Pills and potions
BUSH TALK
Forestry and Lands
Department,
Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Fisheries and
Co-operatives,
P.O. Box 892
Castries,
St.
Lucia
WEST INDIES
The story below is taken from: Bush Talk May 1986 Vol.
5 No. 7 (copyright M. Grech)
The text and illustration is by Maria Grech.
If reproduced, please give credit to Maria Grech/Bush
Talk
Helen had a cold. Her head ached and she was sniffling so much
that her mother decided to keep her home from school. She made some bush tea
from herbs that she had gathered, boiling the leaves gently for a while then
straining off the water. She sweetened it with honey and took it to Helen.
“Here, drink this it will get rid of your fever and help the headache go
away.”
“Oh Ma! Do I have to?” Helen wrinkled up her nose and
pushed the cup away. “Monica’s mother says now you can get proper
medicine for everything at the drugstore it’s time people gave up all these
old-time things. Couldn’t I just take a couple of aspirins or
something?”
Figure
Mrs Joseph gently put the cup back in her daughter’s hand.
“Maybe if you had flu’ or suchlike,” said Mrs. Joseph. “But
not for a little fresh cold.”
“Drink the tea, it will make you feel better. If it
weren’t for these old-time things, we wouldn’t have half the pills and
potions you buy at the chemist nowadays. How do you think the doctors found out
about them in the first place? When they saw people using a plant to cure some
sickness they would take it to the laboratory and check to see what medicine or
drug it had. Then they would make this drug into pills or tablets or a liquid
that was easy to drink. Scientists believe there are cures for every one of
man’s illnesses in the plants and trees of the rainforests. But it takes
time to study these things. Many of the plants are being destroyed before anyone
has even had a chance to examine them.”
“I see what you mean,” said Helen. “People must
have got sick long before they had doctors to go to or shops to buy things like
aspirin or cough medicine. But who showed them what plants to use, and how did
they know how much to take?”
“It was simple,” answered her mother. “There were
people in the community who spent their whole lives studying plants and learning
how to use them. You would go to them just like you go to a doctor and they
would tell you what to take. But they hardly ever wrote anything down, so when
they die their remedies often disappear too.
“I heard that someone is collecting samples of all the
plants in Saint Lucia and making a list of the ones that are used to cure
things. But they’d better hurry,” said Helen. “The way I see
people clearing the land there soon won’t be any herbs left to study.”
