I recently was reading one of my favourite magazines (Natural Medicine) & read the following article written by Malcolm Harker M.H.D. Traditional Medical Herbalist, Master of Herbology….I thought it was an amazing read & just wanted to share it with you all, so here it is……
…….I was fortunate during my 10 year Aussie sojourn in the 1970’s to have med dear old Gertrude Jurd and family.
“Not many folk get up this way to see us, living here 80 miles from town”.
Old Gert loved having us boys up from Sydney; it gave her an excuse to whip up her delicious pikelets – with lashings of whipped cream, and homemade jam from garden raspberries. “an’ if you getcherself sick’yiv just gotta fix yi’self – no doctors up this way!”
She was right – seven river crossings and no bridges up the MacDonald Valley was a 3 1/2 hour dusty drive up to her place from the Hawkesberry River ferry – if the rivers weren’t in flood.
My mate and I lived in Gertie’s old hay shed, a sturdy, rustic 100 year old eucalyptus slab barn that literally crawled at night with big hairy spiders.
“They won’t hurt cha – only if you upset them”, said Gert, pleased with the way we had done up the old barn to live in. She never did say how to go about making friends with these hairy residents, nor did I ask her how I should go about getting them to not upset me! I soon found out one mosquito-infested hot night about how to annoy spiders. Just spray fly spray into the air and they will fall out of the rafters and onto your bed – and you. These furry fellers are the same family as the Avondale spiders, and usually mind their own business – until some dork comes along and gives them a hard time with insect spray. Then they go berserk.
A hard time was not uncommon to these isolated Aussie hillbillies, living up there in the Eastern slopes of the Blue Mountain range. Home remedies were a way of life and a necessity when urgent medical help was so far away.
One day Gertie’s husband Wally jumped off his tractor, slicing his shin to the bone on one of those big discs they drag around. I saw the wound and it still makes my skin crawl today when I think of it.
Gertie ran down from the farmhouse with a bowl of red-hot chilli powder and, after washing the wound clean, slapped it on half an inch thick, whilst Wally bit down hard on the willow stick she’d snapped off for him.
“The willow’s got the ‘aspirin’ in it boys; helps ease the pain, and the stick’l stop him yelling the bluddy rocks down from the hills. He’ll jump about for a bit then he’ll settle down, you watch”.
Sure enough, 25 minutes and half a bottle of whiskey later, Wally was nodding off in front of the fire as Gertie gently put a blanket over him. That dreadful looking gash was completely healed inside a fortnight!
Over the years I have used the chilli (cayenne) powder cure for severe vegetable chopper and tomahawk gashes to my hands with great success and rapid, antiseptic healing – usually within 7 – 10 days! Yes I know, I need to be more careful. These things happen when you’re not properly focused.
Like a few years back after a heated row when I slipped on the processing room floor at work whilst carrying a heavy bucket. Down I went, ripping my upper arm open on a sharp piece of metal as I fell. Refusing advice for doctor’s assistance, I declined because here was the perfect opportunity for staff to see real and raw herbal medicine at work! “Grab me the cayenne, a swab and some eucalyptus oil, quick please!”
Regaining my composure, yet anxious at the sight of the white chunk of flesh protruding from the deep wound on my arm, I was fully aware that this was a bad gouge, almost to the bone. Within minutes I had staff cleaning the wound with warm sea-salted water then drops of oil of eucalyptus, and putting the raw, hot chilli powder directly into the gaping wound – as I whistled ‘Big Boys Don’t Cry’, difficult to do through tightly clenched teeth.
Within ten days, to the astonishment of staff, the wound was completely healed, new skin, no sign of infection, no pain. Hopefully they all learned something very special that day, though for me, it was a ‘helluva’ way to teach, so I hope they appreciated the show, because there wasn’t going to be a monthly demo.
Old Gertie said that her Pa had often used the cayenne pepper (chilli) for family’s wounds. In fact, one story she related was amazing for its effectiveness over what would appear to have been a hopeless situation.
Pa’s brother Vince, a fine horseman, had gouged out his left eye from its socket whilst galloping through the trees. A sharp branch caught in his left eye, lifting it clean out leaving it dangling down his cheek on the sinews. He stopped the horse and fed the attachments and eyeball back into its socket, (but the wrong way around so all he could see was his brain).
Seriously, when he got home, the first thing Gertie did was pack cayenne pepper and comfrey root gel into the eye socket, replacing the poultice daily. The eye was saved within a few weeks. I saw his eye years later and you’d never have known that it went through such drama.
Now I hope I never have to go through that kind of trauma, but I can tell you that Allan, my protege, put up with a comfrey and cayenne eye poultice packed into his badly infected eye (conjunctivitis), and changed daily for 7 days – which completely healed his eye as good as new – and there wasn’t a peep out of him. He has never had a re-occurence of conjunctivitis in over 17 years. Caution: please do not attempt the cayenne/comfrey remedy in the eyes without proper supervison. The ratio per herb is 80% comfrey root gel to 20% hot cayenne powder, made into a paste with 30% glycerine. This poultice may be used for all manner of ulcerations and infected, long standing sores.
…….Wow is what I say….Thank You Malcolm for sharing that with us….
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