[Our bodies] are not distinct from the bodies of plants and animals, with which we are involved in the cycles of feeding and the intricate companionships of ecological systems and of the spirit. They are not distinct from the earth, the sun and moon, and the other heavenly bodies. It is therefore absurd to approach the subject of health piecemeal with a departmentalized band of specialists. A medical doctor uninterested in nutrition, in agriculture, in the wholesomeness of mind and spirit is as absurd as a farmer who is uninterested in health. Our fragmentation of this subject cannot be our cure, because it is our disease.
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
Tremendous empowerment comes from learning to recognize the medicinal plants that surround us, even more in learning how to make them into medicines for healing. And though it takes time, as your knowledge increases, as you learn how to tend to your illnesses and those of your family, the sense of helplessness that so many of us have experienced when we become ill, often ingrained since birth, begins to dissipate.
We have been trained to place our health in the hands of outside specialists who, very often, know neither ourselves nor our families, not the fabric of our lives nor the communities in which we live. They have no understanding of, and often no interest in, the complexity in which we live and from which our illnesses emerge. But for most of us, those specialists are the only place we know to go when we are ill, uncertain, and afraid, to seek help — for ourselves or our loved ones.
The world, however, is a great deal more complex than that frame allows and there are many more options to healing than that system acknowledges. All of us live, all the time, in the midst of a living pharmacy that covers the surface of this planet. And that living pharmacy is there for you, or anyone, to use — anytime you wish. Once you know that, once you have been healed by the plants in that living pharmacy, often of something that physicians said could not be healed, things are never the same again. You begin to break the cycle of dependence on which the health care system depends.
Taking back control over personal health and healing is one of the greatest forms of personal empowerment that I know. It does take time and effort, this kind of learning, but the learning goes quickly. Harder, perhaps, is learning to trust the plants with your life. It is a truly frightening moment, that moment of decision, when trust is extended in that way, for, before it occurs, there is no way to experientially know what the outcome will be. Most people on this planet, though, people who do not live in the Western, industrialized nations, make that decision every day of their lives. It is a trust they extend every moment of every day. Trusting the healing capacities of the plants is not a new experience to the human species.
The next step is learning how to turn the plants you are learning about into medicines for yourself and your family. It isn’t that hard — people all over the globe have been doing it for a hundred thousand years. At least.
This is a brief look at herbal medicine making. It is condensed from a much larger exploration in the second edition of my book Herbal Antibiotics.
Herbal medicines, in general, fall into two groups: 1) those for internal use, and 2) those for external use.
The main forms of herbal medicines for internal use are:
The main forms of herbal medicines for external use are:
Most of these you can make yourself. In this condensed version, I will primarily look at alcohol and water extractions.
Unless you are using the plant itself in some form — as powder, food, juice, or so on — what you will be doing when you make your medicines is extracting the chemical constituents of the plant in some kind of liquid solvent. (When you take the whole herb internally, the stomach acids, bile salts, and so on are the solvent media. They leach out the active constituents of the plants for you.)
Every solvent has its own properties and people use different ones for many different reasons, some of which I will go into here. Generally, a solvent is referred to as a menstruum. The term comes from menstruus, a Latin word meaning “month.” It was felt, in the old days, that the moon and its cycle of 28 days had an influence on liquids, just as it does on the tides. So, herbs were placed in liquids — on particular days by the fanatical — and left in there for one cycle of the moon. Hence menstruum. Though derided as superstition by scientists there is some legitimacy to this kind of thinking. Plants really are stronger when harvested on certain days, the moon does affect the underground aquifers of the Earth, just as it does the oceans (causing the ground to breathe out moisture-laden air), leeches really are useful (surgeons use them regularly now), maggots really do clean gangrenous wounds better than anything else, and . . . oops, sorry, got carried away again.
Anyway, the solvent is called the menstruum, herbs are placed in the menstruum, and once there they begin to macerate. Maceration is the soaking of something — usually a plant of some sort — in a solvent until the cell walls begin to break down so the compounds in the herb will leach into the solvent, where they are held in suspension. When you later separate the liquid (containing the medicinal compounds) from the solids, the solids that are left are called the marc. The liquid is called whatever kind of medicine you were making: tincture, infusion, or so on.
Water is considered to be the universal solvent; it works for most things to some extent. For most of human history it has been the primary solvent people have used. Alcohol is the next most effective solvent. Combining them will give you the most comprehensive solvent medium that exists.
Just as with the plants you harvest, use the best-quality solvents you can get. Your water, especially, should be well, spring, or rain water — if you can get it. If you use tap water, have a filter on the water line if you are at all able to do so. Or else buy a good-quality water. The better the water, the better the medicine. (Tap water is, as well, filled with minute quantities of pharmaceuticals — you really don’t want to ingest them. They are highly bioactive.)
Another thing to understand is that the more finely powdered your herb, the more surface area is exposed to the solvent. This allows more of the chemical constituents to leach into the solvent.
When you are making extracts, part of what you learn, and develop in your practice, is knowledge of just what kinds of solvents are right for which herbs and in what combinations. The goal is to get as many of the medicinal compounds as possible into the extractive medium. Each herb is different and needs different combinations of water and alcohol — that is, a different formula for preparation. Some do better in pure alcohol, some in pure water. Some need oils to extract the active constituents (Artemisia annua is an example of this; artemisinin is more easily soluble in fats than in either alcohol or water). Some need boiling, some prefer cold liquids.
Pharmacists, prior to World War II (before pharmaceuticals began to dominate medicine) were extensively trained in very sophisticated forms of herbal medicine making — many of which are beyond the scope of this book (and of most pharmacists these days). This is why pharmacists are still called “chemists” in England and the drugstores there the “chemist’s shops.” Distressingly, that kind of training no longer occurs; it is now a lost art. I doubt there is a medicinal pharmacist in practice anywhere in the world who can prepare a tincture of Colchicum officinale and determine, exactly, the amount of colchicine in it — as all pharmacists could do in 1920.
In becoming an herbal medicine maker, you are learning how to be a practical dispensing pharmacist. Part of what that means is discovering how to best prepare the herbs and with which solvents. A brief description follows; my book Herbal Antibiotics includes an herbal formulary that will give you the ratio of alcohol and water for several hundred plant tinctures.
The two most common forms of water extractions are infusions and decoctions.
Teas are, at heart, weak infusions. When making medicine, however, you are usually working with what would formally be called an infusion. Infusions are stronger than teas since the herbs sit, or infuse, in the water for a much longer period.
An infusion is made by immersing an herb in either cold or hot (not boiling) water for an extended time. Again, the water you use should be the purest you can find, not tap water. Water from rain, a healthy well, or a spring is best.
The weakness of infusions, cold or hot, is that they do not keep well; they tend to spoil very quickly. Refrigeration will only slow the process a little. Infusions, unless you stabilize them with something like alcohol, need to be used shortly after you make them. Their strength is that nearly everyone has access to enough water to make them without resorting to the expense of buying alcohol.
The following guidelines are for hot infusions and will work with most herbs. Although these guidelines use short timelines for hot infusions, I often make my infusions at night just before bed and let them infuse overnight. I usually make enough for 1 day, then drink the infusion throughout the next day.
Most hot infusions are consumed, confusingly, not hot but warm or at room temperature; the infusion periods are too long for the water to stay hot. Hot infusion, in this sense, is a description of the extraction process, not of its temperature when used.
Some herbs, however, are best consumed while still hot, often these are diaphoretics that stimulate sweating. Yarrow, if being used to stimulate sweating to help break a fever, is best consumed hot (steeped 15 minutes, covered). If being used for GI tract distress or to stimulate menstruation it is best prepared as a hot infusion (covered), then consumed hours later at room temperature.
To prepare a hot infusion, bring water to a boil, then pour it over the herb in the following manner:
For leaves: 1 ounce per quart of water, let steep 4 hours, tightly covered. Tougher leaves require longer steeping. The more powdered the leaves (if dried), the stronger the infusion. If you are using fresh leaves, cut them finely with scissors or chop them as finely as possible with a sharp knife.
For flowers: 1 ounce per quart of water, let steep 2 hours, tightly covered. More fragile flowers require less time. Most flowers can be infused whole.
For seeds: 1 ounce per pint of water, let steep 30 minutes, tightly covered. More fragrant seeds such as fennel need less time (15 minutes), rose hips longer (3 to 4 hours). Most seeds possess very strong seed coats to protect them from the world until they sprout. You will need to break the seed coat in order for the solvent to work; the seeds should be powdered as finely as possible.
For barks and roots: 1 ounce per pint of water, let steep 8 hours, tightly covered. Some barks, such as slippery elm, need less time (1 to 2 hours). Most barks and roots are infused after being dried; powder them as finely as possible. If you are using fresh roots, mince them as finely as possible.
If you keep the containers tightly covered, the volatile components in the herb will remain in the liquid rather than evaporating into the air. The heat will vaporize the volatiles and they will rise up in the steam, then collect on the underside of the lid. As the mixture cools, the volatiles will condense and drip from the lid back into the infusion. This ensures that the essential oils, which are very volatile, will still be present. You can easily identify an herb that has a high volatiles content; it will have a strong essential oil or perfumey smell to it. These must always be covered when making a hot infusion.
When you are ready to use the infusion, pour off the water and squeeze out the marc as much as possible. The liquid in the saturated herbs is often much stronger than the infused liquid, so keep it if you can.
It seems nearly everyone uses a different way to describe how much to take; some say milliliters (ml), some say drops, some say dropperful, some say teaspoon or tablespoon, so here is a conversion table for you. It may help.
A drop: A drop is not always a drop (see why there’s confusion?). A drop of water and a drop of alcohol are about the same, but a drop of glycerine is bigger — about five times bigger than a drop of water — because it is so viscous. Nevertheless, pretty much everyone treats a drop as a drop. Now, is that clear or what?
Dropperful: A 1-ounce glass tincture bottle has a standard glass dropper that fits in it, and when it’s full of tincture that is what I call a dropperful. It generally holds around 30 drops, so I consider a dropperful to be 30 drops, or 1.5 ml. Normally, a glass dropper will fill only halfway with one squeeze, so it takes two to get a full dropper.
A milliliter is, for water or alcohol, 20 drops, or two-thirds of a dropperful.
A teaspoon is 5 ml or 100 drops or three and one-third dropperfuls.
A tablespoon is 1⁄2 ounce, 15 ml, 3 teaspoons, 300 drops.
An ounce is in the neighborhood of 600 drops.
Cold infusions are preferable for some herbs. The bitter components of herbs tend to be less soluble in cold water. Yarrow, for instance, is much less bitter when prepared in cold water. Usually cold infusions need to steep for much longer periods of time, though each herb is different. The necessity for a cold infusion rarely arises; nevertheless, it may. If so, place the herb in room-temperature water, cover, and let steep overnight.
There are many kinds of infusion pitchers and mugs available; they are pretty common. Most of them have some form of basket in which to place the herbs (and a lid to cover them). The basket is suspended at the top of the mug or pitcher so that the herbs and the liquid do not mix together. It does make it a bit easier. (Avoid plastic if you can; use stainless steel, glass, or pottery infusers.) You can also buy (or make) small cloth bags to hold the herbs, which you then suspend in whatever container you are using. A tea ball will also work but I don’t find them as effective; they don’t usually hold enough herb.
The best infusers work by holding the herb in the upper part of the pot, so that only the upper portion of the liquid is in contact with the herb. As the water at the top of the infuser becomes saturated with the herbal constituents, it gets heavier and sinks to the bottom. This creates a circulating current in the water that brings the unsaturated water to the top of the jar where it can then infuse as well. This will make the strongest infusion. You can also just put the herb in a jar with hot water and cover it; it will work fine but it won’t be quite as strong as this method.
Place herbs in container, pour near-boiling water on top, cover tightly, and let sit overnight. Strain and press the marc to remove as much liquid as possible. Drink 1 cup four times per day. This recipe will make enough to last 2 days. Continue for 8 days (making the infusion again as necessary). This is a good infusion for treating intestinal worms (you can just use the wormwood and ginger if you wish). It will be very bitter, though the ginger will help that a bit.
Decoctions are much stronger than infusions. Basically, they are boiled infusions. There are two forms of decoctions: 1) simple decoctions, and 2) concentrated decoctions. A simple decoction is any water extract that is boiled for a short length of time. Concentrated decoctions are boiled until the water is reduced to some extent. Normally, herbs that are highly resinous or filled with volatile oils are not decocted. Only herbs whose constituents are not damaged by heat are boiled.
It is important to begin with cold water, not warm or hot, then add the herbs and bring it to a boil. The extraction will be more efficient if you begin with cold water because different constituents extract better at different temperatures.
Some herbs, such as isatis, are stronger if they are boiled for a few minutes simply because the higher heat is a better extractant. Herbs high in polysaccharides such as reishi are also often helped by boiling; polysaccharides tend to extract more efficiently when decocted. In essence, anytime an herb is boiled, no matter how short a time, it is considered to be a decoction. If you are just boiling the herb to better extract the constituents, you are making a simple decoction.
Combine the herb and water. Bring to boil. Boil for at least 15 minutes (some herbs will need longer). Let cool enough that you can handle it. Strain the decoction to remove the herb.
Press the herb to remove all the liquid. Add enough water to bring the liquid back to 1 pint. Take as directed.
In a concentrated decoction, which is more common than simple decoctions, the herb is boiled in water long enough that the amount of water you began with is reduced to some extent, often by half, sometimes more. This acts to concentrate the constituents in less liquid, making the medicine stronger. Concentrated decoctions are not often drunk as a tea (reishi is an exception). However, they are sometimes used in smaller doses similarly to a tincture. Once the decoction is made it is allowed to cool, the liquid strained, then dispensed a tablespoon at a time—usually three or four times a day depending on the herb and the disease. The usual dosage range for concentrated decoctions, depending on the herb, is 1 to 4 fluid ounces a day.
The most common form of medicine made from concentrated decoctions is a cough syrup. They are also used to make fomentations — that is, very condensed water extracts that are soaked into a cloth and applied to the surface of the body (to treat pain and inflammation in a joint, for example). Decoctions are also used as enemas — should the need arise, which everyone hopes it won’t. This gets a very strong concentrate into the bowel where it will, usually, rather easily move across the membranes of the colon into the bloodstream.
When you are making your concentrated decoctions, use porcelain, glass, or stainless steel pots if you can; iron and aluminum will often contaminate the mix. When the decoction is cool, prepare it as needed for whatever you are going to use it for. Concentrated decoctions will last longer than infusions, especially if kept cold. Syrups will often last a year in a refrigerator just fine.
Combine elderberries and cayenne with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until liquid is reduced by half. Let cool enough that you can work with it. Strain liquid and press elderberries to remove as much liquid as possible. Add wildflower honey to taste. Add juice of one lemon. Store in refrigerator. Take 1 tablespoon or more as often as needed at the onset of sore throat or upper respiratory infections.
Because alcohol extractions, i.e., tinctures, keep so well over time and because they are so easily dispensed, many herbalists prefer them over infusions. They are made by immersing a fresh plant in full-strength alcohol or a dried plant in an alcohol and water mixture.
I am a fan of using pure grain alcohol for tinctures. What that means in practice, however, is using an alcohol that is 190 proof, or 95 percent alcohol. (There is such a thing as 100 percent or 200-proof alcohol, but the only people who generally use it are scientists or large commercial enterprises; you will probably never see it.) Most people buy their 190-proof alcohol at their local liquor store; the most common brand in the United States is called Everclear.
As an aside: In the eighteenth century the English navy paid sailors partly in rum. The watering of drinks has always been a problem. So to test their rum before accepting it as pay, the sailors would soak gunpowder with it. If the gunpowder would still burn, the rum was “proved.” Hence 100 proof. The rum had to be a minimum of 57.5 percent alcohol for the gunpowder to burn, but that has since been watered down to a simple rule of thumb, 50 percent alcohol = 100 proof.
Some states — some countries — will not allow their citizens to buy 190-proof alcohol (for their own good, of course). If you live in such a place, you will have to cross state (or country) lines and buy your alcohol from a more enlightened place or else make do with what they allow you buy. In such places, most people use a 40 to 50 percent alcohol-content vodka; that is, 80 to 100 proof. Get the highest proof you can — you will see why this is important as we go on.
In the United States, the amount you pay for liquor, regardless of what you are buying, is directly proportional to its alcohol content. The actual cost of a gallon of 190-proof alcohol is about US$1.00. The rest of the cost is federal and state taxes — which are then taxed again as sales tax when you buy the thing. So you may be tempted to buy a lower-proof vodka because it is cheaper. That is a bad idea. Your tinctures will be weak.
Fresh plant tinctures, again, are made by putting the fresh herb in pure grain alcohol. These tinctures are nearly always made in a one-to-two ratio, which is written 1:2. (There are a few exceptions.) This ratio means you are using 1 part herb (dry weight measurement) to 2 parts liquid (liquid measurement). The amount of herb in such ratios is always indicated by the first number, the amount of liquid by the second number.
So, for example, if you have 3 ounces (dry weight measure) of fresh echinacea flower heads, you would place them in a jar with 6 ounces (liquid measure) of 190-proof alcohol. I generally use well-sealed Mason or Ball jars, stored out of the sun and shaken daily. At the end of 2 weeks the herb is decanted and squeezed through a cloth until as dry as possible (an herb or wine press is good for this), and the resulting liquid is then stored in labeled amber bottles.
Fresh plants naturally contain a certain percentage of water and alcohol is a very good extractor of water. (One of the main symptoms of a hangover comes from the alcohol extracting the water from your body — you get the same kind of headache from too much alcohol as you do from dehydration.) Alcohol will pull not only the medicinal constituents out of the plant but the plant’s water as well.
The water in the fresh plant dilutes the alcohol; how much depends on the kind of plant it is. Peppermint has a lot of water in it, 50 percent or more by weight. So what you get when you tincture fresh peppermint leaves is a tincture that is about 50 percent alcohol and 50 percent water. Myrrh gum has virtually no water in it, so you end up with a tincture that is 95 percent alcohol and 5 percent water — and all that water was already in the alcohol, assuming you began with 95 percent alcohol.
Fresh leafy plants may be chopped or left whole before being placed into the alcohol or pureed with the alcohol in a blender. Fresh roots should be ground with the alcohol in a blender into a pulpy mush. (I generally think it better to make root tinctures from dry roots but there are a few exceptions; coral root is one.)
When your tinctures are done and you pour off the liquid, the marc will still have some, often a great deal of, liquid in it. The marc needs to be pressed to remove the remaining tincture. Most people do this by hand. The best thing to use is a good-quality cloth with a close weave to it — I use the same surgical cloths hospitals do; they hold up really well. An herb press facilitates this immensely, though a cider press, depending on the style, will work very well, too. You will get a lot more out of a press than doing it by hand, but they do tend to be expensive.
With fresh plants you can generally get out about as much liquid as you put in; with dried material, especially roots, you get out as much as you can. Sometimes this isn’t much.
Plants, as they dry, lose their natural moisture content. When making a tincture of a dried plant, the amount of water you add to the menstruum is the amount that was present in the plant when it was fresh. This enables the extraction of the water-soluble constituents to occur.
Dried plants are usually tinctured at a one-to-five ratio, which is written 1:5. (There are, as always, exceptions.) That means 1 part dried herb to 5 parts liquid. Fresh Echinacea angustifolia root, for example, contains 30 percent water by weight. If you have 10 ounces of powdered root (dry weight), you would then add to it 50 ounces of liquid (liquid measurement). This gives you your 1:5 ratio. The tricky part for many people comes in figuring out how much of that liquid should be water and how much should be alcohol. In this instance you want your liquid to be 30 percent water (fresh echinacea root’s water content), that is, 30 percent of 50 ounces, which would be 15 ounces of water. The rest of the liquid will be alcohol, that is, 35 ounces.
In a formulary or materia medica, the tincture instructions for this particular plant would look something like this:
It is just assumed that you already know that all fresh plant tinctures at 1:2 will be using 95 percent alcohol. (Note: Everyone I know just assumes that the 95 percent alcohol they are using is 100 percent; no one I know takes that 5 percent into account in figuring this stuff out. Life is too short.)
Again, don’t use tap water if you can avoid it. Powder the herbs you are tincturing as finely as possible — many people in the United States use a Vitamix for this. It is a pretty indestructible mixer/grinder, especially if you get a commercial-grade unit. (The demo video shows them grinding 2x4s into sawdust.)
Unless the herbs become tremendously hard when dried (as red root does), it is best to store herbs as whole as possible until they are needed. This reduces the cell surface area that is exposed to air. Oxygen degrades plant matter fairly quickly.
Dried plant tinctures, like fresh, are left to macerate for 2 weeks, out of the light, before decanting.
Tinctures should be kept out of the sun — a dark, cool room is good. Keeping them in dark or amber-colored glass jars is even better — though if they are in the dark you can leave them in clear jars as many of us do with our larger quantities of tincture. Tinctures will, in general, last many years. However, you should know about precipitation, a very neglected area of herbal medicine.
The constituents that you have extracted from the herbs are held in suspension in a liquid medium. Over time, some of these constituents will precipitate out and settle on the bottom of the tincture bottle. Some herbs such as Echinacea angustifolia root are heavy precipitators, while others, like elder flower, are such light precipitators that you will almost never see a precipitate in the bottle. Unfortunately, there has been little study on this, nor has a chart of herbal precipitation rates ever been prepared (as far as I know; intent searching has never turned one up). Technically, we need one that shows both rate of precipitation and the amount of precipitation for each plant.
Some herbalists will add 1 to 2 ounces of glycerine to every 16 ounces of tincture (10 to 15 percent of the total liquid) to help slow down or eliminate precipitation. It does help retard the precipitation of tannins; I am not sure how well it works for other constituents or over time but you might try it and see how it works if precipitation becomes a concern for you.
You will find that some herbs will produce an ever larger precipitate on the bottom of your storage bottles as time goes by. It is not possible to get that precipitate back into solution. Most herbalists simply shake the bottle prior to dispensing and suggest the user do the same before ingesting it. I do it this way and it seems to work fine, medicinally speaking.
There is, as yet, no data on whether the efficacy of a tincture is affected by precipitation. Certainly the ones that do not precipitate are good for decades if kept in a dark, cool location in well-sealed bottles.
In spite of our aversion in the United States toward the metric system, all scientific glassware in the United States is metric. Most herbalists use a graduated cylinder to measure the amount of tincture they are pouring out (available from any scientific glassware company). Most herbal bottles, of course, are in ounces, while the measuring cylinders are in milliliters. Roughly, 30 milliliters is equal to 1 ounce.
As an example, if you were going to make a combination tincture formula for the early onset of colds and flu, a good mix would be 10 ml each of echinacea, red root, and licorice tinctures mixed together. This would give you 1 fluid ounce total.
You can mix something like this in the graduated cylinder, as long as your hand is steady, then pour the mixture into a 1-ounce amber bottle with a dropper lid. Dosage would be one dropperful at least each hour during the onset of upper respiratory infections. This will usually prevent the onset of colds and flu if your immune system is relatively healthy.
Children’s bodies are much smaller than adults’, and if you are using herbal medicines with them, you need to adjust the dosages. You can determine the dosages for children through one of three approaches:
Clark’s rule: Divide the weight in pounds by 150 to give an approximate fraction of an adult’s dose. For a 75-pound child, the dose would be 75 divided by 150 or 1⁄2 the adult dose. (This is the rule I find most useful.)
Cowling’s rule: The age of a child at his or her next birthday divided by 24. For a child coming 8 years of age, the dose would be 8 divided by 24 or 1/3 the adult dose.
Young’s rule: The child’s age divided by (12 + age of child). For a 3-year-old it would be 3 divided by (12 + 3; that is, 15) for a dose of 1/5 the adult dose.
There has been a tremendous resurgence of puritanitis in the United States and a few other parts of the globe (notably the UK) the past 20 years or so. One object of attention of this spasming of the puritan reflex has been the evils of alcohol. Many on the Right and on the Left seem to think it is some sort of inherently evil substance that is going to destroy Western civilization or at least make God really, really mad.
Alcohol existed long before human beings emerged out of the ecological matrix of this planet. It is a highly natural substance, both inside and outside of our bodies. All living beings partake of it, including trees, bees, and elephants. (Not kidding.) All of them enjoy it. It facilitates the functioning of the body, enhances organ function in many respects, and reduces the incidence of many diseases. It is not an evil substance.
One of the continual queries about tinctures concerns the alcohol content. Many people are afraid to take tinctures because of the evil alcohol in them.
To be really specific: The amount of alcohol in tinctures is incredibly tiny. Less than you will get from eating a few pieces of bread (yes, bread does have alcohol in it, enough to produce a breathalyzer reading of 0.05 just by itself). If you are taking 20 drops of a 60 percent alcohol tincture every hour for an acute condition, you will get about 1/17 of an ounce of alcohol over the course of a day (less than 2 ml). If you are taking a general dose (20 drops three times daily), you will be getting about 1/30 of an ounce over a day. Again, this is less than you will get from eating two slices of bread.
If this truly is a problem for you, you can make infusions or use glycerites — though the glycerites really aren’t as effective and the water extractions won’t extract some of the more important alcohol-soluble constituents. Some people heat their tinctures to remove the alcohol; it doesn’t work very well and I suspect the heat alters the quality of the tincture. I don’t recommend it.
Most childhood ear infections can be treated successfully with herbs. Tinctures, glycerites, honeys, teas, and herbal steams are all effective approaches.
Children are most susceptible to ear infections from antibiotic-resistant strains of Haemophilus influenzae, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Branhamella catarrhalis. The following kinds of remedies have been found highly effective for treating them, individually or together. These kinds of ear infections often accompany flus and colds; this will help if they do.
Chop garlic finely, place in small baking dish with olive oil, cook over low heat overnight, and strain, pressing garlic cloves well. Add essential oil to garlic oil and mix well. Place in amber bottle for storage. To use: Hold glass eyedropper under hot water for 1 minute, dry well (quickly), and suction up ear oil from bottle. Place 2 drops in each ear every half hour or as often as needed for 2 to 7 days.
Roughly crush all herbs. Bring water to a near boil, then pour over the herbs and allow to steep until cooled enough to drink. Consume as hot as is comfortable for drinking. Sweeten with honey if desired. As much as is wanted can be consumed. The Mormon tea is a decongestant, the rose hips are slightly astringent and anti-inflammatory and high in vitamin C, the elder flowers are slightly sedative and reduce fevers, the licorice root is anti-inflammatory and tastes good and is antiviral and antibacterial, and the peppermint helps reduce fevers and decongests and is calming. Catnip can be added to help lower fever.
Mix together the tinctures. Give one dropperful (30 drops) of the combination tincture each hour per 150 pounds of body weight until symptoms cease. Best administered in juice. Dosage should be altered for the child’s weight. Eucalyptus and sage tinctures can also be used. You can also prepare this as a glycerite or a medicinal honey.
The best herb for lowering seriously high fevers is coral root (Corallorhiza maculata), as either a tea or tincture. Tea: 1 teaspoon of the root steeped in 8 ounces water for 30 minutes and then drunk. Tincture: Up to 30 drops for a child of 60 pounds. Brigitte Mars’s herbal tea for ear infections (page 325), with the addition of catnip, is also exceptionally effective in lowering fevers. Yarrow and peppermint teas are excellent too. Finally, bathing with cool water will also work very well.
The use of a tea and tincture combination is usually effective. See the recipes that follow.
Mix the herbs together (for example 3 ounces blackberry root and 2 ounces slippery elm bark). Simmer 1 teaspoon of the herb mixture in 1 cup water for 20 minutes. Strain and cool. Take 2 to 4 tablespoons every hour or as often as needed.
Combine the tinctures, and shake well. Give 1 dropperful (30 drops) for every 150 pounds of body weight every 1 to 2 hours in water or orange juice until symptoms cease.
You, more than anyone else ever will, know how you are feeling in your body. Pay close attention to how you respond to any medicines you take. If you don’t feel right when you take an herbal medicine, stop taking it.