Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.Blackberry also known as: Bramble, Dewberry, Goutberry
Not Just Jam and Jelly
Family: Rosaceae; (includes Rose, Apple, Almond, Strawberry
Genus and Species: Rubus Fruticosus (European); R. Villosus (American)
Also known as: Bramble, Dewberry, Goutberry
Parts Used: Leaves, bark, roots, fruit
If your acquaintance with the blackberry is confined to jam and jelly, it’s time to branch out. You have to look to the whole bush to benefit from its full potential.
The blackberry bush was once as highly prized for its medicinal leaves, bark, and roots as it was for its sweet fruit. Today, however, blackberry has fallen from healing fashion, replaced by its close botanical relative, raspberry. It’s time to bring back blackberry. Externally it may help treat wounds, and internally, it’s a tasty treatment for mouth sores, sore throat, and diarrhea.
“Goutberry”
The ancient Greeks used blackberry to treat gout. They were the only people to use the herb as a treatment for this disordec but Greek medicine was so influential in Europe that well into the 18th century, the herb was called goutberry.
The ancient Chinese used the unripe berries to treat kidney problems, urinary incontinence, and impotence.
The Romans chewed the leaves and bark for bleeding gums and drank a decoction for diarrhea.
Tenth-century Arab physicians considered the fruit an aphrodisiac (it isn’t)
“An Excellent Syrup”
During the Middle Ages, blackberry leaves were applied to the skin to soothe burns and scalds.
In his influential Herbal, 17th century English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper called the herb “very binding” and good for “fevers, ulcers, putrid sores of the mouth and secret parts [genitals], spitting blood [tuberculosis], piles [hemorrhoids], stones of the kidney, too much flowing of women’s courses [menstruation], and hot distempers of the head, eyes, and body”.
The 19th century American Eclectic physicians recommended a preparation made from the fruit as “an excellent syrup which is of much service in dysentery, being pleasant to the taste, mitigating the sufferings of the patient, and ultimately effecting a cure.” They also recommended blackberry leaves for gonorrhea, vaginal discharges, recovery from childbirth, and “cholera infantum” - an old term for infant infectious diarrhea, which, in the days before antibiotics, was often fatal (and still is in many parts of the world).
The few contemporary herbalists who discuss blackberry at all recommend it as an astringent for diarrhea.