Book excerpt: This book will provide you with herbal remedies that have been used successfully for generations to treat numerous common ailments. Remedies for 170 Health problems How to prepare Herbal Infusions and Decoctions Home and Holiday First-Aid The ailments are listed alphabetically; this book investigates each of the ailments and their causes, describes symptoms and provides herbal treatments that are cheap, safe and effective. There is a rich age-old tradition of healing human ailments with wild plants, a tradition that has not died over thousands of years. The uses of healing plants have not varied, though today, with increasing knowledge of the origins of disease and of the pharmacology of plants, their uses have become better defined and understood. Herbs are a natural medicine, part of our inheritance. An interest in plants may begin in childhood when we learn quickly to distinguish garden plants from weeds and may return from a walk in the country clutching a handful of wild flowers. Enlightened education may open our eyes to the profound wonder of plant life, and if we are more fortunate we may incorporate in this wonder an understanding of the medicinal uses of plants. We should make a study of plant remedies, although it must be said that the use of herbs is a skill and an art, and the most successful herbalist, in addition to studying intensively, must surely have some inherited gift of healing. Plants draw sustenance from the soil and manufacture chlorophyll from sunlight. They contain many constituents: essential oils which give the plant its perfume and have medicinal properties (i.e., to aid digestion, to stimulate the nervous system, or if used as liniments, to increase the flow of blood to a given area); tannins, which have an astringent action on the mucosa; glycosides, some of which are anti-inflammatory, while some have -a regulating influence on heart action; mucilage's, which are used to soothe irritation and inflammation in the digestive tract; bitter principles which stimulate the secretion of digestive juices and improve the appetite. Numerous other constituents include resins, gums, minerals (notably sodium, potassium and silica), acids, vitamins and hormone precursors."