiseptic properties, by the way, so it could help that tooth as well. But once the tooth is that damaged, it's you know, it's going to have to go. Bottom line, let's see, gargled it relives roughness of the throat, so sore throat, scratchy throat, and again it's just stringing that tissue. It's pulling the swelling out. Taken as a drink, it helps flowing bowels, dysentery, arthritis, and cyanica. Pounded finely boiled in vinegar and applied, it restrains herpes viral skin disease, of course, and is all goiters, hardened places, edema, aneurysms, separations, arisipolis, which is a skin inflammation, and conjunctivitis. It heals skin lesions and psoriasis. The juice from the tender root is good for disorder. That means fresh root, not dried. It is good for disorders of the liver and lungs, and for deadly poisons. The leaves taken in a drink with honey, water or diluted wine and a little pepper, are good for recurrent fevers. The leaves of four little branches are used for paroxysms. It's spasms every fourth day, three four paroxysms of every third day, and one for paroxysms every day. Okay, I think he's talking there about malarial type fevers which can cause they come on regularly like that episodically, and they'll either come on every two days, every three days or fourth day such as that, and they do cause tremors and shaking because it's a very violent fever. So I don't these sally talking you know, epilepsy in that case. But then he says they do help epilepsy. Taken as a drink for thirty days, and three glasses of the juice of leaves taken as a drink for some days cures soon cures jaundice. By the way, this last week on my other podcasts Southern Apple Aachian IRBs podcast, I interviewed Zuzu Arms, who has a herbal and natural healing center done in Georgia. She's a great author, very well known in the world of herbal medicine. She actually had was diagnosed with epilepsy as a young lady and healed herself with natural medicine. We get into that a lot, and she's really big on gabba. If you have epilepsy or you know someone who does, definitely listen to that podcast, Southern Apalachian Herbs Podcast. Yeah, it was a great interview. I wish the sound quality had been a little bit better. I did everything I could to clean it up. I hate doing zoom interviews because whenever I log into Zoom, it resets my microphone settings. Well, I have my microphone setting set specifically for what I need for my podcast. Well it goes in there and it turns this down and alters it. I don't even know what all it does, but I have to reset them every time I get off of a Zoom call. And the recording was it sounded like I was talking on the phone. I mean, it's not bad, but it's not as clear as I like. So that annoyed me. But you can still hear everything. Fine, it's just, you know, sounds like we're on the phone. And it's a really great in information. She talked about how she cured her epilepsy, how she cured her scoliosis. Even that was really interesting as well, and a lot of other really good topics. So let's see. He says taking as a drink for some days soon cures jaundice. That's the juice of the leaves, applied with salt and honey, the heel wounds and fish shillas. Taken as a drink or else supplied, it helps those who are broken in the foreskin or hymen. Again, we're talking the stringency just going to kind of tighten things up and reduce inflammation and stops flows of blood. It is cut for washings, discharge of blood and purification. He says, this is an interesting old folklore. Says if anyone carries singlefoil around his body, he remains without suffering. It helps the eyes, tumors possibly goiters. There's a note there. Hardened tonsils, the uvulus, swords under the tongue, the joints, disorders of the nerves, the teeth, scabies or other itchy skin conditions, especially caused by pernicious famine, as well as drawing down the afterbirth. A decoction pour in the hands is excellent against fears and enchantments. Therefore, gat of the herb when the moon increases and the time of the sun arising. Yeah, that's not I have no idea about that, but it is also well. We don't need to get on all the names that we used commonly two thousand years ago, but potentilla or tormental has a long history of use in German folk medicine. Saint Hildegard van Bingen, writing around eleven hundred, described tormental as a cold herb. She says it's coldness is good for a healthy person and prevails against fevers which arise from noxious food. Take tormental and cook it and wine with a little honey added, straight it through cloth, and drink it frequently at night on an empty stomach, and you will become well. Father Johann Kunzel, writing about eighteen ninety or so well, No, he was one of around nineteen hundred and nineteen twenty, but he was Swiss or herbalist, stated that potentila erecta was his best remedy for diarrhea. Potentilla is also an ingredient in the Swedish bitters me sipple water here. But Father Nate, who was writing about the eighteen nineties, use potentil. He just called it silver weed. I'm not going to pronounce the German name he gave for it, Okay, I'll try just to give your Germans a laugh anyway. Gon's finger ye kraut, gons fingie crout there we go. I have no idea implies where the geese like to be, so I guess it means it's an herb. But goose like to eat. Geese like to eat, and that's true. You know, it's a waterside plant. And it is one favored by geese. It's found in the vicinity of houses on commons and along the roads. People have named it after its mode of operating. Cramp herb team made from silverweed is an excellent remedy attacks of cramp in the stomach and abdomen or elsewhere, even in cases of tetanus. Insofar as this can be worked upon, this little herb renders very good service at the commencement of the attack. Are better still when symptoms of the cramp first appear. The patients should be given three three times daily, very warm milk, as warm as possible, in which such herbs as much as can be taken with three fingers, have been boiled as for tea. A greater effect may be obtained if at the same time as the tea is taken, a poultice is made of the boiled herb and laid upon the afflicted part. No mother of a family should emit together and dry a sufficient supply of such herbs. She knows herself how painful such frequently occurring spasmodic attacks are, and how it gives still greater pain if she sees her dear ones suffering without being able to help them. In other words, good for minstrel cramps. Brother Aloysius used two potentillas, potentilla reptands and potentilla Tormentilla reptans means spreading, so and that's the one not commonly called sincofoil. I probably should have cleared that up before. Potentilla will often be called tormental or sincofoil. They're both species of potentilla, so of the reptands or sincofoil, he said. The root decoction is good for fixing loose teeth and for toothaches. Leaves used for blood spitting, lucrea, stomach and intestral cramps, bleeding gravel, repressed menstruation, dysentery, jahn tosc dropsy, and alleviates infections of the kidney, bladder, and bleeding gumps. Leaf Tea is also used as an eyewash and for ulceated or separating sores when steeped are boiled milk taken hot sink of foil is especially highly praised for cramps of the heart and chest and tormental, he said. Use for heavy bleeding, chronic diarrhea, blood spitting, alters from scurvy, and to quench thirst for diabetics, heavy menstruation, hematuria, internal sores, bedwetting, and urinary in continents. Yes, this is actually no folk remedy for bedwetting because it would kind of tighten up the tissue of the urinary tract. The Ashkenazi Jews, who brought much of knowledge of herbs es central Europe, use potentilla as serena in their medicine. According to Datrich Cohen and Adam Siegel said, in folk medicine, the whole plant decoction was employed in the treatment of fever in some towns I cannot pronounce, like in Ukraine and Poland and parts of Germany what they used to call the Pale. That was the Ashkenazi Jewish settlement in Karlston. The well I got that on Korston. That's an easy one. The decoction relieved stomach alments, diarrhea and bloody diarrhea. And in Anapol a midwife bathed infants suffering from inigestion in a decoctia the whole plant. The other one was something like chivarts Domna. I have no idea what that. The hows pronounced that a decoction prepared from a combination of silverweed, potentila and serena type of clover de napur d n I E P e R. Clover I'm not sure about that. And meadow cranesbill that's geranium was a fol killer's remedy in Anapol for stomach elements that caused elevated temperature and sure costs. A plant to coction was used for chest diseases and tuberculosis. Same decoction was given as a sedative enlightened in somewhere I cannot pronounce. The same remedy was used both externally and internally for epilepsy, which echoes the plant's use. In ancient Greece, a decoction made from Arec climatis, silverweed and comfrey plus the leaves of geld or rose was given by folk proactifiers in the form of a steam bath for contusions rheumatic pains. The same formula was employed as a respiratory steam for headache. Belief in some town that starts with Z with Z and V together, so forget that. I did have my friend from Ukraine helped me when I was writing this book to get some of the pronunciations down, but they never were pronounced that they were spelt, so I gave up on it anyway. Decocture of the plant was washed over affected areas to cure rash and pimples. In someplace I can't pronounce. An exact folk remedy was used in contemporary Bristol, England, which I can pronounce so for sores cause a neuro disease, as similar decoction was given in Chuircoss In the pale the plant was used widely in the treatment of gynecological disorders, as mirrors a similar treatment in Russian folk medicine. Midwise man decocture the whole plant that was drunk by women experiencing minstrel cramps, and in I guess rights of the plant steamed was applied to the abdomen of a woman in labor. The plant decoction was given to drink in case of complications after delivery, and for the same purpose of steam treatment administered by pouringto coctions over hot stones was known. In Boschlav a decoction made of silverweed and meto flea bane was given to women suffering from gynecological diseases. In the town of Zidimir. Maybe children who suffered from scrophula were bathed in a plant decoction, while children and adults suffering from metabolic diseases were made to drink a similar decoction In Ulanov, somewhat similar to practices in contemporary Russian folk medicine terinary medicine, the plant was fed to cows to increase selectation Gerard. In the English tradition, Victorian England wrote a silverweed as wild tansy, and also several types of sincofoil, so kind of had to sort through and find out because it's not a tansy at all. But anyway, he said, it is moderately cold and drying almost to the third degree, so very drying or a stringing, he said, boiled in wine and drunk. Stop at the Alaskan bloody flux and all other flucks of blood in man or a woman the same boiled in water, and that means diary or a bleeding, you know, the same boiled in water and salt, drunk dissolveth clotted and congealed blood, and such as are hurt with bruising, with falling from some high place. The decoction hereof made in water cureth ulcers and cankers of the mouth, if some honey and alum be added there too into the boiling wild tansy or you actually mean sincofoil hath many good virtues against the stone inwards inward wounds and other wounds of the privier secret parts, and closeth up all green and fresh wounds that distilled water taketh aways, freckles, spots and pimples of the face, and sunburning. They're real big in England of keeping their skin real pale. They didn't like freckles. But the herb blade to infuse or steep and white wine is far better. But the best of all is to steep it in strong white wine vinegar. The face being often bathed or washed wherewith therewith whatever, Let's see. He goes on about various types of syncret foil. They all have similar uses, though, and it really is kind of hard to know exactly which plant he's talking about. In some places he does say the root boiled and vinegar is good against shingles and appeetheth the rage of fretting sores and cankereth ultars. And he mentioned that it is reported that it cureth the quartan terch and quotidian agus. Again, that's malarial fever. So I was right at my supposition on that. He also mentions it the leaves used as a cure for epilepsy, So I don't know. So coals pepper and narrow things down a bit. He set of the silver weed, He just describes it. We don't need to get into all that government and virtues. This plant is under venus, by which he means it's mostly a women's nerve, and deserveth to be much more known in medicine than it is. It is of the nature of tansy. The leaves are mildly as stringent, dried and given in powder that will frequently affect a cure in agus and intermittence of fevers, usually a malarial type. The usual dose is a spoonful of the powder every three or four hours betwixt the fits. The roots are more stringent than the leaves and may be given in doses or larger doses. We go with that in obstinate pursings attended with bloody stool and immoderate minstrel discharge. So gain you're saying it just drives things up. Strong infusion the leaves stops in moderate bleeding of the piles and sweetened the little honey as an excellent gargle for sore throats. Then he talks about a strawberry syncafoil, and but again the uses are pretty much the same. He does mention that the young leaves or that one are a good diuretic. Now, maud Greeve talks a lot about potentilla or tormental in her book, and this is, you know, nineteen thirty, so I think we can kind of kind of narrow things down a little bit. Let's see, she says anything different, because it is considered one of the safest and most powerful of our native aromatic astringents, and for its tonic properties it has been termed English sasaparilla. At this point it was in the official pharmacopeia of England and the United States. Actually, all parts of the plant are stringent, especially the red woody rhizome. The name tormental is said to be derived from the Latin tormentum, which signifies such gripings of the intestine as the herbs will serve to relieve, likewise twinges of toothache. The plant is very es stringing and has even been used in some places for tanning well. She says Thornton tells of a poor old man who made wonderful cures of agu smallpox, whooping cough, etc. From an infusion of this herb, and became so celebrated locally that Lord William Russell gave him a piece of ground in which to cultivate it, in which he did, keeping a secret for long. Now modern use let's see what plants her future says. The plant is considered to be one of the safest native astringents and is widely used in herbal medicine and the treatment of diarrhea, dysentery, sore throats, etc. The whole plant, and especially the root, is antibiotic, strongly a spinge, a stringent hemostatic hypoglycemic that means lower's blood shugar. It is used in the treatment of diarrhea, dysentery, irritable ball syndrome, colitis, alternative colitis, et cetera. Externally, the plant makes a good stepticch for cuts I means stops bleeding, and a strongly made decoction has been recommended as a wash for mouth alters, infected gums, piles or hemorrhoids, and inflamed dice. Extracts are used to treat the shaping of the anus and crack nipples. The plant's effectiveness as a toothache remedy is undeniable, and it has also been a benefit in treating bed in treating bed wetting by children. So obviously potentilla more than just a yarpha. It would actually kind of be the king of yarphas, so really good to have on hand. If you've got some oak and you've got some potentilla, you can take care of a whole lot of disorders. And it's a very cheerful looking flower. I mean, people are gonna if you can grow it, people are gonna love it. So y'all have a go one and I'll talk to you next time. The information this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition. Nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The US government does not recognize the practice of verbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating herbless. Therefore, I'm really just a guy who says herbs. I'm not offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or true. I can tell you what Earth has been traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience, and if I believe in herb has helped me, I cannot, nor would I tell you do to say. If you use an herb anyone recommends you are treating yourself, you take full responsibility for your health. 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