It is interesting to note the many similarities between healing traditions that are centuries old, such as TCM and Ayurveda, and more recent healing traditions such as traditional western or folk herbalism today. Samuel Thomson, self-taught botanist and herbalist around the start of the 19th century, came up with a system with the following three tenets that envelope previous healing systems in such a way that they continue to be useful today. 1) Opening the Exterior, 2) Warming the Interior, and 3) Removing Canker. Although this can seem a bit daunting, I do think its simplicity is what makes folk herbalism accessible and doable by anyone and everyone.
Here is the outline Lucia More developed for this chapter to share with us. Thanks again, Lucia!
The Fountain of Life: The Energetic Organism
- The condition of the skin reflects the condition of the grand regulatory of the body, the hypothalamus; the hypothalamus regulates the periphery as a shield to protect the interior organs from sudden environmental changes
- Blood volume, perspiration, shivering, body temperature, hormone secretion
- Diaphoretics to induce sweating and clear fever
- The body as a “fountain”; stomach is the center
o If fires of digestion are strong the body is nourished and the inner fire radiating towards the surface will be strong; if pores and channels of transportation and elimination are open, the organism will clean itself out
o If center is cold, phlegm coats the stomach preventing digestion and keeping it cold
o If heat in center dies down or heat at periphery is raised by cold blocking an outlet, the flow stops; the lack of flow causes life to cease
- Traditional healers also used emetics
- If peripheral barrier is pierced, the skin will assume a disturbed character: too hot, cold, damp, dry; the disease will move deeper…stress on lymphatic system from white cells killing bacteria, etc,; tenderness, swelling, congestion; muscles affected by increase of fluids in the interstitial spaces around the blood/lymph vessels…soreness and stiffness…the body begins “critter killin” with white cells
- If disease process is not held in periphery it moves to deeper organs, causing problems at the level of function and regulation; liver and kidneys stressed…urine scanty and concentrated…water retained…pulse increases to move blood through peripheral congestion in a fever or chill…heart speeds up…shift toward sympathetic nervous system…disease affects the centers regulating metabolism, fluids, solids, nervous and endocrine systems…all under dominion of the hypothalamus
- Three Functional Levels
o Defensive: peripheral vents (skin, mucosa)
o Functional: vital organs
o Regulatory: Neuroendocrine system, hypothalamus
o Health problems tend to penetrate from the exterior, deranging the vital organs, and then the regulatory system; they can also move in the opposite direction, from interior to exterior…theory of toxemia: metabolic leftovers that seek outlet through the peripheral or defensive layer. “The skin will always show the ‘dragon tracks’ of disease.”
§ If disease penetrates from exterior skin will be too red/hot, cold/pale, dry/sweaty
§ If disease originated in internal weakness it causes a disturbance in the skin; toxins, heat, cold, dry or damp will try to move from interior to exterior
o Sometimes all we need do is correct the skin, clear elimination channels, remove toxins, get lymph moving; old healers did this with food, water, exercise and herbs
- The Primal Tradition
o Traditional Folk Medicine emphasizes the importance of the skin, the self-governance or the organism and regulation from center to circumference
o Four primary methods of healing in Latin American Folk medicine
§ Sweating medicines or the sweat lodge in Indian communities
§ Warming medicines
§ Removal of empacho, a mucus-like substance lining the digestive tract
§ Counteracting the evil eye
o Thomson’s basic theories bear the stamp of both traditions (except for the evil eye) and has analogies to Ayurvedic medicine
§ Opening the exterior
§ Warming the periphery
§ Removing canker, humors, or toxins accumulating in the interior
- Opening the Exterior: Indian America use the sweat lodge as primary center for physical and spiritual healing
o Steaming doctors in 1820s and 30s; Finnish used sweat lodge
o Sweat at the beginning of a fever to open pores; then purgatives and strengthening bitters
- Warming the Interior
o Stomach is seat of internal fire, continually radiating out to periphery, maintaining it against the cold, toxins and outward environment
o Thomson: when the outward heat becomes equal with the inward…cold assumes the power and death takes place.
o Three basic kinds of disease:
§ Hot: external heat invades the interior and dominated the organism
§ Cold: internal heat dies down or it is overwhelmed by external cold
§ Alternation of heat and cold: cold is ‘stuck’ in the periphery and the forces fight for ascendancy
- Removing Canker: chronic disease was caused by thickened ‘humors’ which had to be thinned by improving digestion, restoring the internal fire, and opening the channels of elimination
o Humors…canker...impurities in the blood…toxins
o Canker = a lining on the GI mucosa and a substance burdening the internal organs