HERB - Another Bruise juice recipe (rather long)

[Gaylin Walli]

Suzanna wrote a bunch of interesting information about working with
herbs and heat (which I've snipped) but she ended with:

>There is very little heat with this method, which I think is better for
>the herbs.  And I never get that scorched smell.  We use this for
>everything, and it really works well.

An excellent point about the scorching avoidance. Most of the
people in my area use very low heat on the stove repeatedly
to extract the herbs' benefits because they don't want to wait
the three+ weeks it would take to make an ointment that way.
The direct heat method does work and the effects of ointments
created with them is noticeable and documented, but nowhere
near scientific.

One thing to point out, because we all like to keep some form
of obligatory "period" mention in our posts...when I've been
looking into ointments, bases in particular, but ointments in
general, the late-period herbals that detail their construction
very often give you what would appear to be *MUCH* longer
times for direct cooking of herbs in oil. You will often see
such phrases describing the process as cook "until the herbes
be, as it were, burnt" which suggest either a hotter temperature,
or a longer cooking time, both of which end at the same point
after a while. Another good phrase is "for the length of a rosarie."
Know how long it takes to say the Catholic rosary? Today, I
think about 45 minutes based on what I've experienced at
Catholic funerals (someone correct me if I'm wrong, 'cause
I'm in NO way Catholic).

Question: What kind of modern research do we have available on
the stability of herbal constituents and their effectiveness in the
presence of heat? (Anyone read a phytochemical journal regularly?)

>Also keeps a long time (up to a year or two) if not used up sooner.

What do you think is acting as the preservative, then? I would
assume the clove and the peppermint oil you suggest adding at
the end, but if they eliminate these ingredients, I don't see anything
that particular stands out as a preservative, excluding the vodka
of course, but there's little enough of that in the overall recipe.

I wonder if some of it isn't, perhaps, the oil and beeswax combo?
Reason I mention it is some really fantastic stuff I've discovered
on wound therapy and the use of honey in ancient and period
ointments. I'm just *itching* to write a TI article about this
all (hence my rather verbose replies on the subject).

jasmine
Iasmin de Cordoba, gwalli at infoengine.com
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