Medicine Meets Nature
by Jelena Krivokapic
In 2016 I visited the exhibition from one of the significant contemporary artists Damien Hirst. The exhibition was held in the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina in Novi Sad, Serbia. The powerful impression I received from this exhibition, five years ago, is still with me today. The exhibition title was “New Religion” and it explored the complex relationship between mortality and faith. As well as strong fascination and belief we, humans, put in technology and science, especially medicine and pharmaceutical industry, to fight our biggest fear – the fear of dying.
In spite of traditional folk knowledge containing natural remedies for various illnesses and extensive medical knowledge, we tend to rely mostly on the pharmaceutical industry today to treat illness. As Damien Hirst presented in his exhibition we tend to pray and call for a pill every now and then we face some issue.
Around the world, there are numerous natural, bio remedies for fever, caught, body pains, runny noses, and even sustaining our immune systems. However, the pills industry has seemingly replaced all of this information from our ancestors. Rather than treating ourselves naturally, we take a pill once in a while for a different reason.
Therefore, I decided to explore the herbal and natural medical knowledge from my grandmother and try to provide natural remedies for common colds and cases of flu. As I explored her knowledge, I widened my understanding of biodiversity and learned about several plant species and their uses. The aim of my work is to encourage youth worldwide to collect traditional remedies.
The following are just a few of my discoveries.
Why take a pastel for coughing if you can make medicine at home and know what you put in your body?
There are a MILLION ways to deal with a cough; this is just ONE of them –
Natural Remedy for Cough, my Grandma's recipe from Serbia
Ingredients:
3 dl of water
7/8 bay
How?
Put the leaves in water and let them simmer for 5 minutes. When it cools down well, add a spoonful of honey and one squeezed lemon. Consume three times per day, one spoon, before every meal. Keep it in the fridge in a small, well-closed jar.
Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis)
Characteristics: Evergreen shrub or tree, relatively hardy; can grow 5-12 meters in height
Native Habitat: Mediterranean
Nutritious values: Fresh leaves contain vitamins A, C, and B complex vitamins. Among the minerals, it has calcium, manganese, iron, selenium, zinc and magnesium. Laurel contains about 1 to 3 percent of the essential oil, which consists of cineole, eugenol, sesquiterpene and tannin.
Natural Remedy for Fever, my Grandma's recipe from Serbia
When reducing the temperature:
Wash the potatoes and cut them into circles, put them on the forehead and bind with a scarf. It is good for reducing fever and headaches at the same time. When the temperature is high, the potatoes all evaporate and change the structure - soften.
For the fever also:
Soften a fresh cabbage leaf with a bottle, rolling it over the leaf, put it on your forehead and tie it with a scarf.
Additionally, when your joints and knees hurt, you can put a cabbage wraps around the painful spots fixing them with the cloth.
Skin infection, my Grandma's recipe from Serbia
Rabbit fat, preferably of a wild rabbit, should be placed where a person is stung by a thorn or has some fungal disease injury under the skin. Rabbit fats "pulls" the injury out on the skin surface and heals it.
Anti-dandruff Lotion, my Grandma's recipe from Serbia
Ingredients:
100g of fresh nettle
0.5l of distilled water
25g of dry chamomile
200g wine vinegar
How?
Cook 100g of nettle on a low heat for 20 minutes in half a liter of distilled water, then add 2 g of chamomile and leave it sit for 8 hours. Then drain the liquid and add 200g of wine vinegar. Rub this lotion into the hair root every night.
Additionally, nettle can be drink as a tee. In this way, it empowers the immune system.
Nettle tea is prepared by putting a teaspoon of nettle in boiling water, covering it and letting it stand for a few minutes. Tea should not be brewed, after a few minutes of standing; it is strained and drunk in sips. Preventively, nettle tea is drunk only once per day. You can add granted ginger, lemon and honey to the tee.
Nettle (Urtica dioica)
Characteristics: It is green during summer and then it can reach 1-2 meters in height. It has soft green leaves that are 3-15cm long.
When the leaves and stalks are touched, the bulbs leak juice that burns and causes an unpleasant burning sensation. Nettle flowers are heart-shaped green. It blooms from spring to autumn; the root survives the winter in the ground.
Native Habitat: Nettle is a wild edible plant. It grows in Europe, Africa, North America and Asia.
Nutritious values: Nettle contains a large amount of iron, and is one of the best natural remedies against anemia. In addition to iron minerals, it is also rich in vitamins C, K, minerals as magnesium, calcium, phosphorus ... It also contains chlorophyll, tannin and carotenoid.
All in all
Take advantage of your own heritage, talk to your grandmother and ensure future generations learn the traditional knowledge of medicines. Let's work together to build a healthier future and increase our knowledge and respect for nature! Join me in discovering nature's mysteries.
About
My name is Jelena and I am from Serbia, Belgrade. Currently I am writing my master thesis in the field of world heritage on the topic of traditional knowledge, beliefs and rituals embodied and bound to the vernacular architecture of East Serbia. In addition, I have small participatory online project with three other university friends called “195 flavors” that is dedicated to the collection of worldwide recipes and biocultural diversity. Through food stories around the world we talk about food sustainability, food of the future, traditions and costumes that follow food and food production, the effects of climate change on agriculture, circular economy etc. Moreover, I also have and upcoming workshop, as part of Youth Biennale in Belgrade 2021, that I will be conducting with my best friend. The Project Seed: The Life of Trisnja (created by combining the names of the sour cherry as visnja and sweet cherry as tresnja) is an interactive workshop on circular economy that aims to inform the public and increase their understanding of the concept. A series of workshops will be held during which visitors can make their own therapeutic pillows filled with trisnja seeds and learn through doing about circular economy.