SC - Re: Honey Butter as a medication

[Gaylin J. Walli]

Illia wrote about honey and honey butter, saying:

>I believe that it has anti-bacterial/preserving properties in it. I 
>think that I have heard somewhere that it is used on wounds to help 
>healing, and that it really does work to help prevent infection.

It works rather well. Honey in general has some amazing properties to 
it that were rather thoroughly exploited in the time periods we study 
and even before. Several good books exist that cover the subject as 
well. One is "Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels" by the 
authors Root-Bernstein. Another really good book is "The Healing 
Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World" by Guido Majno.

I reviewed the later at Amazon and have read both extensively. The 
Root-Bernsteins are good scholars in my mind, though their Honey book 
is geared far more toward the casual reader. For scholars and 
researchers looking for speicif references, you'll have to look 
elsewhere. They didn't write the book to be used as a source text, 
more they wrote it for the popular market (and it works surprisingly 
well for that). A comfy read, I would say. Majno's work is more for 
the scholar.

>I am surprised that milk was considered medicinal, especially for 
>respitory problems, since it creates congestion, rather than 
>relieves it.

Not so surprising to me. I can't say that I've gotten into their 
mindset, but think of it this way...you treat each symptom often as 
if it's a disease in and of its own right. A cough you treat, a runny 
nose you treat, watery eyes you treat, and a fever you treat. But in 
many of the the time periods and cultures we study, you don't 
necessarily treat a cold, per se. You treat these things each 
separately.

Milk may have been considered to have some certain soothing 
qualities. Congestion may have been considered a good thing because 
it meant good things for treatment were centered in one area. Perhaps 
heat was being driven in, bad humours were being brought into one 
spot and then released some other way. I don't know that we can 
rightly say without more of the information from the text, but as 
Phlip pointed out with her quote of the translation of Anthimus's 
letter, the person writing the book at least knew to tell people 
there were times when you *didn't* use milk (those being the times 
when pus was present from a punctured lung).

Iasmin

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