Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.Comfrey
Controversial Wound Treatment
Family: Boraginaceae; (includes Borage, Forget-me-not)
Genus and Species: Symphytum Officinale
Also known as: Bruisewort, knitbone, boneset, healing herb
Parts used: Roots and leaves
For years herbalists have touted comfrey as “an absolute must” an herb with “a healing and soothing effect on every organ,” “ideal for the amateur herbalist” “perfectly safe and harmless.” But ever since liver-damaging, cancercausing chemicals were discovered in it, scientists have blasted it as “definitely hazardous to health.”
Healer or hazard? The truth lies somewhere in between.
Battlefield Casts
The early Greeks first used juicy comfrey root externally to treat wounds, believing it encouraged torn flesh to grow back together. The Roman naturalist Pliny “verified” this practice with the observation that boiling comfrey in water produces a sticky paste capable of binding chunks of meat together.
Comfrey paste hardens like plaster, and cloths soaked in it were often wrapped around broken bones on ancient battlefields. When the paste dried, the result was a primitive but effective cast. This treatment earned comfrey the popular names “knitbone” and “boneset.” (Comfrey should not be confused with the other Boneset)
During the first century, the Greek physician Dioscorides began prescribing comfrey tea internally for respiratory and gastrointestinal problems.
By the 1500s, herbalists were recommending comfrey tea-not paste-to mend broken bones. One early English herbal suggested it “helpeth [people who have] broken the bone of the legge.”
The 17th-century English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper recommended comfrey roots, “full of glutinous and clammy juice,” for “all inward hurts … and for outward wounds and sores in [all] fleshy or sinewy parts of the body … [it] is especially good for ruptures and broken bones.” Culpeper also prescribed the herb for fever. gout, hemorrhoids, gangrene, and respiratory and menstrual problems.
Internal Soothing
As plaster replaced comfrey paste for casting broken bones, names like knitbone were discarded. Comfrey came to be used internally to soothe inflamed mucous membranes. America’s 19th-century Eclectic physicians prescribed it for diarrhea, dysentery, cough, bronchitis, and “female debility” (menstrual discomfort).
Mexican midwives still apply comfrey to vaginal tears. In the Philippines, the herb is used to treat arthritis, diabetes, anemia, lung infections, and even leukemia.
Not many modern herbalists have been daunted by the discovery of cancer-causing chemicals in comfrey. A few herbalists, such as Michael Weiner in Weiner’s Herbal. recommend using comfrey only externally, because of its cancer taint. But most modern herbalists pooh-pooh any association with cancer. They continue to tout it enthusiastically for ulcers, ulcerative colitis, internal hemorrhages, bronchitis, bleeding gums, hoarseness, and digestive complaints.