I tell myself that herbs are part of any respectable grower’s garden. But then I count more than forty distinct species thriving in the greenhouse and must admit that my “herb habit” is truly an “herb compulsion.” Why do I find herbs captivating, so beguiling that I grow all varieties likely to survive at the Patch?
Humans have long looked to herbs as active agents, as plants that carry healing powers. Herbs are central in systems of healing worldwide, but traditionally they were about far more than their chemical components. The person who planted, picked, and prepared the herb was often also the person who prescribed it, who put it in the hand of someone seeking help.
Examples of this hands-on, personalized method abound, but here I will examine just two: immigrant midwives and Chinese doctors. In the 1700s and 1800s, Euro-American settler women worked as midwives, assisting laboring mothers and serving the reproductive needs of their communities. They supplied remedies for a variety of maladies, and “grew, harvested, preserved, and dispensed herbs that induced abortion, prevented conception, and increased milk supply.”[1] Midwives treated women and families during childbirth and beyond, recognizing the need for whole-person health and support.
As midwives offered personalized care within community, so, too, did Chinese immigrant healers. As
they dispensed herbal treatments, Chinese doctors of the 1800s and 1900s saw to their clients’ needs for food, celebration, and cultural connection. Tamara Venit Shelton’s detailed documentation of these practices demonstrates how “Chinese doctors sustained the literal and figurative health of American Chinatowns.”[2]
While Euro-American midwives and Chinese doctors could point to a host of cultural differences, they shared a healing modality – the herbal preparation mattered, and so did the relational process of prescribing, the context of dispensing and dosing, and the connection between the healer and those seeking health.
Healing practices often reveal attitudes about class status. In the 1900s, American physicians caricatured midwives as uneducated immigrants, relegating them to the position of healers of the humble folk, the only practitioners available to those without means. Similarly, Chinese doctors immigrated from a culture with a class-based system. Many of those with the status to treat the ruling class remained in China as their futures were relatively assured. Some of those in the lower classes emigrated, often in the hope that they could access a better financial future for themselves and their families. Chinese doctors in America “largely conducted their medical work out of the public eye, in ways not easily captured by the historical record,” as did Euro-American midwives.[3]
While much of the expertise of these marginalized health practitioners remains unrecorded, archival sources demonstrate that their work addressed the varied needs of their clients. Midwives dispensed ointments, and also prepared bodies for burial; they grew an herbal cornucopia, and also adjusted their fees based on the ability of their clients to pay. Chinese doctors imported traditional herbs, and also provided translation services; they diagnosed and prescribed treatments, and also lent money to clients without access to capital.
Herbs were the substance, but hands were the vehicle. In our era of technological medicine, the idea of healing through touch, through taste, through personal attention may seem quaint and out-of-touch. But we exist as bodies, bodies that depend on human contact, bodies that fail without kindness and care.
Both the historical record and the development of modern pharmaceuticals attest to the power of herbs as agents of healing. Herbs formed the basis of the materia medica for human civilizations throughout time, and pharmaceutical research continues to plumb their chemical composition in the development of new treatments. But the power of plants is most useful when it is paired with human hearts and hands, and it is that body of folk knowledge that has been lost. We now have the tools to isolate various herbal compounds, to explain some of their potency, but most of the detailed knowledge necessary to contextualize an herbal remedy for a particular patient, to effectively dose and dispense the optimal blend for a specific need, died with the marginalized healers who employed such expertise.
In America of today, physicians and pharmaceuticals reign; their efficacy is assumed. Mass-produced quantities of pill-form compounds, marketed by corporate interests as herbal supplements, can be purchased at big box stores, all without individual attention or human connection. In contrast to the omnipotent pill, herbs can seem ordinary, especially given their long service to humankind. Despite our frequent dismissal, the impacts of herbal treatments can be truly remarkable. Herbs consistently provide both flavor and healing: a generous handful of thyme transforms mashed potatoes into a culinary wonder, and the gentle inhalation of lemon balm tea swiftly clears clogged nasal passages.
To make use of the healing power of plants, it is necessary to engage in a process similar to that of midwives and Chinese doctors: observe, question, and apply, all in the context of relationships. Cultivating a healing knowledge of plants will take time, but I am willing to wager that a decade from now I’ll see my herbal companions with an expanded vision, with greater comprehension of their potentialities and usefulness. In the meantime, I’ll toss sage in the morning fire, make up a batch of bergamot tea, prepare a feverfew tincture, experiment with calendula salve, and honor the actions of both plants and people in a relational space of healing.
Sourcing:
Tamara Venit Shelton’s Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace (Yale University Press, 2019) narrates the constraints and triumphs of Chinese doctors in American medical history. With accessible prose and wonderfully substantive documentation, it is an invaluable resource on issues of race, immigration, and healing.
[1] Jennifer Hill, Birthing the West: Mothers and Midwives in the Rockies and Plains, University of Nebraska Press, 2022, p. 39.
[2] Tamara Venit Shelton, Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace, Yale University Press, 2019, p. 53.
[3] Venit Shelton, p. 79.
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