Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.An Ancient (and Modern) Treatment
The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans loved apples and developed dozens of varieties, but it was ancient India’s traditional Ayurvedic physicians who first prescribed them to relieve diarrhea. Applesauce is still a diarrhea treatment today.
Traditional Chinese physicians have used apple bark for centuries to treat diabetes, another use supported by modern science.
The medieval German abbess/herbalist Hildegard of Bingen prescribed raw apples as a tonic for healthy people and cooked apples as the first treatment for any sickness.
Around the same time in England, people said, “To eat an apple before going to bed/Will make the doctor beg his bread.” This evolved into our saying about “an apple a day.”
Not everything the English had to say about apples was so apt, however. Seventeenth-century English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper recommended apples “for hot and bilious stomachs … inflammations of the breast and lungs … [and] asthma.” He also suggested boiled apples mixed with milk as a treatment for gunpowder burns.
The Americas had no native apples, but the Pilgrims brought apple seeds with them, and the fruit quickly became, well, as American as apple pie.
Apples, apple bark, and apple cider soon became mainstays of American folk medicine. A century ago, Eclectic physicians recommended raw apples for constipation, baked or stewed apples for minor fevers, apple bark decoction for “intermittent fever” (malaria), and apple cider “as a refreshing drink for patients with fever.”