Many of us know the adage from Hippocrates about letting food be our medicine; medicine be our food. I have often said about the other end of the spectrum that the difference between medicine and poison is one of dosage.
Recently, I learned experientially what I was talking about. I was far away from home and my apothecary with an infection in my mouth*. I had tried a whole slew of things but none seemed to be the answer.
Then I saw a big poke plant (Phytolacca) and thought about making a poultice for inside my mouth...
I picked three green leaves surprised not to smell the Phytolaccine that is usually very strong in older plants. I started cautiously with two leaves, crushing them and placing them on the wound. It was not nearly as intense as I imagined (and hoped for) and soon I added the third leave. I did not swallow the leaves, but their mellowness relaxed me some. I chewed on the poultice and kept it there a half an hour letting the juices go down my throat thinking it would help with my overall lymphatic system. I remember thinking that these leaves seemed good enough to eat and they seemed way low in the alkaloid (lesson one-plants contain many kinds of chemicals. People do eat the leaves after blanching in two changes of boiling water!). After a while I took out the poultice and tossed it feeling a nice buzz on that side of my head. I was very tired so off to sleep I went.
A couple of hours later I awoke with extreme nauseousness. Soon I was over the toilet with my body trying as best it could to remove the toxins from my belly. I was sweating a lot. Then I would feel better for 15-20 minutes and then I would be throwing up more, back and forth through the night. After a couple of rounds I was only dry heaving so I began drinking water thinking that might dilute the toxins and the next round I would throw that up. This continued all night. By early morning I was able to sleep for a couple of hours and then got up to release very watery, smelly bowels. This I did several times. By noon I was done throwing up and felt very weak. I ate watermelon and it stayed down.
There is the old saying, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. At this point I don't feel stronger, perhaps a little wiser. I hope that in addition to toxifying myself maybe I detoxified also by putting all my cleansing systems through a workout.
*For those of you interested in what I was treating let me give some more details. Some weeks back I was illustrating how one can eat the seeds of sedges and some of the chaff scraped the back of my mouth near my throat. It felt like one was stuck there but I could not find it. Within a week there was an infection there that spread up my ear canal. I tried garlic and some other things which helped but not enough. After another week, my body began making mucus around the wound and within a day of that out came the piece of seed. I wished I had the hoxsey formula available from HerbParm for it had miraculously helped me in a more dire situation years ago when I had an infection down in my throat. But that was not to be had. It contains nine herbs including poke root. I am still suffering from it.