Weed Wanderings Herbal Ezine with Susun Weed: Weed Wise Recipes
July 2003
Volume 3 Number 7
 

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Weed Wise Recipes...
The treatment of fevers
An excerpt from Nature's Children
by Juliette de Bairacli Levy

The treatment of fevers , pg. 97-101
by Juliette de Bairacli Levy

excerpt from Nature's Children

The treatment of fevers is of great importance, because on this is based all the cures for "children’s ailments," from measles to scarlet fever, chicken pox to whooping cough. I believe there is much truth in old adages, if properly interpreted. One is "feed a cold and starve a fever." This may be explained in several ways. I see it as meaning that if one gives heavy food during a cold, one will soon have to treat a fever. In any case, it seems confirmed that the natural treatment for fever is fasting (starving).

The greatest and wisest statement on fever comes from the Father of Medicine, Hippocrates. His pronouncement was: "Give me a fever and I will cure an ailment." He knew that the heat of fever is there to burn up the invading bacteria and viruses and to support immune activity. It ill serves the patient to try to curtail that fever by unnatural treatment. Fever promotes sweating, fasting and sleep, three good things in any illness.

How well I have seen this proved in animals: The feverish animal hides away in a dark and secluded place and remains without any food until cured. The domestic animal is often fed by force when plagued with a fever, because the owner, in ignorance of Nature’s way, believes that if food is not consumed daily, death will result! Thus, a simple fever often ends in death or in "complications," meaning physical deformity such as lameness or blindness, which are something like living death for an animal.

During fever the body has no energy to expend on food digestion; all the powers are required for combating the condition which is causing the feverish state, for fever is only a symptom of one ailment or another attacking the body. This cannot be said too often.

Therefore chicken pox, diphtheria, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, whooping cough, and all the other fever ailments of childhood, require similar treatment: rest, cleansing, and the giving of natural and vital medicines to assist and strengthen the body--antiseptics in the form of well-tried herbs, and the juices of fruits and vegetables. Serious throat obstruction must be attended to at once, and medical aid sought.

My children never suffered from any of the common ailments of childhood until they attended school. And, because of our frequent travels, frequent school did not come until his tenth year for my son. Then came a time of being crowded into a confined place with many other children, and the place was one where the windows were closed either against the flies in the summertime or the "cold" in wintertime. The typical child's school.

Neither of my children had diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid nor whooping cough, but they did have the other diseases, and were never in need of treatment for longer than a week. A short fast of three days, a few days on a fruit and vegetable juice diet, and then out of bed again. No complications and really improved health! But when the ailments came I welcomed them, for they gave me a chance to impose the short cleansing fasts which all growing creatures need, whether child or animal, and which children are apt to refuse unless unwell.

Growing children must have cleansing periods so their glands and other organs can throw off impurities. Since much of the air we now breathe is impure, and we are lucky to get truly pure water, the natural cleansing processes are not allowed to serve us as well as they used to. If modern vaccines inhibit them, the general health of the body will be vitally impaired.

This is a book concerned with the natural care of children, therefore nothing as unnatural, and unclean, as vaccination can ever have a place within its pages. The only true vaccination against any ailment is good health, and the fever ailments of childhood are only cleansing processes and never do harm if correctly treated.

There is no true need to vaccinate against them. My children, now adult, when in my care never had vaccinations of any kind, despite world travel along with me. By obtaining a paper from a qualified doctor, stating that the parents refuse vaccination on health, religious and moral grounds, and that the family is in good normal health, people should be able to enter any country, including those where vaccination is a condition of entry.

Likewise, I have protected my Afghan hounds from vaccination. I keep my children and animals protected with herbal pills, and have no need of serum taken from artificially diseased and tortured animals. Sentient animals, caged for use of the making of serum, suffer stress beyond description, and at the end of it all they will be killed with that very instrument, the evil hypodermic syringe, which is mostly the chosen, painfilled, frightening method of injecting vaccines into humans. I could write a book about my hatred of vaccination and hypodermic syringes!

To quote from that learned opponent of vaccinations for children, Edda West of Canada, "Our children are not getting healthier. They are being overloaded with environmental toxins that encroach from at large, and from within, as deposited by vaccine-laden hypodermic needles. There is a fundamental flaw in the premise that infant and other young children's health is protected by the injection of toxic substances into their systems."

Similar to the manufacture of armaments, vast fortunes are involved in the manufacture of vaccines. Therefore that trade, as with armaments, is likely to persist for a very long time yet.

As this new edition of my book goes to press at the end of the twentieth century, I heard a strange (indeed incredible) item on the morning TV news concerning immunization against polio (infantile paralysis). While it is admitted that there have been many failures, and that the vaccine has actually caused cases of polio, we are told that it should not be withdrawn from the market, for if it was, this would cause fear in the other countries and the faith in, and demand for, that vaccine would be spoilt.
At the first signs of fever in growing children, I put the child to bed in a cool and shaded room, for fever is one condition where sunlight is unwelcome. Take the temperature with a clinical thermometer, and base the treatment on your reading. Very high fever requires a lemon-water diet only (one tablespoon of lemon juice to a glass of water). Apply cold cloths to the head, and use mint brew or sprinkle lavender water on the head cloths. Sponge the body down night and morning with cloths also dipped in mint water or with lavender water added.

I use one or more of the proven antiseptic herbs such as wormwood, rue, vervain, garlic, wood sage, all of which are the old anti-plague herbs--and (mostly) intensely bitter--in the form of a pill, which I make. It has helped animals the world over, including cattle with foot-and-mouth disease, sheep with contagious scour, dogs with distemper. It may seem odd to recommend the same type of pill for one’s children, but it is logical enough. And parents can make their own.

Prepare Antiseptic Pills as follows: Pound the herb or herbs into a powder or pulp (if the fresh herb is used) and make a paste with thick honey. (Remember that it may be dangerous to give honey to an infant under one year.) Plain wormwood or garlic can be used, or the herbs can be mixed; personally I prefer to use several herbs in the pill. Though the most bitter, wormwood is "the wonder herb." (John the Baptist used the herb so much in his healing work that he carried it with him plaited in a girdle around his body, and one name for this herb is St. John’s Girdle.)

Divide into regular-sized pills, about the size of a common aspirin (which I never use!). Now wrap the pill in a twist of fine tissue paper (peroxide-bleached if at all possible; chlorine-bleached products are not health-promoting) and have the child swallow this whole. I have used my finger to push this pill down the throats of infants and delicate wild birds. I often dosed my pet owls this way, with absolutely no harm, but current opinion is that this could be dangerous. I give two antiseptic pills, night and morning.

When the fever lessens, add some liquid sweetener to the diet: a teaspoon to a glass of lemon water. Give also drinks of anti-fever herb teas: chamomile, red clover, rosemary, sage, sorrel, strawberry leaf, valerian, yarrow, whichever is preferred by the patient; all are good and well proved. Yarrow is dual purpose as it promotes sweating, useful in high fever.

Another adage is "Old people and children fast badly." This is true; therefore do not keep a child fasting overlong. As soon as the really high fever has abated or if the fever is low to begin with, fruit juices can be given, especially citrus juices. Lemon can always be taken; undiluted grapefruit and mandarin juice can be added, orange juice is the least desirable. If citrus is not available, give the juice of any berry.

Among the best are mulberry, raspberry, strawberry, blackberry, black and red currants, gooseberry. First give these healthful and cooling fruits as drinks, but as soon as the child is feeling better the fruits can be eaten whole.

A child in bed is a bored child. This is the time for the pleasure of storytelling and new picture books, and the planning of celebration walks and picnics when health is restored.

For mumps, massage the neck gently with warm vinegar and cayenne pepper (a half teaspoon of cayenne to a cup of vinegar). If there is no fever, give a diet of bananas with a little honey added. (See page 78 for caution about giving honey to infants.) Banana skins bound around the neck also give much help. Do not forget the usefulness here of pine bud syrup (recipe on page 89). The patient will appreciate natural jells of fruit juices. Choose the type made from an agar-agar seaweed base, with honey and fruit juices added as part of the mixing water. Or use Irish moss and again add honey and fruit juices.

The specific remedy for whooping cough is a small, insectivorous plant, sundew (drosera). It grow in marshy places in many parts of the world, and is used in orthodox as well as in herbal medicine for spasm condition. A tablespoon of the fresh herb is pulverized and infused in sweet red wine overnight and given every few hours or as required to quell the spasms.



Excerpt from Nature's Children. The author, Juliette de Bairacli Levy, a respected elder of contemporary herbology, shares practical information and fascinating lore to help you raise healthy children without drugs.

Nature's Children is "A simple well-balanced way of life that brings radiant health and a clear mind. It did so for me, my brother, and now my own child." Luz lancha de Baliracli Levy

In Nature's Children you will find herbal remedies for: mother and father, pregnancy and lactation, infants and children first-aid. Plus, delicious, healthy, child-friendly recipes! Order at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com

 

“In Memory of
Juliette the Grandmother of Herbal medicine”


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Learn more about the author, Juliette de Bairacli Levy

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