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karen_b_gw

How do you use herbs in an external medicinal way?

karen_b
17 years ago

Most threads on this forum pertain to growing herbs and not much to using them medicinally in every day life. I know that is what the herbalism forum is for, but if you read some of the threads on that forum they are pretty out there (sorry, I don't mean to offend anyone). This past week I've been doing a lot of weeding in the evenings and I'm not one to use alot of bug spray if I can help it. I usually plant a lot of pennyroyal in my beds as a natural bug repellent but because my pennyroyal didn't grow back and I couldn't find any at the nursery it didn't get planted so I've had to work in my gardens at my own risk. Needless to say I have been eaten nearly alive, the bites have been very irritating (itching so that I couldn't sleep). I tried every over the counter remedy I could think of until I attended a class on herbs and it dawned on me that there were herbs just for this so I searched my database and found that though comfrey wasn't actually listed for bug bites it was known for it skin healing properties. So I took a couple of fresh medium size leaves and mashed them and then put the green pulp on the bite, covered it with a piece of gauze and wrapped an ace bandage around it for the night. It worked so good I made another...I guess you could call it a poultice...and held in place with a large bandage for work and so far no itching and the redness in the center is gone.

I know there are many common "external" medicinal uses for herbs but since we are so used to running to the pharmacy I thought this might be a good forum to get out how others use the herbs they grow in simple external medicinal ways.

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