Summary
Feeling a bit under the weather? Why not chop an onion in half and pop a piece under each armpit? Upset stomach? Some tea made with freshly picked mint leaves might help. Want to get revenge on an annoying sibling? A few prised-open rosehips down the back of the jumper should do the trick. Plant remedies (and plant artillery) are all around us, but with pills for every ailment being available from the local pharmacy, what was once common knowledge is in danger of being lost.
There is a growing interest in keeping knowledge about the traditional uses of plants alive, however. Anne Barker is the co- ordinator in Scotland for the Ethnomedica Project. This study was set up ten years ago with a number of partner organisations, including Kew Gardens, The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Chelsea Physic Garden and the National Institute of Medical Herbalists. Barker first found out about the project as a student studying for her BSc Honours degree in herbal medicine at Edinburgh Napier University and in early 2007 she decided to sign up and become a collector for the project.See the full content of this document
Extract
A Healthy Interest
"The Ethnomedica Project is about oral history," she explains, "the oral transmission of simple remedies. It's not what people wrote or read in a book, it's what they remember their granny telling them or what they remember their granny doing...
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