agk’s Library of Herbal First Aide
The modern idea of wound healing extends little beyond the admonition to keep the wound clean and ‘let nature do its work.’ Antibiotic creams are given to protect against infection or fight established infection, but this is secondary to the wound itself. Stitches are used to bind the lips of the wound together. So far, so good, so much more can be done.
Herbs have affinities to certain phases of wound healing and different types of wounds. Therefore, they can accelerate the process of healing beyond what people would imagine. There are herbs to draw out dirt and pus from wounds, close the lips of clean wounds, prevent the development of excessive scar tissue, remove it after it has developed, reduce proud flesh, reduce nerve damage, regenerate lost tissue, make threatened amputation unnecessary, and so forth. Herbs possess intelligence. When we see them rapidly change a dangerous situation for the better we know that they are following a plan, as it were, which is written in their genes and a reflection of their essential nature. They are not just a bunch of ‘active ingredients.’
If I could only have one herb in my practice it would be yarrow – and many herbalists would agree. It acts deeply on the blood, circulation, fever, and diverse tissue conditions. It is probably the single most important wound-healing plant. Everyone should know about it because it can literally save life and limb.
Here’s an example of how yarrow cured a terrible injury quickly and almost miraculously. One of my students was cutting firewood in the woods with a chain saw. He slipped and cut himself across the shin, to the bone, three inches long, the width of a chain saw blade. He was too freaked out to look at it and kept working for the next ten minutes. Finally he went over to the little road in the woods, found some yarrow, chewed it up and put the wad on the wound. The pain and bleeding stopped immediately. After about ten minutes he took it off and put on another wad. The blood had been pooling under the skin to create a blue-red bruise around the wound but this was now gone. It looked as if the lips of the wound were drawing together. Twenty-four hours later, when he showed it to our class, all that remained was a brown line across the skin. As we will see from some of the stories below, yarrow has healed other dramatic and terrible injuries quickly and efficiently.
Medicine has long recognized three stages to the healing process. Each one is important for a wound to heal completely in a healthy manner.
The first stage of healing consists of inflammation, the purpose of which is to send blood to the area to feed and strengthen wounded or stressed tissues and provide white cells to the area to fight bacteria and consume waste products of tissue breakdown. Since the time of ancient Greek medicine four characteristics of inflammation have been known: calor (heat), robur (redness), tumor (swelling), and dolor (pain). Even today, this is what the doctor or the housewife sees on looking at a wound. Each of these characteristics is important.
Regrowth of the flesh itself fills the wound. ‘Feed a wound’ with good food and usually there will be no problem. The main problem is excessive granulation, or granuloma, commonly known as ‘proud flesh.’ The flesh overgrows the wound. Poultice with raw potato. Or, take elecampane internally and externally. An old name for elecampane is ‘scabwort.’ I thought that meant it was for scabby skin but it is the opposite. Jennifer Tucker, an herbalist in State College, Pennsylvania, said her mentor, an older practitioner named Evelyn Snook, used ‘scabwort’ on proud flesh ‘to form the scab.’ Another remedy may be rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccafolium). This problem is more common in animals than humans; I have seen it numerous times from badly done biopsies of the breast.
Finally the scar forms. Yarrow will keep scar tissue in a bad laceration to a minimum. Monarda fistulosa will reduce scar tissue from a burn, or lessen the formation in the first place. This is an old Indian remedy. I was also taught the Indian philosophy to healing burns: always draw out the fire with hot dressings and herbs; don’t put on cold, which drives the fire deeper and prevents healing. Scar tissue from acne: wild lettuce. Excessive scar tissue or overgrowth is called a keloid; prevent or lessen with homeopathic silica, Silicea 6x, three doses a day for five days, or with herbal horsetail.
------------------------------------------- from Matthew Wood: THE EARTHWISE HERBAL © 2008–2009 North Atlantic Books (two vols) -------------------------------------------