Saturday, December 27, 2014

Making a Mini-Poultice

Right now I'm working on an issue that's inside my mouth.  Christmas day, one of my salivary glands got plugged.  I was instructed to bite into lemons or suck on lemon drops to encourage salivation, hopefully washing out the blockage.  If this has not resolved in the next 5 days, there will be some as-yet-unnamed alternative remedy, which doesn't sound like fun.
So... having seen a large, lush patch of chickweed on the way out the door, I decided to try my favorite drawing combination, chickweed and plantain.  After some discussion with knowledgeable friends, clay powder was added to the mix, and I decided to put the blend into a heat-sealable teabag so that the poultice would stay in place.
While putting these together, it seemed so fortuitous that these herbs were growing fresh in late December.  That's really pretty unusual.  Then it seemed like a good idea to put together some extras and freeze them - just in case their drawing powers were needed over the winter.
Here's how to do it:


The chickweed and plantain were snipped finely and then ground in the mortar and pestle.  Because there is no liquid added, it was difficult to get anything resembling a smooth paste - but that's okay.


Once that was finished, about a teaspoon or so of kaolin clay was added.  That's the clay we had available, but other clays could be used.


Small amounts of the mixture is spooned into the teabags. Some were filled more than others, as I want very small ones for the current project.


Iron set on high, and a padded surface prepared...


These heat-sealable teabags can be ironed "to size" so that I could shape them and get rid of the extra paper, or leave them whole for future use.


Here they are ironed and trimmed

The larger poultices were put into a labelled bag and will wait in the freezer, just in case we need them.
Here's hoping this works!  I know it works great on difficult splinters and pulling out gunk from wounds, so there's every reason to expect it to help.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for sharing this Tina, How can I contact you for more questions about poultices?

Tina Sams said...

You could post questions here or you might find our magazine helpful. My email is tina@essentialherbal.com