The last time I wrote an “Accidental Herbalist” article was a long time ago. Which, considering I There’s a double meaning hidden in this title. The first is fairly obvious because it’s about a herbalist treating his own accidents. But the second you could never know, which is that I never intended to be a herbalist. It’s a long story but this path came about through what might be seen as a series of accidents. A deeper, and unwelcome truth is that the old ones are speaking to us through these unintentional occurrences we call accidents all the time. And not to tempt the fates, I’ve had my fair share of misfortune, but I think if we’re listening to the old ones then the accidents don’t need to happen. I feel it’s important to clarify here I don’t see accidents as a punishment, or even karma so much as a strong act of intervention by those on the other side. An act which penetrates beyond our control to deter us from one direction and guide us in another. In retrospect these guiding moments become clear. And with these insights we change something which at the time might have seemed horrible into something that can be recognized as a blessing. When really serious stuff happens now, I try not to dwell in the drama of it so much as try to just be in the moment and feel what the occurrence is connected to. Ok, that’s all on the spiritual end of things and needed to be spoken to. Yet, my intention in this article is to address the more physical side of having accidents, for the would-be herbalist in us all.
have a very physical life a do things all the time that would be considered dangerous, hopefully means I must be listening to the old ones more. That article was about scalding myself when a side handle on a four gallon stock pot broke off as I removed it from the fire and the boiling fatty liquid sloshed over my arm. That was about the use of fresh Aloe. This time I’m going to talk about Yarrow, St John’s Wort, Wild lettuce and Skullcap.
I was up at sunrise on this particularly beautiful crisp clear April morning, the second week of Maple sugaring. The week before we’d had strange rainy weather so I’d actually only collected sap at this point and not had a boil yet. I have a large pan so I need about 100 gallons of sap to make it worth while doing a boil. I do my Maple Syrup production outside so I’d been waiting for a day without rain, and this was the day. It had been -5 the night before, and while the snow was gone in the farmyard from all the rain, the ground was rock hard and crunchy as I hurried out to feed the chickens before I headed to the back for the day. I’d not had a single fall on ice or even cross-country skiing all winter, and there was no ice in the yard so falling could not have been further from my mind, which admittedly was more on the tasks of the day then me walking. I turned on my way in the yard toward the coop and stepped down on a plank of cedar I’d put down earlier in the season for the chickens to get from the coop over the snow and ice to the first grass that had opened up. What I didn’t think about was that it had been raining like mad and that plank had been super saturated with water from the top and bottom for weeks, and was frozen solid that morning. And while it still looked like wood it was as sheer as black ice. I had a bucket of sprouted oats in one hand and a gallon glass jug of water in the other. The jug was the old-time kind you put your finger through at the top, (picture a moonshine jug). When my foot slid on the plank and twisted around in front of me I went down fast. Normally under such circumstances, as you go down your hands come up and out to catch yourself, flinging anything in them away, which was what happened with the oats that got scattered like confetti at a wedding. But with my big finger planted firmly through the hole in the gallon jug it came down with me. Again, the odds were heavily against the jug breaking because 95% of the farmyard is turf, but where I fell and specifically just where the jug and my hand came down was bedrock. While the fall happened in one split second I watched in helpless slow motion as the jug hit first and broke into long jagged pieces and then my hand came down on that. My hand came down hard and fast to stop my head and face from smashing into the rock right beside the shattered jug. All the momentum of the day came crashing down with me.
St. John’s Wort
My shoulder and elbow came down on the frozen ground and bedrock pretty hard yet I felt they were ok, but as I slowly raised my hand I realized the extent to which it had become one with the jug. The blood was pouring out on the frozen ground and I kinda shuddered as I held my hand up to my face so I could see if there was glass in it. I pulled two or three long thin pieces out that were jutting from inside my finger. The glass, with surgical sharpness had ripped along the inside of my right hand ring finger. Two big white chunks of flesh floated loosely on the exiting stream of blood. One piece I pulled off immediately with the glass removal, the other was big and deep. I didn’t want to look too close at that one. Held my right hand tight with the left and quickly walked back to the farm house, leaving a trail of blood offerings through the yard and house on the way to the bathroom. I grabbed wads of toilet paper and staunched the blood flow with pressure on the side on my finger. There was a couple other little cuts and gouges on that hand but the one long jagged fissure on the side of my finger was seriously deep. I thought about going to the hospital and what a huge hassle that would be. And I thought about the fact that I’d let the sap build up so much I had no more storage barrels. And that, that day, and the next two days were supposed to be all good flow days. And, that I had no back up. Megan and the kids were away visiting a friend for the weekend. So I actually felt like I had to boil that day or I’d miss the syrup season.
I sat for a while and calmed down once I got the blood to stop. I wished I’d had a little sterile thread and curved needle for doing stitches. Though I’m not sure I actually could have done it with my now very shaky left hand. Still, I mention it because it should be a part of any first aid kit. I immediately thought about Staunchweed, which has also been called Soldier’s Woundwort, and is now known as Yarrow. But I had only used it fresh before to stop bleeding. I also, of course, thought of the more famous Woundwort know now as St John’s Wort. Since there was no fresh herbs to be had I took a good couple droppers full of each tincture as well as using them to soak the bandages. I painfully rinsed out the cuts, although I knew as a rule glass is very sterile and clean, and the ground was frozen so I think it would have been ok anyway. Then, with as much pressure as I could, without cutting the circulation off I bandaged and taped up the finger. I think it was still oozing a bit but the pressure and yarrow did the trick to stop the excessive blood flow. Just to note here, fresh Yarrow works best for this purpose and is itself antiseptic so you don’t have to worry about getting little bits in the cut. Poultice it, or macerate (chew it) into a damp clump first before putting it on the wound directly. Then wrap it tightly with a sterile cloth or bandage.
The pain was not too bad as long as I didn’t move that finger or hand too much. By the amount of blood that was coming out right away when it happened I was pretty sure the glass had cut through to an artery in my finger. Later, when the inflammation was reduced the area felt numb, as though I might have also cut through the nerve going to the inside of that finger. The sensation on other side and top of the finger felt normal. For the pain I initially looked for Opium Poppy tincture but couldn’t find it. However, years before I’d made a very dense Wild Lettuce tincture which I’d given to others in pain releasing combinations but never had need to try myself. So I also took the occasion to try a couple droppers full of that. It, and the Yarrow, and maybe the Skullcap, did the trick for pain, without making me feel out of it like the Poppy would have. I also knew I had a range of plants containing acetaminophen, like Poplar, Meadowsweet and Willow but they are not very strong for pain and I didn’t feel any of those were appropriate. I imagine part of how these plants work is through draining inflammation by thinning the blood and dilation of the blood vessels, which at that point I didn’t want. I did take skullcap but not too much, (about 15 drops) as this one can also space you out (not a good idea when using a chainsaw and axe). I usually think about Skullcap in terms of head pain, a ’skull-cap’, as well as for sleep and nervous disorders but this delicate little friend presented herself to me, so I took her for both the nerve numbness and pain. Over three weeks the sensation has slowly come back to that side of the finger. I have no way of knowing for sure if it helped regrow the nerve tissue but something did.
Now that I had the blood under control and was bandaged, medicated and ready to go, the really shit part was I had very little cut wood for sugaring and would need to use my hand. When you’re sugaring you have lots and lots of time, so usually I just cut and sled over standing dead wood as I go, during the few weeks of the season. The hardest part was starting the chainsaw which I had to do twice too because it stalled on my first cut. Carrying the wood and buckets wasn’t too bad, I just used my left hand only where possible. Splitting the wood was brutal and I could see by the changing colour of my already extremely dirty bandage these activities had reopened the wound. I got all the cutting over with early so the hand could heal and actually had not too bad of a day. The next couple days Megan and the kids were home so they helped out. I changed the bandage (soaked with Yarrow and St John’s Wort Tincture) twice a day, and kept on with the Skullcap. By the third day I could take the bandage off at night without fear of it starting to bleed. After a week it was basically better. The loose chunk of flesh re-adhered but then pealed off a week later after new pink scar tissue had formed underneath. The picture of my finger is taken after three weeks to the day after the accident.
Yarrow
So, even after forty years of working with herbs, I’m yet again struck with how incredible our bodies are and by how well common traditional herbs, which grow close to all of us, really work. And, I have to say, this event being an example of when even most herbalists would say “you have to go to the hospital”, I’ve found 99% of the time having medical intervention is actually unnecessary. We have become not just dependent on but addicted to the power and authority of allopathic medicine. And as my dad used to say “absolute power leads to absolute corruption”. Allopathic medicine is no longer an art or a practice it’s an out of control oligarchy demanding our cult like following. Ok, now that I’ve told you my accident story and had my little political jab I’m going to talk about Yarrow.
Yarrow was my ‘first herb’. And while you might imagine because this one has soft feathery leaves and fine little inflorescence that make up lace-like flowers, that the plant’s spirit is feminine, I have only experienced it as a man. A jaunty little angular fellow, half trickster, half shaman. It was forty years ago when Yarrow first came to me. I was walking the inland granite ridges of Muskoka and was drawn in by this magical plant without having any idea about medicinal herbs. Little did I know I’d met one of the primary and universal healing herbs. If St John’s Wort is the first healer as others and myself have said, Yarrow is the second. When I first saw this one it was a good twenty years before ‘the internet’ was created, so when I got home I looked up Yarrow in an edible plant guild and found you could make a nice ‘tonic’ tea from it. And indeed I never did get sick the whole winter through when I harvested enough Yarrow to drink regularly. I could feel the Yarrow heat me up, burning out any bug I might get.
Back then I was also becoming interested in indigenous culture, or the ‘red road’ as I knew it, and began to do my own sweat lodges. It was then I began to use these two healing ‘tools’ together with incredible cleansing results. Yarrow is a diaphoretic so it opens your pores, increasing and releasing internal heat. Once when I was journeying with Yarrow in the lodge I saw him clear as a movie, dancing in folk ‘Russian’ style around a fire, drawing it up and up. He had a dark striped angular ’suit’ on. As I think of it now the texture of the suit evoked not Yarrow but Nettle. Not the prickly part but lines and kind of layered angles. The practical healing part of his second gift (the first being as a woundwort) is not only can he heat you up to cleanse you but in the case of a fever he can break the fever by releasing it. A kind of treating like with like, that brings our body to self correct and reset. I think it’s debatable, but for liability reasons I should add a cautionary note here that if the fever is already very high, 103F or higher, strong Yarrow tea could cause the brain to heat up too much (especially for children). Having said that, I always gave our kids yarrow tea with our wild honey (so they’d drink it) when they’d really worked up a fever because he told me he could help. As I understand Yarrow, while it can raise your temperature it essentially helps release heat, so I don’t think the sustained high temperatures that could damage the brain would actually ever be an issue. Hot tea, not tincture, is what needed for this diaphoretic effect. You can use the leaves, flower heads and roots. They are perennial though, so think about sustainability before pulling the roots out.
One other brief story about Yarrow I’d like to pass on was that one of my helpers about twenty years ago, who had a Phd. in ethnobotany, had this book (I think generated by U. of Alberta) that had all the chemicals listed that were found in each wild plant. Yarrow had four pages of chemical compounds in it, over two hundred. And all these chemicals work harmoniously together with no side effects. You think herbalism is ‘primitive’? Let’s see a pharmaceutical recreate that!
I see the doctrine of signatures for Yarrow in his leaves. They themselves are cut to their vascular core. They’re just bones and veins, the flesh is missing, which gives them their highly filigreed, feathery look. Another way to see that is their leaves look exactly like the micro-vascular network of branching capillaries that feed and cleanse our flesh, our cells. The same branching network that dissipates heat from our skin. So the plant holds this medicine of being able to both expand and contract, which I see now was the reason he was doing that vigorous folk dance in my vision of him. For deep cuts Yarrow can contract our arterial flow, which gives our bodies time to staunch the wound. It also likely increases the clotting ability of the blood, because it is miraculous how quickly it works in that capacity. There is also a medicine teaching that us being shown to us between the plants dense ‘yang’ stock and open ‘yin’ leaves. When seen this way it’s interesting that it’s sometimes frowned on to include the Yarrow stocks in medicinal preparations.
This brings me to the last thing few things that I need to be said about Yarrow. This plant is one of the oldest known circumpolar healers. It is well known and used essentially for the same things throughout the northern hemisphere. It is referred to in the most ancient Chinese and Egyptian texts on herbalism, and is of particular Chinese fame as the traditional divining tool for the ‘I Ching’. The part used for divining is the one part not used as medicine, the stalks. Go figure.