People's Pharmacy

For more up-to-date information on drugs, herbs and home remedies visit The People's Pharmacy Home Site at peoplespharmacy.us

Pennyroyal Plants Beat Off Bugs

Posting Date: 08/15/2005

Supplements such as fish oil, boswellia, ginger, glucosamine, SAMe and turmeric can ease arthritis pain for some people. Others get relief from home remedies like grape juice and plant pectin. We discuss these approaches in our Guide to Alternatives for Arthritis. Anyone who would like a copy, please send $3 in check or money order with a long (no. 10) stamped (60 cents), self-addressed envelope: Graedons' People's Pharmacy, No. AA-2, P. O. Box 52027, Durham, NC 27717-2027.

Q. I would like to give you my family cure for hemorrhoids. Take rutabaga, peel, boil and then drain it well to make a poultice in gauze. Put it on the hemorrhoids while it is still warm.

Do this at night and they will be gone by morning. If they are not, you can do a second application the next night.

I am from Scotland. When my mother came to the States to visit back in the 40s she told this cure to a lady from Ohio. My husband used it too, and his hemorrhoids never came back.

A. Rutabaga is a root vegetable related to turnip. It has long been cooked, mashed and used in poultices, but this is the first time we?ve heard of using such a poultice on hemorrhoids.

Hemorrhoids are swollen blood vessels, much like varicose veins. If a blood clot forms in one, it can become very sore. Warm baths can help the clot resolve and ease the discomfort, so perhaps that is how the rutabaga poultice works.

* * *

In their column, Joe and Teresa Graedon answer letters from readers. Write to them in care of this newspaper or e-mail them via their Web site: www.PeoplesPharmacy.org. Their newest book is The People's Pharmacy Guide to Home and Herbal Remedies (St. Martin's Press).