Argument in the press about St John's Wort and the value of it and other herbal remedies. You'll remember the old doctor from Vermont, D. C. Jarvis MD, who had a profound belief in some of the simple folk medicine remedies of his own people in the North American State of Vermont. Mind you, he had the normal medical degrees and internship experiences, but he found that to gain the confidence of the inhabitants who lived "close to the soil on back road farms" he had to take cognisance of the folk medicine which was deeply a part of rural living there. (His chosen speciality had been of the eye, nose and throat.) He learned that, in his own words "it is a lot harder to keep people well than it is to just get them over a sickness". His book, is in this case, Folk Medicine, subtitled "A doctor's life-time study of Nature's secrets". Honey is one of his nutritional, curative and preventative measures. "We have an ingrained respect for the nutritional wisdom of the bee, which goes into the fields and selects the materials for the making of a perfect food. With bees there are no newfangled ways. By some infallible instinct the bee has some way of checking the quality of the flowers it visits to obtain nectar. It knows if and when flowers aren't up to its standards and moves along to others." Bacteria, he assures us, cannot live in honey and quotes bacteriologists in Washington DC, and Ottawa, Canada. Then the mineral content of honey is examined and the vitamin content. He numbers the advantage of honey over other sugars; nine, in his estimate, including easily and rapidly assimilated, non-irritating to the lining of the digestive tract, quickly gives energy, is a sedative, has a gentle laxative effect, and so on.
By the way, the dose recommended for those who find sleep hard is one tablespoonful at the evening meal each day. He goes on to an old-fashioned cough remedy, to its use in treating burns. Then chewing honeycomb in certain disturbances of the breathing tract. Vermont, by the way, is described on the cover as "climatically one of the most unstable areas of the world". It has bred generations of hardy, long-lived inhabitants, and it possesses a rich and unique lore of folk medicine." Published on this side of the Atlantic by W. H. Allen in 1960.
All this on enjoying some fine Irish Woodland Honey from Woodtown, Rathfarnham, from Sean Cronin of Rathgar. Woodtown, wasn't that a Mac Neill house? James lived there and Eoin as Commander-in-Chief issued from there the order in 1916 cancelling a planned, mobilisation of all Volunteers for the Sunday. Those who were determined on a Rising, decided that order didn't apply to Monday. Y