ASH TREE PUBLISHING
Women's Health, Women's Spirituality
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Ash Tree Publishing
Common Herbs For Natural Health
by Juliette de Bairacli-Levy
Book Review by Christina Francine
Common Herbs for Natural Health
by the author: Juliette de Bairacli Levy
Ash Tree Publishing 1997 (Reprint Edition)
ISBN # 0-9614620-9-4
Soft Cover $15.95--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Common Herbs for Natural Health is one of the best herb books I have read. Not only does it provide details on what herbs do and how, but gives recipes, guidance on gathering, preparing, preserving and all in an easy to follow and understand way. The author is one of the most enduring, respected herbalists of our time.
Because Juliette de Bairacli Levy has traveled to many parts of the world to teach and learn she is known as the gypsy herbalist. It is evident that the author of this herbal loves to share her experience and knowledge of herbs.With this book she's created a reference that readers may find life changing. Rosemary Gladstar says it did hers and tells readers how in her “Foreword.” Gladstar claims that Levy evokes a sense of adventure and freedom that seems to evade dreams of a more natural way of living in harmony with the world.
There is an index, plant sketchings, over two hundred herbs from around the world, recipes for cosmetics, medicines, and meals.
Chapter four teaches how certain herbs and plants can be used naturally to protect other plants and trees. The information is understandable and explanations given with reasons why so that even beginners will understand. Levy constantly helps readers throughout the book. Her advice, information, and conclusions all aid in attempting to gently teach. One can tell she is friendly, humble, sincere, and a gift to the world.
She offers multiple fascinating tips from when the best time to gather herbs is, to how to make an herbal poultice bandage.
Leaves should be picked when young. Flowers should be gathered in their first opening and before being much visited by bees and other insects.
Levy provides cautions when necessary too, like how when gathering herbs, care should be taken that they have not been sprayed with chemical poison. As is her way, she further provides a list of a few suppliers of high quality dried herbs, tinctures, cosmetics and other useful products.
Multiple common herbs are listed in alphabetical order and talked about in the middle of this book. Each provides its common and Latin name, where it can be found (its habitat), a description of the herb itself, its use to man internally and externally, the dose, and more.
Examples of medicinal and culinary uses for herbs are plentiful, such as Fenugreek. It is found in pastures, and likes sandy soil. The nourishing, and medicinal value of this plant is in its seeds, which are very mineral rich and nourishing, and in chemical composition close to cod liver oil. Use, internal: A general tonic and stomach remedy. To increase the body weight. To strengthen the stomach, intestines, nerves. Use, external: Fenugreek seeds make a useful poultice. The ground seed is made into a thick paste with hot milk. Spread on cotton cloth and apply directly upon swellings, abscesses, boils, carbuncles, and corns, running sores. As a throat pack, applied hot to relieve soreness. As a throat gargle, use a hot brew. Dose: A strong tea of the seed (do not strain the tea, eat the seeds also).
Herbs and plants have a lot to offer in a most natural way. It is Levy's hope people will find as much health and happiness through the studying of herbs as she and her children have. She says that the human race should make a study of herbs and not be content to remain ignorant of a medicine which is man's rightful inheritance, and which has only become lost to man through their ignorance and laziness and their departure from natural living. Unnatural chemical medicines are seldom beneficial to the human body and often harmful, their total effects unknown. Learn to know wild medicinal plants. They are free for the taking. Nature makes the best medicine.
Anyone looking for natural and healthy ways of healing and who enjoys herbs and plants will enjoy Common Herbs for Naural Health by Juliette de Bairacli Levy. Some herbal books may sit on your shelf collecting dust, but this one won't. Readers will find it a reference used often and will want to keep it available and easy to reach.
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Common Herbs for Natural Health
by Juliette de Bairacli Levy
Foreword by Rosemary Gladstar
Paperback - 236 pages
Published by Ash Tree Publishing
ISBN: 0-9614620-9-4
Retails for: $15.95Common Herbs for Natural Health includes: lore and uses for 200 herbs including cosmetic, culinary, and medical recipes. Juliette de Bairacli Levy is famed for her mastery of herbal lore and her many books on living in tune with nature. Re-indexed, re-designed, and expanded.
"This is the book that got me started in herbal medicine.
It's solid gold; not only useful but incredibly fascinating." Susun Weed
A Gypsy in New York
Author: Juliette de Bairacli Levy.In this richly detailed memoir, Juliette de Bairacli Levy – one of the founders of American herbalism – offers us a rare documentary. It is at once an herbal, a travel book and a compendium of Gypsy lore and Gypsy ways. 210 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $21.95buy A Gypsy in New York in our Bookshop
Spanish Mountain Life
Author: Juliette de Bairacli Levy.This jewel-like memoir by noted herbalist and traveler Juliette de Bairacli Levy details her personal struggle against typhus fever, during which she gave birth to her second child, Luz, who had to be suckled by a nanny goat. As ever we are embraced by Juliette's love of nature and animals, and welcomed onlookers as she relates with people whose lives are far different from ours. 114 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $16.95buy Spanish Mountain Life in our Bookshop
Summer in GALILEE
Author: Juliette de Bairacli Levy.Join Juliette de Bairacli Levy – Gypsy herbal veterinarian and mother of two toddlers – as she spends an eventful summer swimming in the waters, and the history, of the Sea of Galilee, in the modern state of Israel. Juliette trains her observant eyes, and lovely descriptive prose, on the people, places, plants and animals around her. 240 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $24.95buy Summer in GALILEE in our Bookshop
