From Cedar to Hyssop
5. Science and Folk Lore
There is so much of myth and charm in
the uses of these plants of healing employed in Palestine that it is natural to
ask whether there is any medicinal value in them at all. The cure-all
properties of the forty 'Arba'in' plants seem a long way from modern medical
practice. But it must be remembered that natural plant products are still
amongst the most important drugs of today.
Many of the plants mentioned in this
book have obvious medicinal properties,[1] e.g.,
Hyoscyamus sp. and Mandragora officinarum (hyoscyamine and hyoscine), Peganum
harmala (harmine and harmaline),[2] the
various carminatives such as Pimpinella anisum, etc. Of others it is more
difficult to determine whether any effect produced is due rather to the virtue
of the plant or the faith of the patient. In any recorded analyses of these
plants we find a list, necessarily incomplete, of various constituents of more
or less curative value. Some of the compounds listed are used as medicine at
the present day, but it may not be always justifiable to compare their
reactions given separately in a pure state with those when they are found in
very small quantities in company with many other substances. This must depend
on the nature of the effect concerned since many compounds have extraordinarily
powerful physiological activity even in most minute quantities.
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These difficulties are encountered
for example in the study of the aromatic herbs, which are among the most celebrated
healing plants, both in Palestine and elsewhere. Salvia triloba, which is
assigned almost miraculous powers in the East, yields an essential oil which is
said to contain cineol, camphor, perhaps thujone and esters (bornyl acetate).
Cineol, camphor and thujone have medicinal properties – chiefly antiseptic and
stimulant – and are used in modern medical practice in various forms. The
plant may certainly be considered generally useful, as it is regarded in
Palestine.
The oil from the hyssop, Origanum
maru, another famous plant, appears to consist almost entirely of a mixture of
thymol and carvacrol, both of which are powerful antiseptics similar to phenol,
but less irritant and less toxic. It is difficult to trace any direct
connection between modern medicinal use of thymol and that of the hyssop in
Palestine and among the herbalists. The materia medica of the present day state
that thymol may be used externally as an antiseptic and deodorant, particularly
in skin diseases, internally as an anthelmintic and internal disinfectant and
by inhalation for nasal catarrh and laryngitis and bronchitis. But the stories
of the great prowess of the plant, whether as a cure for colic or a stimulant
to the brain, for the "wamblings" of the stomach or the bites of
serpents, may still have their foundation in its undoubted medicinal
properties.
It would be difficult indeed to deny
to any of the plants listed above a certain degree of medicinal value, and
their use probably began in cases in which their value was really shown. But in
time any scientific experience on which such use rested has been forgotten and
to any one plant claiming a healing power a whole host of other virtues become
attributed, until at length it is believed to cure all mortal ailments. It is not
difficult to imagine how certain steps in this process might have came about.
Take for instance, the hyssop, O.
maru. Suppose that leaves of this plant, containing as we have noted,
antiseptics similar to phenol, had been applied to a snake bite (a use comparable
to that of carbolic acid) and that the patient had recovered. One can see how
this external use might have became an internal one, and subsequently the
prophylactic consumption of the plant acquire its present vogue. As the process
of degradation is carried still further the plant becomes a charm, the mere
touch of which confers virtue, as with the mandrake, whose magical powers are
valued while its narcotic principles are ignored. One would have to draw a
little more freely on the imagination to see haw this could have came about,
but it might be attempted thus. In the story of the mandrake in Genesis it is
remarkable that it is the fruits that are in question, the 'love apples' which
presumably were eaten, though later magic always employs the root. Now suppose
that these fruits, which as we have noted, contain hyoscine, had at some time
been used, very practically, to allay pain. There might have resulted from this
a primitive 'Twilight Sleep' case, and the reputation thus earned being spread
abroad, grows into general virtue for those who wish 'store of children.'
Through some such transformations of its very real uses the blessed sage also
has came to be said to ensure 'quickened minds' and 'length of days' and ,even
to render men immortal.
So behind the cloak of charms and
legends, of many worthless or even dangerous practices we may still perceive
the nucleus of scientific observation. And while among the fellahin such
observations have become distorted and forgotten, elsewhere they have led to
further research. The first task of scientific investigation has been the
separation and identification of the active principles which occur in the plant
mixed with many other substances; and the plants to be studied first were
generally those of the herbalists. In many cases the chemical structures of
these active principles have then been determined and this has been followed by
much work on the relationship between physiological reactivity and chemical
constitution leading to the production of new substances unknown in the plant
world.
In all directions this work is still
going on today. To the purely chemical investigation for example belong
researches on the still unknown structure of strychnine and the synthesis of
quinine, while to the correlation between chemistry and physiology is due the
production of many new local anaesthetics in imitation of cocaine, present work
on anti malarials following quinine and the study of that peculiar series of
acids, the first examples of which were found in chaulmoogra oil, which are
used to cure leprosy.
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