medicinal herbs and mortars and pestles

[psy-ops]

The more I research medicinal herbs the more I find you need something to powerize them.

There are tubers and twigs and all kinds of things out there that could heal Headaches and Wounds.

excellent book "Earth Medicine, Earth Food". has a lot of native american herbal remedies. There are other books as well on this subject.

so a little research goes along way. This would be appropriate for long term survival and economic depression. if one couldn't afford ones medicine they could make it. It is not that difficult.


after the research one would have to make a mortar and pestle and there are a few styles of that. the mexican type that is flat stone with a round stone as the pestle, there are even wood ones. carved out like a bowl but narrower and the pestle is easy.

 

[phatch]

I use a mortar and pestle routinely in cooking. Wood has it's failings. Lots of what you're grinding is harder than the wood is. You need both a very hard mortar and very hard pestle. Additionally, wood is porous. It will absorb stuff out of the various pastes and poultices, then mix them with the next batch of whatever even after washing. In medicine, this leads to potential mixing of ingested and exterior medicines. Very dangerous.

Stone and ceramics are very much preferable. Heavy too.

Phil

 

[beezaur]

I use a mortar and pestle for my geology studies. It is cast iron, fairly substantial, about 9lbs total. I usually use it with 3 in dia brass laboratory soil sieves.

When I pulverize a soil or rock sample, I grind up about a coffee measure worth of material, sieve it to separate the fines, and regrind the stuff left on the screen. I can pretty much get any fineness I want. My smallest screen, 0.003 in, produces a product about like baby powder.

Prospector's mortars & pestles are $30-40; small sieves are about $30 each. It might be overkill for plant matter, but it sure does a nice job on rocks.

Scott

 

[coyotlviejo]

I use a stone mortar & pestle for the various wild edibles / medicinals that I gather. Stone also absorbs material into the pores of the rock, so when making medicines it is a good idea to turn your mortar upside down over a fire or bake it in the oven to burn out the residues.

When I use it for making salsa I only rinse it, as the flavor of each successive batch of salsa is enriched by the stone if it still has particles of garlic and chile down in the pores. Stone-ground salsa has a full flavor that you won't get using a blender or other metal instruments.

A mortar is better suited to wet grinding. It can be any rock with a decent depression for grinding in, combined with any rounded pestle stone that fits well into the hand and into the mortar depression, and that has a similar hardness to the material of the mortar. Hard, porous basalt stone grinds best, as the pores will hold, cut, and shred the material better than a smooth-surfaced stone.

For dry grinding try a metate. Any hard, flat stone that has a coarse grain should do, combined with a mano stone of similar hardness and grain. Again, I prefer basalt stone, but the kind that does not have large pores. The mano stone should be flat or loaf-shaped.

There is another type of mortar, but I've never used it. It is used for pounding. I think that this is what the California tribes used their bedrock mortars for, and I've seen documentaries that showed people in Africa who used large wooden mortars for this. It seems like you would have to have a large, deep mortar if you were going to pound your material like that.

 

[psy-ops]

The large ones in Africa are probably similar to the Native American large corn kernal grinding, a large log 3-4 ft high and a wooden pestle that fits inside about 3-4 ft. They stand in groups and pound away making corn flour.

In addition, the indians of the Amazon also use one like this, for their grinding. There is a great documentary on medicinces of the jungle called "Shaman's Apprentice" I am not into the whole "new age shaman wann-be thing!" BUT I do love useful information and learning how to develope useful skills. This video has tons of info.

Thanks

chris