HERB - Brusie juice recipie and questions

[Gaylin Walli]

>Where can I get the ingredients in Ft. Lauderdale Florida or mail order?
>andy

In all honesty, I don't know that I would make the bruise juice
recipe in that Complete Anachornist. Your mileage may vary,
however. I have a problems with using Isoprpyl alcohol on the
skin for anything other than cut and scrape sterilization. Though
the Bruise Juice works, might I suggest this alternative? It's a
bit more transportable and less prone to breakage if you send
it in a small ointment container with fighters and shoppers.
-- jasmine, gwalli at infoengine.com

---------------------------------

Jasmine's Bruise Ointment

The steps for making my bruise ointment are simple, really
more a matter of determining ratios than anything else. To
make the ointment you must:

1. Infuse an oil with dried herbs over mild heat
then straining out the solids.
2. Thicken the oil with some form of wax.

Here's how I make the ointment myself.

1. Infusing the oil

In equal amounts take:

- crushed, dried juniper berries (I use a food processor)
- dried arnica flowers
- packed dried comfrey leaves, crushed or chopped (see note)
- dried lavender flowers

and place them in a nonreactive saucepan with an oil such
as vegetable oil, canola oil, or a neutral smelling olive oil.
Almond oil may also be an alternative, though a more
expensive one than standard vegetable oils. Use enough
oil that all the ingredients are covered.

Over low to medium-low heat, I warm the herbs until
very small bubbles form at the edges of the pan. When
the bubbles form, I turn off the heat and and remove the
pan to another burner. I let the mixture cool, then I
repeat the process two more times.

An alternative to this is to place the herbs in a small
crockpot and heat them carefully on the lowest setting
for a few hour. Use your sense of smell carefully. You
should never smell deep-frying herbs.

2. Thicken the strained oil mix with wax.

Your choice of wax is probably limited to either paraffin
or beeswax. Either choice will slightly inhibit the
body's ability to absorb the bruise oil, but thickening
with wax is one of the only ways to successfully
transport bruise ointments to hot camping events that
I've been able to devise (most other containers either
risk breakage or somehow come open, mostly at
inopportune times and amongst armouring bits).

I use beewswax because I have a steady supply of it and
because none of my friends object to the use of this
animal-based product. I choose not to use parafin in
most cases because I have friends who have petroleum
allergies. You may find that vegan friends prefer paraffin
for this ointment.

Both waxes behave very similarly in the mixture, with
beeswax usually requiring very slightly less for similar
thickening properties. I've devised a table for some help
in determining how to thicken the oil. It's normally in a
table, so I'm not sure how it will appear in your e-mail.

In all columns, I use standard US measures. Ounces of
oil are measured by volume, not by weight. Ounces of
beeswax or paraffin are measured by weight, not by
volume. Teaspoons of beeswax are measured in liquid
form, not solid.

If you have this much oilŠ		Use this much beeswaxŠ
cups	ounces	tpoons	tblspoons	tpoons	ounces
1/8	1	6	2	1/2	0.1
1/4	2	12	4	1	0.2
3/8	3	18	6	1 1/2	0.3
1/2	4	24	8	2	0.4
5/8	5	30	10	2 1/2	0.5
3/4	6	36	12	3	0.6
7/8	7	42	14	3 1/2	0.7
1	8	48	16	4	0.8
1 1/8	9	54	18	4 1/2	0.9
1 1/4	10	60	20	5	1.0
1 3/8	11	66	22	5 1/2	1.1
1 1/2	12	72	24	6	1.2
1 5/8	13	78	26	6 1/2	1.3
1 3/4	14	84	28	7	1.4
1 7/8	15	90	30	7 1/2	1.5
2	16	96	32	8	1.6


Now, a little more about this table...this is the table I use
to thicken just about any ointment I make. Sometimes I use
a little more wax for something stiffer and sometimes I use
a little less, depending on the oil I use and depending on the
purpose the ointment will serve. If I'm certain the ointment
won't be needed at a "hot" event, like Pennsic or any summer
camping (and for quickly used ointments in Winter) I typically
put in a little less wax to allow the oil a better chance to soak
into the skin.

The nice thing about the table is that you don't have to be
all that exact. If you think you might not like how thick an
ointment might get, err on the side of less wax. Play with
it and use your own judgement; you may find you like a
different thickness than I do, and I'm certainly no expert.

NOTE: You should be aware that current research about
comfrey lists the plant as a known carcinogen. Below is an
excerpt from the Herb Companion magazine. Because my
family does not typically use bruise ointment in large
quantites or for any length of time, we have chosen to
include it in our bruise ointment. Should you choose not
to in the recipe above, simply remove it from the recipe.

[From "Comfrey: A Fading Romance" by Steven Foster in the Feb/Mar
1992 issue of The Herb Companion, pp. 50-54, typos are my fault]

"....The romance with comfrey began to sour late in the 1970s, when
some reports appeared suggesting that ingestion of the herb was
dangerous. At first, people wouldn't accept this finding. Some
called it the establishment's conspiracy to denigrate comfrey....
Rat's weren't humans, and laboratories were irrelevant to the
success that many had experienced with comfrey....
      In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several research chemists
report on the presence of pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) in several
species of comfrey....PAs became a health concern in the mid-
1970s. During a two-year drought in Afghanistan, more than 7000
Afghani villagers developed severe liver impairment, and many of
them died. Their illness was traced to the ingestion of wheat
contaminated with seeds of a PA-containing heliotrope (Heliotropium)
species. Then, about 70 people in central India suffered severe
liver damage (and nearly half of them died) when food cereals
became contaminated with the PA-containing seeds of the Crotolaria
[pea family] species.
      These reports, couple with an increased understanding of PA
toxicity, prompted scientists and public health officials worldwide
to examine human consumption of PA-contianing plant species more
closely....
      Ingestion of PAs can produce venocclusive disease of the liver,
in which the blood flow from the liver is shut off....Comfrey's
safety was questioned directly in a 1978 report on the 'carcinogenicity
activity of Symphytum officinale [common comfrey]' published in
the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. In this study, rats
were fed diets containing from 0.5 to 8 percent comfrey leaf or root
for 600 days. Liver toxicity was observed within 180 days, and liver
tumours developed in all groups. Urinary bladder tumours were also
observed at the lowest dosage levels. The incidence of liver tumours
was higher in rats fed comfrey root than those fed only the leaves
....No cases of human cancer are known to have been caused by
ingestion of PA-containing plants. But the cancer question is probably
moot because by the time a person consumes enough PAs to develop
liver cancer, he or she may well have succumbed to other forms of
liver disease....If you use comfrey at all, you should do so only
for short periods of time."
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