Slides from my recent classes at University of Atlantia

 Poisons and how to avoid them from Antiquity to the Renaissance-

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQYv1f9DX0PLZTQYU-457P8cAN9FT1KyUndAOfN9pnhnwPWi4phz5_5STwoZtwMBkA94GgtN2sSJ80c/pub?start=true&loop=true&delayms=10000

Brew your own Theriac (or electuary, probably, because we don't want to be poisoned)-

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQqo29-VtHCaB2CqpBpNJZ9lIwtzijZvG-K2dyokL3hGzr3IWDDaR3VnaQOnsxKQArpOliK8ArQyD3u/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=10000

Cannabis sativa from antiquity to the Middle Ages

I wrote this as a bit of a giggle for my local SCA newsletter. I am not advocating for the use of Cannabis sativa for psychotropic purposes, but I do believe that we should be using the fibre in place of wood. It also makes pretty good shirts.

Medieval plant dyes (and modern)

As long as you have red, yellow and blue you can mix and match to make almost any colour. Some of these dye plants are more resistant to fading in sunlight or getting washed out of the fibre than others.

Any plant name that is in bold is a perennial (or biennial).

Red - 

Medieval European- Madder (Rubia tinctoria), Lady's Bedstraw/Cleavers (Galium verum)

Other- Amaranth (Hopi red dye), Dyer's Alkanet, Henna (Lawsonia inermis) (shrub), Joe Pye Weed, Dyer's Woodruff (Asperula tinctoria), Brazilwood (tree)

Orange - 

Medieval European- any yellow + Madder, or just Madder itself

Other- Dyer's Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), Orange Cosmos, Black Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldstrum') (edges into dull yellow)

Dye, you fool!

Madder and dyer's chamomile. Dyer's chamomile smells just like chamomile tea, so my daughter didn't hate this as much as weld. Thank goodness she wasn't around for the woad.

I always used to get orange out of madder, but I've got the hang of it now. This is the madder with dyer's chamomile. The picture doesn't do the colour any justice. It's a quite nice tangerine.

First Attempt at Mead

It takes me a long time to work myself up to trying something new. I'm always worried that I'll mess it up and end up having wasted my time and money. However, in this case, everything is either cheap or reusable.

I keep bees, and earlier this summer I was trying to do something with one of my hives (I can't remember what now), and I ended up with a frame of unfinished honey. This honey smells a little off, but it's perfectly safe to eat. I suspect there were some odd flowers or something that went into this batch. It just doesn't taste very good in my tea.

So, I saved it in the fridge until I was ready to try making mead. I have enough of that honey to probably make just about five gallons of this stuff.

More mead thoughts

As is usually the case I'm not the first person to have thought about the medieval way of making mead. I came across a great post in a forum recently that really clears up all my questions. This is the kind of mead that I'm going to be making at the end of the week-

Some thoughts on mead and pre-industrial bee keeping

So, in a lot of mead recipes there's the direction to boil the honey with water and skim off the scum, which sterilizes it a bit and removes impurities. With modern beekeeping methods there's very little in the way of impurities, so this always seemed like a slightly redundant step to me. Until two days ago when I had to clean up a mess I let build up in a hive, and I ended up with almost 2kg of honey, and the associated wax... and a bunch of dead bees in it. Pro tip- bees are busy little creatures, and if you leave a bit of extra space on top for any reason they will build right up into it lickety-split.

More advanced topics- Soil pH

As I learned from my daughter's grade 8 science class notes pH stands for potential of Hydrogen, and it's determined by measuring the number of hydrogen ions. Water has a neutral pH with a balanced number of hydronium and hydroxide ions. This pH is measured as 7. Anything less is acidic and anything above is basic (or alkaline). Lemon juice is 2.2 pH, so it is highly acidic. The best range for plants is between 5.5 to 7.5 (so acidic is better than alkaline), although some plants have evolved to survive in soils outside of that range (like Arabian coffee and highbush blueberry).

Betony- the 'detoxing cure' of the middle ages

I bought two betony plants from Vesey's last year, and put them in a nice, sunny place in my garden, thinking that herbs like sun. Obviously. Unfortunately, I nearly killed the poor plants through lack of education. Betony is a forest plant that enjoys shade. When I realized that the plants were looking beaten down, and just weren't thriving I finally did the research on them that I should have done in the first place.
Ah, well. They survived.
And this year they're looking extremely perky already, and much more like the illustrations of the plant that I've seen in medieval herbals. The next plan is to be my own guinea pig and make some tea. From everything I've read there doesn't seem to be any toxicity problems, unlike angelica which you apparently really shouldn't eat if you're pregnant because it might possibly cause uterine contractions, so it's not allowed to be in any commercially sold food in Canada... Who knew?

In the SCA my current persona is sort of nebulously Anglo-Saxon/Norse, and about the year 900-ish. Really, I just like the comfy clothing, the bling styles, and the history is interesting. Also, I am very interested in the history of medicine and gardening. It's a fascinating period where information of all kinds was becoming much more freely available through the networks of the monasteries and increasing trade. The Anglo-Saxon (Old English) herbals are an interesting mixture of fact and folklore.

I just hope that this herb tastes better than horehound...


http://blog.metmuseum.org/cloistersgardens/2011/06/24/beneficent-betony/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stachys_officinalis

Natural dyes

I've been experimenting with natural dyes this week. I bought a 100% lambswool twill blanket at a thrift store for $6 and made it into a Skjolenham hood and an Anglo-Saxon jacket. Unfortunately, it was beige. I dislike beige. Intensely. So, I thought that I could try re-dyeing it.

That was this week's experiment.

I tried the hood first because it was smaller, and I would be less unhappy if it failed horribly. I used powdered weld extract, and it came out a gorgeous dark spring green. Considering I used weld to colour and alum as a mordant it should have come out yellow. I suspect that the original mordant on the blanket was copper (which turns weld green).

Next was the jacket, and it wasn't as much of a success. I suspect that the larger volume of cloth in my kettle (ie. canning pot) made the movement of both mordant and dye a bit more constricted. As well, I was using ground up madder root, and I possibly didn't let it 'extract itself' long enough before putting in the cloth on the first attempt. So, it came out a bit motley. I washed it thoroughly in the washing machine and tried again. It came out a much more uniform colour. It may have gotten a bit too warm as it has an orange-ish tinge to it, also, the probably use of copper as the first dye mordant would have done that as well. I did find my dye thermometer afterwards, though, which is good. I won't have to guess at any future temperatures for dyeing.

The joys of moving.

With this warm weather my saffron popped up. I hope they can weather this weather and last until fall... *sigh* I've nick-named that grey squirrel that lives in my backyard 'Stew'... Because that's what I'm going to make him into eventually when I snap because he's eating my saffron bulbs and other things that he likes... The chicken wire is slowing him down a bit, thankfully.

Yet more on horehound

Since the horehound seemed to be effective I decided to start looking up *why*. There's been a lot of work lately on ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology and whether traditional folk cures actually work or not. Unsurprisingly, some of them actually are effective to a certain degree. Horehound was amongst some of the best that I have researched so far.

In the study referenced below the essential oil was distilled from the 'aerial parts' (ie. the leaves and stems) of Marrubium vulgare (horehound) and that was tested on various types of bacteria and fungi in vitro (ie. dropped onto culture plates of the bacteria, etc. and then studied). To distill it down to a sound-byte- Yes. It's very effective against two kinds of bacteria that make your throat sore, plus one kind of fungus that makes people feel sick. Plus, it slows down a few other kinds of bacteria. So, without knowledge of the scientific causes of sickness it would have been useful in quite a few instances to alleviate sore throats. I don't know how technical people want me to get with this... I could go into more detail, but I don't want to bore anyone. Basically, horehound was much more effective against gram+ bacteria than gram-. Also, it's a pretty good source of anti-oxidants, and it reduces inflammation and swelling.

Keeping bees

I've decided to go in with a few friends and keep a hive of honeybees- only one for this first year because it's a bit expensive to start. It's illegal to use the medieval-style of hives (because they aren't as good for bee health), so I'll be using the modern Langstroth variety. It's the most popular and has the most information for beginners. If all goes well we might add another hive next year.

I admit that I'm a bit daunted and nervous. There will eventually be a LOT of bees. There are so many things that can go wrong. Bees have been under an unprecedented amount of stress from disease and parasites. I don't think they've had so much to deal with at once in all their 40 million year history.

Those pictures of foulbrood that I've seen on the 'net turn my stomach. If that happens I might just set the whole hive alight... Unfortunately, that's the best method of keeping the bee-eating bacteria from spreading to other hives and wild bees. The second best method is burning the frames and thoroughly scorching the inside of the hive bodies. The spores live up to 40 years in a dormant state. Once a colony has it, that colony is dead. I refuse to administer antibacterial treatments which become something you have to give that colony indefinitely. That's just breeding a super-bug. Plus, it gets into the honey you will be eating. Again, breeding super-bugs and damaging your own immune system. No thanks.

In my head I have this beautiful idea of a large garden of flowers, herbs and vegetables, drenched in sunshine and humming with bees. It's my idea of heaven on earth, actually. Hopefully, one day I'll be able to have that.

Planning for the spring

All the seed catalogs have started coming in already, but there's still a month and a half before I can start planting anything. This is the long, dark teatime of the gardener's soul.

But, on the up-side, my horehound and marshmallow are surviving in their pots, and my Meyer lemon tree is getting leaves again. It looked quite strange for a while with three green lemons and no leaves. It needs a better location, but that's the best window in the house. It also needs to be re-potted. Maybe in the spring when I can do that all outside. Our living room is much too small to deal with all that dirt. I'll have to wait until we get our new house to plant out the horehound. Or, maybe I could start a new plant and give this one away. It's a perennial, so it would make a pretty, low shrub in someone's garden. I don't want to leave it here, as the people who buy the place are 99.99999% unlikely to appreciate it.

I've found a whole new genre of YouTube channels- British people who vlog about their allotments. It's adorable, and makes me yearn for a milder climate. Putting in potatoes on the first of April? That would be insanity in Southern Ontario. I also learned a better method for growing leeks- use a dibber to make a 6" hole and place the small plant inside with the first leaves poking out the top. Don't fill it in, just water it. The hole will gradually fill in on its own and leave room for the stem to get nice and big. I'll have to try that this year.

Herbs for digestion for Lucia

Here is a listing of herbs from the Old English Herbal which deal with anything related to digestion and the abdomen. At the start of each herb I will list the plant as it is in the book- modern name, scientific name, Latin or Greek name, and then Anglo-Saxon.

Just an FYI- I have not looked into the toxicity of most of these plants, and I do not recommend them at all for the conditions described. And some of them, I know for a fact, are deadly poisonous and have no medical qualities at all.

This is offered as a historical curiosity, not for medical use.

Anglo-Saxon Herbal Remedies- class notes

A class given by Muirenn ingen Morgair at War of the Trillium, A.S. 50

 

Egypt, Greece, and the Classical Tradition of Medicine In Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia 

 

Illness was seen as a manifestation of a god’s anger or possession by demons or ghosts, as shown by the Ebers and Hearst papyri. The goal of the healer was to appease the god through sacrifices or drive out the possessing demon by applying or getting the patient to ingest substances which the demon found repugnant (like feces).