Mama's Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Livin, Svetlana Konnikova [classic fiction .TXT] 📗

r 8. Drink a cup of warm water or milk sweetened with a little honey or sugar before bedtime.

r 9. Drink a cup of “Tranquility” tea. Place one tablespoon minced valerian root in a cup and add boiling water. Steep for 20 minutes. Filter and drink. r 10. Add one tablespoon valerian root to eight ounces boiling water. Continue to boil for 15 minutes. Steep for 10 minutes. Filter and take one tablespoon twice daily.

r 11. Cold valerian drink. Dice one tablespoon valerian root. Add one cup cold boiled water. Steep for 24 hours. Take five to six teaspoons a day.

r 12. Take a 30-minute walk outside before bedtime.

r 13. Cal your local health-food store to locate a source for black elder or common elder. Use elder root or leaves and brew the tea for a good night’s sleep. In a pot, add dried elder flowers to eight ounces boiling water. Steep for 30 minutes. Filter and take one tablespoon before bedtime.

In the chapter “Stop Sneezes and Sniffles and Stifle a Cold” I wrote about the black elder plant as a “treasure chest” of the green pharmacy. If you are awake right now and cannot sleep, perhaps you would like to read the funny superstitions about this great plant.

Sleeping Beauty @ 157

^ In the seventeenth century there was a belief that if a small boy got scratched by an elder branch, he stopped growing.

^ Lightning never hits the elder, so some people plant it near their houses for protection.

^ If you want to get rid of a wart, rub it with a green branch of elder. Then bury the branch in the ground to rot—the wart

will disappear.

^ If a horseman carries two small branches of elder in his pocket, he will never rub a sore on his horse’s back, no matter how fast he gallops. Even today some horsemen carry the twigs of elder in their pockets during horse races.

^ Cut a piece of elder branch between two “joints,” where the sunlight has never fallen and hang around the neck of an epileptic to treat his condition. This treatment was popular in Europe in the seventeenth century.

^ Elder was considered an effective healer in many European countries. Various beliefs surrounding this plant created legends, such as that the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified was made of elder, and traitor Judas hanged himself on the elder tree too. Contrary to British beliefs, Russian legends tell that the cross on which Jesus was crucified was made from the cypress, but Judas hanged himself on the asp.

^ Slavic people bent young shoots of elder from the tree to the ground and held them there with stones. A sick person with fever was to crawl three times under the arch of the elder’s branches and say, “I cut out my sickness with these three shoots.” The same ceremony was performed in England as well, but instead of the elder, they used the sprouts of an oak or an asp.

^ According to Russian folk beliefs, the elder possessed a magic. The elder’s cane saved and defended a traveler from wicked people and dangerous animals.

158 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

Here’s what the little elder tree mother had to

say in the following interpretation of a Hans

Christian Andersen fairy tale written in 1845.

T hat was no fairy tale,” said the little elder tree mother, “but now it comes!” Real life furnishes us with subjects for the most wonderful fairy tales; for otherwise my beautiful elder bush could not have grown forth from a teapot.

She took the little boy from his bed and placed him on her bosom; the elder branches, full of blossoms, closed over them. It was as if they sat in a thick, leafy bower which flew with them through the air; it was beautiful beyond all description. Suddenly the elder tree mother became a charming young girl with a green dress covered with white blossoms, just as the elder tree mother had worn; she wore an elder blossom on her bosom, and a wreath of the same flowers was wound round her curly golden hair. Her eyes were large and sky blue. Those who gazed into them were mesmerized. She and the boy kissed each other, and then they became the same age and felt the same joys.

They walked about hand-in-hand and then the little girl seized the boy round the waist, and they flew far into the country. It was spring and it became summer, it was autumn and it became winter, and thousands of pictures reflected themselves in the boy’s eyes and heart and the little girl always sang, “You will never forget that!” During their flight the elder tree smelled so sweet for the flowers fixed on the little girl’s bosom lay against the little boy’s face as he rested his head against her and slept soundly throughout the flight.

Sleeping Beauty @ 159

Try the benefits of herbs for sleep, using the following remedies: r 14. Combine one teaspoon of minced elecampane root and one cup cold water. Steep for 10 hours. Filter and drink two ounces four times daily 30 minutes before eating.

r 15.