The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Hop Tree and Pear

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Today, I tell you about the medicinal use of Ptelea, Hoptree and Pyrus, Pear.  These trees both have medicinal and edible uses.  I also give some advice on mushroom hunting, and update on hurricane recovery in western NC and one of my favorite dessert recipes..The Spring Foraging Cook Book is available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRP63R54Or you can buy the eBook as a .pdf directly from the author (me), for $9.99:https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-spring-foraging-cookbook.htmlYou can read about the Medicinal Trees book here https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2021/06/paypal-safer-easier-way-to-pay-online.html or buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1005082936PS. New in the woodcraft Shop: Judson Carroll Woodcraft | SubstackRead about my new books:Medicinal Weeds and Grasses of the American Southeast, an Herbalist's Guidehttps://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2023/05/medicinal-weeds-and-grasses-of-american.htmlAvailable in paperback on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47LHTTHandConfirmation, an Autobiography of Faithhttps://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2023/05/confirmation-autobiography-of-faith.htmlAvailable in paperback on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47Q1JNKVisit my Substack and sign up for my free newsletter: https://judsoncarroll.substack.com/Read about my new other books:Medicinal Ferns and Fern Allies, an Herbalist's Guide https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/11/medicinal-ferns-and-fern-allies.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BMSZSJPSThe Omnivore’s Guide to Home Cooking for Preppers, Homesteaders, Permaculture People and Everyone Else: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-omnivores-guide-to-home-cooking-for.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGKX37Q2Medicinal Shrubs and Woody Vines of The American Southeast an Herbalist's Guidehttps://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/06/medicinal-shrubs-and-woody-vines-of.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2T4Y5L6andGrowing Your Survival Herb Garden for Preppers, Homesteaders and Everyone Elsehttps://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/04/growing-your-survival-herb-garden-for.htmlhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X4LYV9RThe Encyclopedia of Medicinal Bitter Herbs: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-encyclopedia-of-bitter-medicina.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5MYJ35RandChristian Medicine, History and Practice: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/01/christian-herbal-medicine-history-and.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B09P7RNCTBHerbal Medicine for Preppers, Homesteaders and Permaculture People: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2021/10/herbal-medicine-for-preppers.htmlAlso available on Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B09HMWXL25Podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/show/southern-appalachian-herbsBlog: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/Free Video Lessons: https://rumble.com/c/c-618325

Hey y'all, welcome to this week's show. Well, first of all, James said he wanted me to keep everybody posted on the hurricane situation in Western NC. Things are getting better slowly. Life's getting back to normal as it can. I mean, obviously, with people who have lost loved ones and such, that's not the case. But, you know, things are kind of getting back to normal. I was finally contacted by a FEMA inspector I guess five weeks later so I guess in another month or so I'll know if they're gonna cover any of the damage house and since

we had a freeze now I have frozen pipes too so it's it's fun but a lot of people of course lost everything so I'm not going to complain. And, you know, the bad thing is a lot of people, their claims are being denied. And so if you're listening to this show, if that happens to you, the law is actually, FEMA is supposed to make your house habitable. You know, your homeowner's insurance is not going to cover most of the damage from a hurricane. I mean, tree falling on the house is one thing, you know, but flood damage. If you don't live in a flood area, and normally one does not have that as part of their coverage. And, of course, if you're on the coast, you're probably not going to get any coverage for it anyway

because it is a flood-prone area. So if you do get denied or if you have any trouble, call your congressman, ask for a constituent services representative telling you've been denied. They can put the pressure on the agency to do what they're supposed to do. You can't do it on your own. And I've had so much feedback from people saying, you know, you really shouldn't have to do that. Well, no, you shouldn't have to do that but that's our government at work you know uh this being an election year uh your congressman probably could be a little more motivated uh to help you out you know uh you can either say i just voted for you or um if it's next week and they

lost the new person coming in we'll be hiring a whole new staff, and they'll be very eager to help people, actually. And I think, I would say most people don't even know that's a possibility. But whenever you have any problem, when I worked for a congressman up in Virginia, he had about two, three people on staff that just helped people with disability claims that had been denied. A lot of veterans' issues as well. A lot of stuff with

the VA and benefits. And, you know, that is actually their job. They actually get paid to do that. So, you know, reach out. Worst they can do is tell you no, right? But if they tell you no, then you tell them you're going to tell all your neighbors and they're not going to get reelected. So only person I've ever encountered that was like that was a guy that worked for Senator Tom Tillis. And let me tell you, I've got nothing good to say about Senator Tom Tillis. I actually called the office just to ask a question, and the guy started cussing me out, literally. Tillis is not a good guy, not a good guy at all. And the people that work for him seem to represent that, at least those that I have encountered.

Maybe you have a different view of him, but, you know, I used to be able to call up Jesse Helms and, no problem, right? Call Tillis' office and someone starts screaming and cussing at me just because I asked a question about some proposed legislation and how it was going to affect the people in North Carolina. And wow. OK, so anyway, now let's get on with the show. Oh, and to be fair, I did then call a different office. They put me in touch with his like main chief of staff guy in D.C. who was very apologetic. So I should not smear the entire organization just on one bad experience. But, you know, keep in mind, if at first you don't succeed, try again. Now, let's talk about our tree for the week.

We'll get a couple of them. But, well, I don't know. We'll see how much time we have. The second one is really long. Okay, so maybe we'll do a short show this time. Or I can find a shorter entry that I can put in second place. This is, I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce the Latin name. It's like patella or something.

I don't know if the P is silent. I never know with stuff like that. But you probably know it as hop tree. Now, hop tree is actually a pretty interesting tree. It's been used, at least three varieties have documented use in herbal medicine. Been used for a very interesting tree. It's been used at least three varieties have documented use in herbal medicine. It's been used for a very long time and it's actually a member of the Rue family, believe it or not. The fruit of the tree was used in place of hops as a bittering and preserving agent for beer. It was used before they started using hops around 1100.

It was used when you didn't have hops. Well, as far as the medicinal uses, we're going to start with ancient Greece, actually, Dioscorides. So he wrote that the leaves, branches, and bark of, I'm going to say, patellia, maybe patellia. We're going to go with hop tree. I'll just try to say it in the common name from now on. Are all astringent.

The leaves pounded into small pieces mixed with vinegar and so applied are good for leprosy and to heal wounds. But especially the bark if it is wrapped around like a bandage, for it is flexible like a girdle. Now, that's unique. I mean, that's's you know in a survival situation if you can identify that tree that could be extremely useful uh decoction of the leaves uh i mean the culture of the leaves or the bark of the root applied with hot cloths cloths consolidates by drawing a callium that means means a hard skin, over the fracture of a bone sooner. The moisture which is found in the bladders of the undeveloped fruit

at their first sprouting clears the face when rubbed on it. Oh and this is interesting, the moisture actually of the fruit apparently really attracted like fruit flies and back in ancient Greece they thought that the the the gnats as they called them were actually being produced by the tree so you know they just didn't have all the information yet right but the newly emerged leaves are used for a sauce like vegetables so very very interesting, you know, edible use and some ancient medicinal use. Let's skip ahead a couple thousand years. Resources of Southern Fields and Forests written by a French botanist for the Confederacy in the 1860s said that the

Petalia triflata, that's the one that really grows in my area. We just call it hop tree. He said it was found from Florida to North Carolina. And he said it's a small genus of the trees, and it's actually more like a shrub. And it was peculiar, or specifically grows in America and India. And found it to be anthelmintic which means helps get rid of intestinal worms and such parasites strong infusion of the leaves and

young shoots being used the fruit is aromatic and bitter and is stated to be a good substitute for hops of course in early America they didn't have hops they weren't growing now there are wild hops in America but to the best of my knowledge they weren't in use in colonial times. And so I guess by the Civil War, they were growing hops, but they were still substituting if they didn't have them. King's American dispensatory of 1898 says hop tree is tonic and surpassed in this line only by hydrastis used as an in that means it's a in this case tonic is going to be good for digestion good for the stomach used after intermittent fevers and remnant fevers in all cases of debility where tonics are indicated so helps strengthen the stomach after a severe illness also said to be anthelmintic which we just discussed equal parts of hop tree and another one I have trouble pronouncing I believe

we've discussed euonymus before not much used anymore let me think euonymus I believe that's wahoo wahoo was used a lot in Cherokee herbal medicine and by early America I think it also includes like burning bush or, yeah, if I'm not mistaken. A little toxic. You want to be careful with that one. So, you know, probably would not combine it with equal parts of this were it me. But had been found very useful in pulmonary affections. And that's actually what Wahoo was used for, was for pulmonary issues.

pulmonary affections and that's actually what wahoo was used for was for pulmonary issues a tincture of hop tree made in whiskey is reputed to have cured several cases of asthma and is said in many instances where it has been used said to cause in many instances where it's been used a troublesome external erysipelas inflammation but if the tincture be persisted in, it finally disappears and the patient becomes at the same time permanently cured of the disease for which he was treated. This would certainly indicate other valuable properties of this plant than those which we are acquainted with, which deserve further investigation. And at this point, Professor I.E. Jones stated that the bark is a pure, unirritating tonic, having a rather soothing influence when applied to irritated mucous membranes.

He has also, so it would not be at all a contact dermatitis. I guess it was just an allergic reaction to the tincture. He has also employed it advantageously in convalescence after fevers and inability connected with the gastroenteric irritation. It promotes appetite, enables the stomach to endure subtle nourishment, favors the early re-establishment of digestion, and will be tolerated by the stomach when other tonics are rejected. He employed it in a cold infusion, that's a tea of a half fluid ounce given every two, three, or four hours, depending on the circumstance. It is also said to cure

intermittent fever and is considered by some to be the equal to quinine. Well, that's very useful, especially in this day and time. Maybe used as a powder, tincture, or extract dose of the powder. And under specific indications, they say asthmatic breathing, chronic disease with a sense of constriction in the chest, and short breathing. Now, the only thing I should clarify, until recently, very recently, most all asthma was spasmodic asthma and many herbs have antispasmodic properties. Like we talked about the wild cherry bark last week. I'm assuming this is very similar to that. this is very similar to that. Basically since at least the 60s and 70s we started getting so many toxins in our environment from the you know the crap they put on our food to a lot of you know microplastics and petrochemicals and such. I mean the fumes that come from carpet can even cause people to have an inflammatory asthma.

And I actually developed that at a young age. I've been treating inflammatory asthma basically my entire life. Mine's not spasmodic at all, but I get inflammation and I get, well, I get congestion. And I shouldn't say not at all because with a severe attack, the lungs do spasm for anybody. But so anyway, a lot of the old cures are specifically for spasmodic asthma as opposed to inflammatory asthma. So I can't say for sure on this one. The cherry bark works for both, by the way. According to Plants for Future, medicinal use of hop tree, the root bark

is anthelmintic, antibacterial, antiperiodic, stomatic, and tonic. It has been mixed with other medicines in order to give it an added potency. It has a soothing influence on the mucous membranes and promotes the appetite being tolerated when other tonics cannot be retained. It also is taken in the treatment of intermittent fevers, such as with malaria, heartburn, roundworm, intermittent fevers such as malaria, I guess also for heartburn, roundworms, pinworms, and poor digestion. They left out a punctuation there. What's that joke? You know, commas are important. You see the same sentence, let's eat, comma, grandma. The other one just says, let's eat grandma. Of course, they have,

you know, two totally different meanings. And it says, don't be a cannibal, use your commas. But anyway, the roots are harvested in the autumn and the bark peeled off for later use. Externally is applied to wounds. The roots are tonic, used for the treatment of asthmatic breathing, fevers, poor appetite. The leaves are said to be useful in the treatment of wounds and also in the destruction of intestinal worms. Peterson Field Guide to Central and Eastern Medicinal Plants says, American Indians added the root to strengthen other medicines. Historically used by physicians as a tonic, surpassed only by golden seal.

That was the hydrastis we mentioned. Golden seal was over-harvested. It became a very valuable plant. We don't use it much anymore in herbal medicine unless we grow it ourselves because it almost went extinct. But Oregon grape grows like everywhere. And it has the same alkaloid, berberine. It has the same berberine in the root.

If you pull up an Oregon grape and kind of strip it down a little bit, you'll see that the root is very yellow. And there's also a gold thread, copsis, I think. That's actually a small, almost like a wildflower that also contains it. So we do have other alternatives to golden seal. And if I'm not mistaken, well, I'm sure it's true, also barberry, you know, Oregon grape and Japanese barberry and different ornamental plants that are often, those are cousins, actually, so they would have the same property. But yeah, you can probably find that one if you can't get golden seal. But anyway, used for asthmatic breathing, fevers, poor appetite, gastroenteritis, irritated mucous membranes. A tea of the young leaves and shoots was once considered useful as a worm experiment. What might they have meant in place expectorant?

The bitter, slightly bitter aromatic fruits were once used as a substitute for hops in the manufacture of beer. I think I can give one more here. It's a short entrance. It's pyrus or pear, and the pear is, of course, absolutely delicious, one of my absolute favorite fruits. Just a little medicinal use, and yeah, we'll wrap it up there. D.S. Corides wrote, there are many kinds of pears, and they are all astringent, and it is therefore fit to be put into repellent poultices. A decoction

of the dried ones, or if they are taken raw, stops discharges of the intestines. But if they are eaten, they hurt those who eat them while fasting. In other words, if you've ever been a kid and ate a bunch of perhaps not completely ripe fruit on an empty stomach, yeah, you will get a stomach ache. So you know what he's talking about. There was a wild pear that he said took longer to ripen, and it was more astringent than the pear that they were normally growing for fruit. And that is true. Yeah, I mean, there are so many different varieties of pear. We have, I guess, two naturalized in my region, Bradford and what they call the common pear. And, yeah, the Bradford would be, to me, a little more stringent than the pears you see usually in the grocery store. Yeah, we had a big Bradford pear tree, you know, when I was a kid in my grandparents' house.

And much more flavorful than a lot of the pears you get from the grocery store. But actually those little Bartlett pears, those awful ornamental Bartlett pear trees that everybody, that stink so bad in the spring and they actually smell like rotting fish. They have those little tiny pears, right? Those are actually edible. If you get them when they're ripe before the birds eat them, you could actually make a dessert out of them or press them to make a pear cider. However, just like in apples and many other fruits, like the cherry pits we were talking about last week, they contain, is it cyanide? Yeah, just in very small, or is it strychnine? I think it's cyanide. Anyway, just in very, very small amounts, but that's not a big deal when you're eating a full-sized pear. If you've gathered up like 500 tiny little barlet pears,

and you're going to try to press them or you're going to try to make fruit out of them, you would be ingesting a far greater quantity of the seeds or anything that was pressed out of the seeds or cooked out of the seeds. So if you do that, you really do want to take the seeds out. It's very tedious. Most people wouldn't do it, but if you were starving, it would be certainly worth the effort to pull out your Swiss army knife and start picking those seeds out of there and eat enough of them just to, you know, give you some energy and some calories, you know. But anyway, that wild pear, he says, is more astringent and as a result is good for the same purposes. he says, is more astringent, and as a result, is good for the same purposes.

The leaves, though, are also astringent, and ashtray in the wood actively helps those suffocated from eating mushrooms. Wow, what does that mean? Well, somebody ate a poisonous mushroom, and the ashtray in the wood would help. That makes sense. We use charcoal for a lot of things when it comes to helping with toxins and poisons, things that people have eaten that they shouldn't eat. Charcoal is actually very good. They would be making charcoal from it. However, he does not say which mushroom it is. And I forage for mushrooms. That's actually how I got into foraging and herbalism.

I started foraging for mushrooms when I was like 10 years old with just an autobahn field guide from the library. Nobody told me what to do. So even at that age, I thought the best thing to do would be to learn the poisonous ones first. And we got a lot of poisonous mushrooms in North America. The Amanita, the destroying angel, that one, you take a little bite of that and it will liquefy your liver it will absolutely kill you usually you'll get sick you'll have some diarrhea and throw up you think you're getting better then your liver quits and you're dead so I'm not going to recommend anything for that except they've proven in Germany that milk thistle extract is liver protective, and they've saved a lot of lives. And it's starting to get some traction here in America among doctors who are open to natural cures,

because there's really no cure for Amanita poisoning. Pretty bad stuff, actually. And then there are other, like we have one of the most poisonous mushrooms in the world right here in North Carolina. It's one of the few places it grows and it's actually called a gompfus. It is, I mean, it's an awful name for an awful mushroom, really. It's unique because it's actually brass colored and you can't mistake it for anything else. So anyway, if you're going to get into mushroom hunting, I absolutely say learn the poisonous ones first. And don't eat them raw. You actually don't get any nutritional value from raw mushrooms, basically.

You really do need to cook your mushrooms. Some mushrooms that have a slight toxicity when raw are not toxic when they're cooked. You can learn that. Many mushrooms, well, a few that I know of right off the top of my head should not be combined with alcohol ink caps or shaggy mane will actually prevent the liver from processing the alcohol and so like you take one drink and suddenly you're blind drunk and throwing up and can even drive a diet of alcohol poisoning I mean I'm just a little glass of wine with your meal because your liver cannot process it yeah Yeah, mushrooms fascinate me.

Right before the hurricane, I figured, hey, this big rainstorm is coming in. I better go harvesting mushrooms to see in the yard and the woods around me. And because really a hurricane often triggers, that barometric pressure will trigger a big flush of mushrooms. And it did, as usual. So there were a lot of king boletes. We want the best right well we also have a mushroom that grows in the same region that looks identical to King bullets from the top you actually basically have to pick it look at the stem now it grows in different types shapes and sizes so

it's not always true but in my basket without being you know i was in a hurry i wasn't really paying attention i had only harvested some of those king bolets but i also got a variety called american coelius and um and it was already starting to rain so they were both wet i couldn't tell them apart just by touching or just by looking at the top the The Sewellius actually has a, like a slime to it that causes contact dermatitis. Very rare. It doesn't grow in most places, but in a few spots in North Carolina and Georgia and different places, you will find it. And so I'm processing my mushrooms. I'm like, oh, that's not a king. They have these, they're called porcinis in Italy. They have these nice thick stems,

and the Sewellius is a thin stem, and I'm starting to like trim them up and look at them, and I'm like, oh, I got something else in here, what is that? It was vaguely familiar, you know, so I started sorting them out, and suddenly my hands turned beet red, and anything, anywhere else my hands had touched, like I touched my my cheek and I mean fire red uh no discomfort whatsoever actually it's just really weird I mean I don't know well maybe a little tingly a little itchy you know that kind of thing um faded away within about four hours I would say you cannot wash that slime off your skin I mean you wash with soap and water just will not come off had it been a dry day had I been paying more attention, wouldn't have happened.

So remember the old saying, there are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters. There are no old, bold mushroom hunters. So even if you think, even if you've been doing it for years, you've got to still be very, very careful. There are a couple poisonous lookalikes from morels. They don't look very much like morels at all if you see them side by side, but yeah, you can make mistakes even with something as simple as a morel. And the kings and that Seulius, they're both boletes. And generally speaking, boletes are like the least toxic of all the mushroom species. There's only like, I mean, there are like 10,000 different types of boletes.

And to the best of my knowledge, there are less than 10 that are poisonous. And I happen to just pick the only one that gives you dermatitis. And really, I could have mistaken it easily for another type of bolete that grows right in my backyard called a slippery jack. There are slippery jacks and slippery jill. both have that slimy texture right and i could have picked them right alongside that those are actually delicious when handled and cooked properly there's uh some well in some regions like in california they say they're no good or the but in like oregon and where i live they're one of my absolute favorites so anyway that's just a word of caution and always keep some milk thistle extract on hand i mean just

not only is it really good for your liver um it also has some antiviral properties so but you know could actually save your life but um you'd have to take a lot of it in a very strong concentration if you did actually eat like the destroying angel which is a really common mushroom um looks a lot like uh the the agaricus white button mushrooms you get in the store right um but and it grows like in everybody's lawn uh it's actually deadly poisonous not i mean it yeah the only reason i would say not as poisonous as the gompfus is because you can actually handle destroying angels. You're not going to absorb toxin through the skin. Like if you just wanted to, I don't know, touch them for some reason. I'm not sure why you would.

But that gompfus is actually, you can absorb toxins through skin and make you very sick. And if you ate it, it would certainly kill you so anyway don't touch a mushroom that has a brass colored or gold colored cap and i mean metallic shiny it's the weirdest looking thing so anyway where were we um um and oh and he also said that if some say and this is when you've got a an herbal writer says say, you know it's probably a myth. He says, some say that if anyone boils wild pears together with mushrooms, they become harmless. Not with the species that we're talking about. No.

So, about a thousand years after that, St. Hildegard von Bingen wrote, and I've been told it's not von Bingen. Apparently it's von Bingen, but I don't speak German, so I'm probably going to keep mispronouncing it. I'm sure there are plenty of German speakers in the audience that have been annoyed with me and have been too kind to complain, which actually isn't a German characteristic. But hey, anyway, I grew up with a lot of Germans in the mountains of North Carolina. I have actually a fondness for the culture and the food, a fondness for the food like you would not believe.

And with the culture, especially the Black Forest region, those are great people, just funny and usually great craftsmen and musicians and everything but man german and swiss food i mean that was such a treat um you know mountains in north carolina in the 70s and 80s it was still that alpine theme and we had a big ski industry so people from the french alps and the swiss alps and the german i mean and man, did I learn to love sauerkraut and sausages? Oh, boy. Anyway, they have a way with pork. I am telling you. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, those big cutlets. What do you call them? You pound out the meat thin. You take like a big pork cutlet and you just pound it out thin and bread it. And, oh, man, fry it up crispy. That is, oh, yeah. bread it and oh man fry it up crispy that is oh yeah anyway she said that the pear tree is to the apple tree as the liver is to the lungs for just as the liver it is stronger and more useful and indeed more harmful than the apple and she may have actually been talking about the

poison content in the seeds which they wouldn't have understood at all in 1080 AD when she was writing this. But she also found it particularly irritating to her stomach, and she didn't really like to eat pears at all. Only cooked. She did not recommend raw pears, which I love, but I also love cooked pears and pear preserves and pear brandy and pear, they call it peri, It's like a pear cider. It's delicious.

Anyway, she actually said if you ate it raw, it could give you a migraine headache. I don't know. Maybe she had some allergy. I have no idea. It apparently also gave her lung congestion. So, yes, she probably did have an allergy. But anyway, she says anyone who eats pears should place them in water or roast them on a fire. Anyway, she says anyone who eats pears should place them in water or roast them on a fire.

Boiled pears are better than those roasted since the warm water gradually cooks out the harmful sap which is in them. I don't use any harmful sap in them, actually. And she said they roast too quick on the fire. She just liked them slow cooked. But let's see if she's got some medical information here she did say yeah for cook pears that they would seek out any rotten manner diminish it and break it up nevertheless they give him good digestion since they remove the rotten matter the fruit is easily digested and yeah she did recommend coring them so

they did know there was an issue with the seeds cook them vigorously in water and take a little fennel and a little less galangal. And that's an interesting herb. It's in the same family as ginger and turmeric. It was very popular in Europe at this time. Licorice, a bit less than galangal. And savory, a bit less than the licorice. And if you do not have fennel, use hog fennel and root, reduced to a powder. Mix it with the others and put them in a bit of warm honey.

Add the prepared pears. Mix this well and place in a small container and every day eat one small spoonful before breakfast, and two spoonfuls with a meal and three at night. This electory is very good and more precious than gold since it carries away migraine and diminishes vapor which raw pear may create in a person's chest. It consumes all bad humors in a person and so cleanses the person just as a vessel is washed of its impurities. Hey, and it sounds delicious. I mean, that would be some really good pear preserves. I may have to give that one a try.

I mean, that would be some really good pear preserves. I may have to give that one a try. Gerard in 1500s England, he also said, nope, don't eat uncooked pears. I mean, amazing. I don't know why pears upset their digestion so much. But anyway, he said they were unctuous and sour and harsh, especially the wild pears. Well, you know, I don't know, English taste. He said that pears are cold and have a binding quality and an earthy substance,

and that the choke pears, that would probably be more like the Bartlett's, the little ones, are more harsh and the sweet ones are less. The harsh and austere pears may with good success be laid upon hot swellings in the beginning, as may the leaves of the tree, which do both cool and bind. Wine made of the juice of pears in England called perry, and it's delicious, by the way. My grandfather was, you know, a winemaker, and he had the big pear tree there for a reason. It's absolutely delicious. Perry is soluble, purges those that are not accustomed to drink thereof, especially when it is new. In other words, he said it would work as a pretty good laxative.

Notwithstanding, it is a wholesome drink being taken in small quantities, as with wine. It comforteth and warmeth the stomach and causeth good digestion. About a hundred years later, Culpeper also described it as a very cold tree. He said it was a tree that belongs to Venus, which is what he meant in that regard. He said all sweet and luscious sorts of pear, whether they be manured or wild or cultivated or found in the wild, do help to move the belly downward more or less. In other words, a good laxative. Those that are hard and sour, however, do the contrary and bind the belly very much as the leaves do also. So unripe fruit could be used to, or the leaves could be used for diarrhea. I'll skip forward a little bit of his lore here which you

know I love but he also said that about boiling pears with mushrooms make them less dangerous which I don't think is good advice whatsoever. He said that said pears boiled with a little honey helped the much oppressed stomach as do all sorts of them some more some less but the harsh sorts do more cool and bind, serving well to be bound to green wounds, to cool and stay the blood, and to heal up a green wound without further trouble or inflammation. As Galus saith, he found by experience, the wild pears do sooner close up the lips of green wounds than others. It's very interesting. But Irish tradition, they said,

pears stop diarrhea, can also be applied fresh to green wounds, which they heal. And actually, that's it. I don't have any more modern medicinal uses for pears. I think we got the gist of it. You know, unripe ones and leaves,

good to stop diarrhea and apply to wounds. Ripe ones, good to use, you know, kind of as fibers, you know, a laxative like you might eat some raisin bran or something or take some psyllium or whatever. But I do like St. Hildegard's pear preserve recipe. Man, that would be good. Pears and honey are such a perfect combination as well. And I'll give you one of my favorite recipes. And this is a real common old French recipe. You know, probably came down from my family. You know, my family's about half French. And it's really good. It's just pears stewed or cooked, basically whole, in red wine. And you usually would add a little bit of honey to

that and a little bit of clove and the red wine turns the pear red all the way through and it softens it and really delicious a lot of people just eat them plain like that or they'll put it on like some cake or you can actually keep reducing that wine down and make it into a nice thick syrup. Put that over it. Or put it over some vanilla ice cream. And I am telling you, pears cooked in red wine with a little honey and clove, you can spice it any way you want. If you could leave out the clove, you could put in cinnamon.

You could do whatever you want, right? A little vanilla if that's your thing. That might be good, you know. But anyway, reduce that down you can use sugar in place of honey and use it as a syrup over ice cream and i'm telling you that is some good stuff that is really good right there and uh you'll pay a lot for that dish in a french restaurant a whole lot often served with chocolate and such um you can make it at home yourself if you have a pear tree well Well, the fruit's free.

Like I said, you can use sugar or honey and just an inexpensive bottle of red wine. You don't have to buy the expensive stuff, just anything that's tolerable to drink because you'll be cooking it down and combining it with other flavors. So, you know, for a dish you probably spend a good, I don't even know, you know, with inflation, it's hard for me to even ballpark. I'm going to say 10 to 20 bucks for a dessert in a nice restaurant. You can make it at home for what? A quarter, 25 cents per serving if you source it and you're going to really enjoy it. And, you know, could have a little medicinal value as well. So anyway, y'all, have a great week, and I'll talk to you next time.

The information in this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition. Nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The U.S. government does not recognize the practice of herbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating herbalists. Therefore, I'm really just a guy who studies herbs. I'm not offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or true.

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