WINTERGREEN Gaultheria procumbens, L.( U. S. Agricultural Department, Appalachia, 1971)
Uses: Distilled Wintergreen oil is chiefly used for flavouring confectionery or pharmaceutical preparations. Our Indians employed the plant for rheumatic conditions, internally and externally. Compared to the size of Willow( Salix nigra) or Birch( Betula lenta), Wintergreen is a very small plant, but they all have a common agent, salicylate, which is most useful in relieving pains of rheumatism and as a stimulating nervine. May be employed in diarrhoea and as an infant’ s carminative. Adjust does according to age. Dose: 1 teaspoonful of the plant, cut small or granulated, to 1 cupful of boiling water; drink 1 cupful, cold or hot, during the day, a large mouthful at a time. Of the tincture, 5 – 20 min. Too large an amount can cause vomiting. Externally: Oil of Wintergreen may be added to the bath or steam cabinet. The fresh or dried herb put into a white cotton bag and simmered in a large vessel, adding liquid and container bag to the bath water, is effective for joint pains and swellings. Do not immerse the whole body, just waist high; if the shoulders and neck have the same condition, squeeze the simmered bag over this area. If you feel drowsy, too relaxed or have heart palpitations, get out. Continue once or twice a week for thirty times consecutively. Other suitable herbs can also be used and combined in this type of bath. It is wise to drink a herbal diuretic tea mixture during this period so that the uric acid, or deposits, will not relocate. Homoeopathic Clinical: Tincture of fresh leaves— Gastritis, Neuralgia, Pleurodynia, Rheumatism, Sciatica.
WITCH
HAZEL Hamamelis virginica, L.( N. O.: Hamamelidaceae)
Common Names: Spotted Alder, Snapping Hazel Nut, Winter Bloom. Features: Witch hazel is of the family Hamamelidaceae, or of the extract of H. virginiana. The genus includes five species, of. which two are native to eastern and central North America and three to eastern Asia. H. virginiana, the common Witch hazel of eastern North America, is a shrub or small tree found growing in bunches like the Alder in damp woods in nearly all parts of the United States. In appearance it has several crooked branching stems, 2 – 6 in. in diameter and 10 – 12 ft. high, covered with a smooth grey bark, with brown spots. The leaves are alternate, oval, wavy-margined and turn yellow in the autumn. They possess a degree of fragrance and when chewed are at first somewhat bitter, very sensibly astringent, and then leave a pungent sweetish taste which remains for a considerable time. Its flowers have four yellow, strap-shaped petals, four fertile stamens and four staminoid, blooming mostly in November and December after the leaves have fallen off. The fruit,