DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical professional. All advice given in this article should be discussed with your doctor before attempting to use them. Please be cautious that all plants that you use have been properly identified before using them medically.
After a societal collapse, no matter the cause, store bought medicine will disappear. If you are like my wife and I you have stored up medicines along with your food, water, and all the rest. However, if the collapse will be long term then sooner or later you are going to run out of medicine. About a year ago, after moving to the small town our retreat is in to start farming and setting up agriculturally, my wife and I began a discussion as to how we could supplement and even replace our medical supplies as they begin to run short and eventually run out.
The answer was surprisingly simple; plant-based medicines or herbal medicine. Nature is our medicine cabinet! Most of the pharmaceutical-grade medicines we have today are based off of plants and plant derivatives, so why not take it one step back in the process to the plants themselves. Anyone who has begun a study of herbal medicines has heard the story about foxglove and how it was prescribed by herbalists in the past to help treat heart conditions. Unsurprisingly, when modern science began studying this herb they discovered it contained a medicine that they extracted called digitalis. Digitalis has been prescribed for decades for patients with heart conditions.
One of the things that my wife and I discovered as we began our quest into herbal medicines is that (unless you live in very cold or very hot climates) we are quite surrounded by medicines. Not only medicines but vitamin supplements in plant form. For example, we are surrounded in our area by red or crimson clover, a plant that was introduced to the United States as a cattle feed which has spread like wildfire and is now found in 43 of the 50 states. The flowers of red clover are what gives the plant its name and are also where most of your medical and vitamins are located in the plant itself. Red clover can be used as a tea or can be converted to a salve. As a tea it acts as a mild sedative and also loosens phlegm so is excellent when you have a cold. It is high in Vitamin C and niacin. Also it contains the minerals calcium, magnesium, potassium, and chromium. In ointment form it can be used to treat psoriasis and eczema.
My wife and I spent this past weekend picking an entire bowl of the flowers. The flowers can be dried for use in teas later, which is what we are doing. You can also make a tea with it as soon as you pick it. You boil your water, dump it on top of the flowers, wait 30 minutes to steep, add honey and drink! What could be simpler? That is just one of hundreds of plants that we have identified in our area.
How Do I Get Started?
First: Identify potential health problems you may face after a collapse. Does someone in your family have asthma? Then you would probably want to identify herbs in your area that can be used to treat asthma. Worried that you will not have anything to treat a fever with once the Tylenol runs out? Red clover is great for reducing fevers and has anti-viral qualities.
Second: Identify plants in your area. This is as simple as starting with what you know. My wife and I know without a doubt that the clover growing in our area is red or crimson clover. We had questions about other types of plants so we went online to help identify them. There are great resources out there that make this easy. An example is: RealTimeRendering.com. If you cannot figure out what a plant is after searching in books or online, get in contact with a botanist at a local university. If they don’t know they will help you find out and are usually extremely helpful.
Third: Look up the medicinal uses for the herbs you have identified. Sometimes the results will be disappointing and there is little or no value in harvesting the plant, such as the musk thistles that are abundant in the area where we live. Other times you will hit a gold mine of medicinal uses, such as what we discovered with the abundant red or crimson clover. Check out multiple sites and books to insure that you are getting proper information.
Fourth: Find out what you have to do in order to extract or use the medicine. Sometimes it is as simple as making a tea. At this point, I feel I must give this warning: BE CAREFUL OF INGESTING ANYTHING. Please make 100% sure that you have positively identified a plant before using it as a medicine. You want to help your family and poisoning yourself (or even them) by rushing or guessing will help no one. Other times they are best used in poultices, salves, and in other types of applications. Read up on the medicinal uses then look up how to make these online.
Fifth: Be mindful that herbs will naturally reproduce themselves annually and that you should pick them fresh every year. One of the herbal remedies I will give below (yellow dock) has a shelf life of about six months but can be harvested in the spring and in the fall so this is not a problem at all. Just remember that herbs medicinal qualities will expire after a certain amount of time.
Sixth: Compile all of your findings and share them with your group. This will also give you a great deal of bartering power after a collapse PLUS would be an excellent form of charity that you could use to increase your reputation in your community. Not to mention the simple fact that sharing your medical knowledge would be a very Christian thing to do!
Example of a herbal remedy: Yellow Dock Tonic
There is a plant known as Yellow Dock (you can look up pictures of it on Google Images) that grows on the side of roads and in open pastures. Since there are two different methods for harvesting and preparing this plant depending on whether it is spring or fall, I will tell you how to harvest and prepare this now. The seeding part of this plant can be harvested in the fall after drying and used as flour. The medicinal part of this plant lies below ground.
Yellow Dock is a great medicinal herb with multiple uses, something you should seek in your medicinal plants. It can be added to many other mixtures and remedies, such as the red clover tea. A few of the many medicinal uses of Yellow Dock include, cough medicine, liver detox, digestive aid, gout remedy, headache remedy, depression remedy, skin treatments for itching and eruptions (boils, poison ivy, psoriasis, etc.), bowel infections as well as treating peptic ulcers.
Preparing Yellow Dock in the Spring: To use this plant medicinally you need to grab a shovel and dig out the root system. The root system of Yellow Dock is usually very well established and can go as far as twelve inches below the surface. After you dig out the root you will notice that the roots are carrot like in appearance (but not color). The top of the root system near the stem will be tough and barky. You want to cut right above this hard bark portion of the roots near the stem. The top half of this plant can be fed to your livestock (in moderation). Our goats love them.
The roots should be washed over and over until all the dirt has been removed. After this cut up the roots into ¼” sections and pile these up. When you get to the top of the root that is difficult to cut with a knife you can stop and discard this section. Once you have a nice pile (about 1 lbs or more) of the roots you can begin boiling water. Place the roots into another pot that has a cover. This pot should be small enough that your roots fill it almost to the top with a half an inch to an inch to spare.
Once your water has boiled, pour it on top of the Yellow Dock roots to where it is just barely covering them. At this point, place the top on the pot and go do something else for an hour. While you are waiting you can prepare a strainer and whatever you wish to place the root extract into. My wife and I used an old vinegar bottle to place our tonic into. The excess went into a mason jar.
After your hour is up, fill your tonic bottle halfway by passing the golden brown liquid extract through a strainer to remove any root parts. Let it cool for a while. Place the remainder of your extract into another bottle, also straining. At this point you can throw the roots in your pot onto your compost heap as you have extracted all you can get from them. Warm (not boil) some apple cider vinegar and pour into your tonic bottle. Take a couple of teaspoons of this every day. Remember to not overdo it as the mixture you have is pretty potent.
The foregoing is just one of many herbal remedies that you can concoct. My wife and I have tried the two remedies recommended in the above article so speak from experience that they do work. You may find that you have plants unique to your area with great medicinal uses! In a collapse situation you will need any advantages you can get so start learning about herbal medicines today.
Final Words: I can talk for a long time about herbal medicines but I urge you to get out there and start learning all of this yourself. This post should give you a good idea of what to do and I sincerely hope that a few people out there will take it seriously. God Bless and stay healthy!