Calling herb-geeks, take two

[annathepiper]

So here I am in chapter 18 of my book. My poor hero is wounded, but nobly soldiering on, and he's just made an emergency stop at his family home to have an Extremely Awkward Conversation with his mother to hit her up for help and vitally needed information. Mom, seeing that her boy has suffered a rather nasty wound, has not let him take off again without stuffing something he can use to take care of himself in his saddlebags. My question for the herbally inclined on my Friends list is, therefore, what might she give her boy, and how should he use it? Taken orally, or maybe mashed up into a poultice?

Pertinent bits of data for those of you not familiar with Lament of the Dove:

1) Assume a general technology/cultural level roughly equivalent to the late 1700's in real life, although the book is set in my own world. Similar levels of herbal and medical knowledge/awareness should therefore apply.

2) My boy's got a nasty wound in the chest that has been already partially magically healed and also tended by a village doctor who knew what she was doing.

3) Since the aforementioned doctor was being leaned on to give my boy too much laudanum, he's really cranky about taking anything that would overly muddle his wits. He's on a vital mission and needs to keep functional. This means pain control but not any more reduction in mental clarity than absolutely necessary.

4) My boy is a member of a holy Order that also involves military training, so it can be assumed that he knows how to dress his own wound if he needs to.

As with my last question of this nature, this is something that I'm likely to hit only as a passing brief detail, but it's something I'd like to get right. :) Thanks in advance for any useful cluage, folks!

Comments

[apel.livejournal.com]

From what I read, pain control wasn't really on the agenda in herbal medicine until much later. There's willow bark for pain but because it's a salicylate, it will increase bleeding so it's not really recommended for painful wounds.

A poultice of comfrey would work better. Slippery elm can also be used if the setting is on the North American continent.

[baavgai.livejournal.com]

The easy route, your character has little knowledge of treatments, so you needn't either. Seriously, what was the last anitbotic you took? What was it derived from? What was it cut with? Only specialists should know the particulars.

For an external wound, you'd want to cover it with something. Varieties of lichen have often been a covering of choice for numberous reasons. Honey is also good. A wet, sticky, slimy, mossy thing that makes a sucking sound when pulled off would be nice. See, you still don't know what it is, no worries.

I like maggots. They eat necrotic flesh, have been used historically, and give normal people the willies just thinking about them. The nice wound dressing you were given beings to sqirm, don't take it off for three more days!

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

Generally if it's a deep wound you don't really want a goopy salve because you don't want to leave bits of things behind in the wound as it heals. (Once it /has/ been healing from the inside out, then salves are ok. So maybe he's far enough along for that, considering magic and local doctor.) A poultice of the herbs in question combined with hot water would probably be put in a muslin bag and applied to the wound... though if the wound is not deep, the poultice might go directly on the skin. Though if he's riding off immediately, if it's contained in cloth it'll retain heat longer, and also stay in place a little better. Perhaps Mom would send our hero on the way with a couple of spare dry poultices for him to pour some hot water into as the original cooled and opportunity allowed? Hmm.

Calendula is good for all sorts of crazy things, internally and externally. (ulcers, fevers, earaches, cramps, bleeding) For wounds it would be an external application. Usually seen in an ointment.

Comfrey's been used for wound healing since... oh, for millenia, anyway. It has a lot of toxicity issues so Mom probably wouldn't put it in an internal thing, but external it'd be likely.

St. John's wort has been in use for 2,000 years or so. Externally, it can be used on wounds and burns and things. Probably as an oil.

Slippery elm, as mentioned above- poultice.

Vervain/verbena internally can help with minor pain... but it also has a mild tranquilizing effect.

Witch hazel might be put in an ointment to help with healing... most definitely not an internal thing, though.

Yarrow can be used both externally and taken internally to help with wound healing. It's supposed to have a mild pain relieving effect as well- contains some salicylic acid. Achilles supposedly used it on wounded soldiers in the Trojan war. ;)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Dittany of Crete and lamb's ears are both plants with wooly leaves that are good for use as bandages. I send the Royal Beltresin Fleet to sea with lots of dittany, dropping Crete for obvious reasons. If it doesn't break your worldbuilding to have plants from the Americas, lamb's ears have a wonderfully evocative name--they really do look like that, and your reader can imagine from the name that the plant makes a plausible bandage. But lamb's ears are originally from Peru. If I remember correctly, dittany also repels insects. The Revolutionary War medics carried it for bandages, so you see it a lot in gardens at historic sites around here.

[annathepiper]

It's not a real-world setting--I mentioned a tech/cultural level roughly equivalent to the late 1700's because that's the feel I'm shooting for, but the setting is entirely of my own devising. :)

I was looking at comfrey on one of the herbal-related pages I have bookmarked, but wasn't quite certain if it was appropriate to my purpose here. Thanks for the input, I very much appreciate it!

[annathepiper]

Ah, but just because my boy may not necessarily know what's in the poultice his mother gave him doesn't mean I shouldn't. ;) I like to be thorough that way--because if nothing else, if I know what's in there, I can then filter it through his point of view to describe it properly for the reader.

(It's like what we always used to tell people on the MUSHes I played on, when we got folks who wanted to play amnesiac characters as a short-cut for not knowing anything about the background of the game: just because your character doesn't know his or her history doesn't mean you shouldn't.)

I do take your point about how much my boy ought to know, though, and my gut's telling me that's valid. He's not a surgeon or an herbalist, so while he can perform basic first aid on himself, he probably doesn't know much more past that. Poultice vs. oral ingestion was the big thing I needed to settle, though, because that part would certainly be obvious. :)

Also, eew, maggots! Yeah, I remember seeing that little trick pulled in Gladiator. ;)

[baavgai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the maggot trick get's em every time. Spooky thing is, the little wigglers are still (http://www.azstarnet.com/altsn/snredesign/relatedarticles/32600) used. The US FDA even approved them in January of last year, as "a medical device."

Oral versus external wounds therapy is in interesting idea. To my knowledge, there are no strictly internal treatments for a wound. Modern folks like us think about swallowing stuff for anything, but historically people have been far more direct with their solutions. Something curative would definitely be used as a covering. Something might be taken for pain and maybe even a cure all ( chew ginger, coca leaf, drink OJ, it's good for you), but that's extra.

Early Eighteenth Century Healing

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

If you want, I can dig out my reference books (need to, anyway, now that the new carpet is down and the bookcases back in place). However, unless there's continued heavy bleeding or signs of infection, the doctor may have just told him to put a clean bandage on once/twice a day.

Of course, that wouldn't keep his mother from "knowing better." :-)



Stickmaker

[annathepiper]

Tossing in plants from the Americas wouldn't break my worldbuilding at all, as long as they're plants that fit in with the kind of climate that ought to happen in the terrain I'm setting up! "Lamb's ears" does sound pretty nifty, and "dittany" is a neat name as well, though I don't want to swipe that from you!

When you talk about the plants' leaves being used as bandages, though, is this as padding under cloth, or what? Just to be clear on the proper usage.

(Hi, I'm trying to get caught up on my LJ comments tonight!)

Re: Early Eighteenth Century Healing

[annathepiper]

The needs of the plot do not dictate that my boy has to keep bleeding or get infected; just that he has that extra burden of being wounded as he soldiers nobly on through the rest of the book. ;)

As to what the doctor told him--hah. That was on camera, and she didn't have much time to tell him ANYTHING. She's been watched, doncha know.

(Hi, I'm getting caught up on my backlog of LJ comments tonight!)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't feel you were swiping it. If dittany is what's useful to your characters, go ahead and give it to them. Chamomile and comfrey appear in lots of novels, and it never crosses my mind that the authors are stealing from each other.

I don't know much more about the actual use. The leaves are about as long as the width of the hand, so they'd need to be held in place with wrappings of some kind.

[annathepiper]

Cool, thanks all around. I just thought I'd mention that "swiping" thing just because if the thing's proper name is "dittany of Crete", and you shortened it to "dittany", that's the part that feels like "yours". :) But!

[annathepiper]

This thread is old at this point, but I wanted to drop a comment on this anyway and thank you for all these nifty pointers. I've stuck a note to myself to refer back to this thread when I come back through on the third draft pass, so one or more of these details may make it into the book somewhere. Thank you VERY much. :)

[annathepiper]

Hey there! This thread's old at this point, but I wanted to thank you again for chiming in. I've left a note to myself to refer back to this thread when I come back around on the third draft pass, and hopefully I'll be able to use one or more of the details folks have recommended to me here.

And the article's rather fascinating reading as well. I'm rather stunned that people are actually still thinking about things like that--but on the other hand, it's also kind of cool in an "out of the box" kind of way. Even if it's gross. ;)