Introduction
The stars of this book are the plants, trees, and flowers themselves. They are endearing, beautiful, mysterious, fundamental, and primitive. The delight and uses of their seeds, roots, bark, color, and form are phenomenal and, set among the rest of the intricate web of nature, they are truly miraculous. This book is not only about the plants, however, it is also about a combination of natural healing methods, healthy lifestyle, and the use of herbs as potent tools for natural healing.
Were this simply a book on herbal medicine, it would be dangerously easy to see plants as a direct substitute for conventional drugs. But although it is often possible gently and carefully to substitute one for the other, on the whole it is best to use herbs as an integral part of life, combining them with a wealth of other lifestyle choices and thus preventing and balancing disorders or diseases. Plant healing is deeply ingrained in our ancestry, yet the privilege of healing our own bodies has been increasingly taken away from us and put into the hands of doctors and conventional medicine.
It is not surprising that night calls to doctors have doubled in the past few years, pill taking has soared, and the skills of home nursing have diminished. Many people tend to view ill health as a “supermarket affair,” demanding quick answers with the cry, “Give me a pill and make it go away, now!” Others, however, feel a desperate yearning to know more about natural home-healing skills, combined with herbs. So this book has been written with the understanding that herbalism and natural healing should be restored to the home as safely and effectively as possible. All practitioners insist that if there is any doubt about the cause of a patient’s condition, a doctor’s diagnosis should be sought. From this diagnosis you, and perhaps your local herbalist, can work on your body naturally until you regain full health. This book also explains the philosophy and ethos behind herbalism and natural healing. Perhaps you are not ill but just want to learn how to look after yourself.
Knowing how to prevent ill health by understanding
your body and having some practical insight into ways to look after it is
all part of the ethos of natural healing. By gaining this knowledge, you
will learn how to return some of the responsibility for your health to
where it should be. The need to do s o becomes especially urgent when
one considers that 50 percent of the forty-six thousand patient deaths in
Britain every year from iatrogenic (doctor-involved) ailments are
associated with operations performed as a result of diagnostic errors.
