Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.Slippery Elm
An Early American Favorite
Family: Ulmaceae; (includes Nettles)
Genus and Species: Ulmus Tubre, U. Fulva
Also known as: Red elm, Indian Elm
Parts used: Inner bark
No food or drug of today comes close to matching the place of honor slippery elm held in l Sth- and 19thcentury America. Great elm forests covered the East and even in cities, the versatile bark was always close at hand.
A Bark for All Reasons
Soaked in water and wrapped around meats, the bark retarded spoilage in the days before refrigeration. Coarsely ground and mixed with water, it turned into a spongy mass and was molded into bandages to cover wounds and made into pill-like coverings for unpleasant-tasting medicines. Ground and mixed with water or milk, slippery elm bark turned into a soothing, nutritious food similar to oatmeal, which was used to treat sore throat, cough, colds, and gastrointestinal ailments and to feed infants and hospital patients. Slippery elm sore throat lozenges were a fixture in home medicine cabinets, and the herb was the nation’s leading home remedy for anything in need of soothing.
Slippery elm is still listed in the National Formulary, the pharmacists’ reference, and health food stores still sell lozenges containing the herb. But our once-great elm forests have been decimated by Dutch elm disease, and both our landscape and our herbal Healing heritage are poorer as a result.
Bark for Broken Bones
First-century Greek physician Dioscorides prescribed bathing in a European elm bath to speed the Healing of broken bones. His prescription survived more than 1,500 years. In the 17th century, English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper wrote: “The decoction being bathed in, heals broken bones … [and] is excellent [for] places … burnt with fire. The leaves bruised, applied, and being bound thereon with its own bark heal wounds.” Culpeper also claimed elm root decoction restored hair on bald scalps.
Colonists found the Indians using American slippery elm bark as a food and treatment for wounds, sore throat, cough, inflamed nipples (mastitis), and many other ailments. The colonists adopted these uses and developed many more, including applying slippery elm poultices to bring boils to a head.
America’s early 19th-century Thomsonian herbalists recommended slippery elm tea as a laxative gentle enough for children, and Thomsonian midwives lubricated their hands with the slippery bark before performing internal examinations.
Elm Stick Law
Indian women inserted slippery elm sticks to induce abortion, and white women adopted the practice, which caused many deaths from uterine infection and hemorrhage. As a result, several state legislatures passed laws forbidding the sale of slippery elm bark in pieces longer than 1½ inches.
By the Civil War, slippery elm was being used to treat syphilis, gonorrhea, and hemorrhoids. America’s Eclectic physicians called it “very valuable” and suggested “a tablespoon of the powder boiled in milk affords a nourishing diet for infants newly weaned, preventing the bowel complaints to which they are subject. Some physicians consider the constant use of it, during and after the seventh month of gestation, as advantageous in facilitating an easy delivery.”
Contemporary herbalists recommend slippery elm bark externally to cover wounds and soothe skin problems and internally as a tea to treat sore throat, cough, diarrhea, ulcers, colitis, and other gastrointestinal complaints.