HERB - balm and ointment documentation (long)

[Gaylin Walli]

I don't know how helpful it will be, butI thought I'd post part
of the documentation I entered last year into regional and
kingdom A&S within the Midrealm on balms and ointments.

I don't really believe this information is a substitute for classroom
material, but you're welcome to use it as you will for any
info that might help with your ointment research. Our kingdom
requires all herbal safety information up front and also some
particular requirements for documentation, so don' t be
disturbed by the non-standard look to the information.

FWIW, the entry received a 1 (highest, or first place). For obvious
reasons, I've not included my photocopies that supplmented
the documentation. :) -- Jasmine, Iasmin de Cordoba


A Non-Medicinal Balm Base

Safety Information: There are no ingredients used in this
entry listed in the Prohibited Herbs List for The Middle Kingdome
Arts and Sciences Faire Judging Criteria.

Common Sense Cautions: Please do not taste this balm base. It
was not meant to be eaten or used internally during the Middle
Ages and should not be eaten today.

Summary of This Entry

This entry is non-medicinal balm base made of olive oil,
wine vinegar, barley meal, and beeswax. It was cooked in
a brass pan over an open flame. The olive oil was pre-made,
the wine vinegar was made by hand, the barley meal was
ground by hand, and the beeswax was gathered by hand.

Description of This Entry
The product before you is a very simple balm base that
could have been created for a variety of comfort or medicinal
purposes during the very late 1500s. This base alone and
of itself is not meant for use as a comforting application,
nor is it intended to be used as a medicinal substance. It is
not meant to be used by itself.

The product here was completed as an experiment to see how
medieval balm bases could be created using the variety of
ingredients listed in the bibliography sources on page 4. Further
research into how herbal ingredients would be incorporated
will be my next step.

Definition of Balm

"Balm," "salve," and "ointment" are terms that have been
used interchangeably throughout history to denote any solid or
semi-solid preparation applied externally to treat a medical
condition, usually by soothing or easing pain, reducing infection,
or both. Depending on the purpose for which they are created
and the additives included, some balms, salves, and ointments
are designed to penetrate the skin quickly and some are designed
to stick to the skin, absorbing very slowly.

The Ingredients that Could Have Been Used

My interest in these herbal preparations centered around not
the herbs used, but rather the non-herbal ingredients of the bases.
In most of the sources listed in the bibliography, the procedure
for making a balm was the same, with very little exception.
At their simplest, these balms were created when herbs were
chopped or crushed small, placed in oil or fat, heated or boiled,
then strained, and finally thickened. In more complex cases,
additional ingredients were added at the same time as the
thickeners.

Comparing the balm descriptions in my bibliographical sources,
I have determined that the ingredients of most balms of the time
period discussed here can be classified as follows:

oils and fats: olive oil, rape (canola) oil, butter, rendered chicken
      or goose fat, lard (barrow's grease), beef tallow, and deer tallow
thickeners: beeswax, the plant material of the herb (i.e. the herb
was not strained, but left in the mixture), grain flour, nut flour,
      rosin, feces, and earthworms
additional liquids: wine, vinegar, turpentine, urine (human or animal),
      and water

The Ingredients I Chose to Use

To make the balm shown here, I combined olive oil, red wine vinegar,
barley flour, and unprocessed beeswax.

Olive Oil
I chose olive oil because of the frequency it is mentioned
in all my primary sources. The olive oil was purchased from
a local market because of magnitude of producing enough oil
from olives to make this balm. I had not the time, money,
space, or skill to make all the equipment required to press
olives into oil. I chose to use virgin oil rather than extra
virgin (the first light pressing of the olives) or pomace (the
second pressing of the olives).

Vinegar
I chose red wine vinegar for two reasons. First, I did not
want to use my good red wine which I intended to drink.
Second, I wanted to use up the excess of red wine vinegar
I had made. The red wine vinegar was made at home. Because
I did not have an oaken or wood barrel in which to store
the mixture, I used a gallon-sized glass pickle jar. This
method is much cleaner and does not result in the smell
of spoilage or fermentation permeating your living space.
I began with a vinegar "mother" that existed in a store-
bought bottle of red-wine vinegar. For three months, once
a week, I added to this between 1/4 and 1/2 cup red wine
left over from my family's regular consumption. The
wine added was never more than 3 years old. At the end
of three months, I loosely capped the jar and stored it in
a cool, dark location for another three months. At the end
of this incubation time, I tasted the mix and discovered it
had produced a lovely, mellow-flavored vinegar with
almost no wine or alcohol taste left.

Beeswax
The beeswax was given to me from a private apiary in
Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The owner, Mr. Richard Selfe,
produces honey for his family's consumption. The wax he
gave me was approximately five years old and extracted
by hand from an unoccupied hive.

Barley flour
The barley flour I made by grinding barley in a mortar. The
barley was purchased from a local organic foods store.

How I Made this Balm Base

I took one cup of Salvia officinalis (Sage) and "stamped them
very small in a stone morter" (Gerard, p. 360). These herbs
were used for timing purposes only and were not included in
the final product. Sage was chosen because it is commonly
available in fresh form, at a reasonable price, from the local
grocery store. Had the season been right for growing Sage
(this balm was created in very early Spring), I would have
used the fresh plant harvested directly from my own garden.

I did not heat the substance near or on an regular fire as
would have been done during the time period because open
fires are illegal in my city limits. Therefore, I used a gas
kitchen stove to heat two cups of olive oil and the herbs in
a brass pan (Gerard, p. 356) until small bubbles formed and
regularly bubbled gently to the top of the liquid (ibid.). I did
this as an experiment of timing the cooking for the sage
"until the herbes be as it were burnt" (Gerard, p. 349;
Culpepper, p. 217).

It is important to not that this first batch of oil was discarded
to ensure no herbal substances remained in the balm base
experiment. The cooking of the sage was used for timing
purposes only in order to obtain a general feel for how long
plant leaves would take to cook to the time Gerard suggests.

The second batch of oil (two cups) was combined with one
cup of red wine vinegar and left to stand, covered, overnight
(Gerard, p. 360). After standing for a night, this mixture
was heated in a brass pan for the same time period it took
the first oil batch to thoroughly cook the sage leaves. This
resulted, as planned, in the evaporation of the wine vinegar.
Gerard suggests this process (p. 360) in his description of
a Lobelia inflata (Birthwort) balm, though in this recipe he
used claret wine, not vinegar. I then removed the oil mix
from the heat and added two ounces of ground barley flour.
As an example, barley meal is used in combination with lard
in Gerard's recipe on page 400 for a Papaver somniferum
(Poppy) balm.

To the oil mixture I added "sufficient waxe to give it body"
  (Gerard, p. 360), which amounted to roughly 1.6 ounces of
wax. The wax was added whole and stirred with a wooden
spoon until it melted into the mixture.

The entire mixture was then immediately poured into the
container you see. As indicated by period sketches in the
United States National Library of Medicine "Images from the
History of Medicine" collection, similar containers would have
been used in the time period and sealed usually with linen covers
tied down with string, or with pottery covers sculpted to fit as
a cap. I chose a cork fitting for this entry because of its ease
of removal from the jar.
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