Apocalyptic Apothecary

by Ron Foster

  “Parker said he was definitely going to go ahead and try bugging home no matter what the risks were and I think Nick and Knobby might be thinking about doing the same thing. Ever since Parker looted him that shiny new motorcycle, they have been talking about possibly traveling together part way home and heading back to their respective home fronts for good. I can’t say I blame them much at all for wanting something better than they have here, but the idea of going cross country at this moment in time sounds more like a suicide mission to me.” Zack said concerned about his loss of manpower as well as personal concerns for the health and safety of his friends.

  “Well, they have their own lifelong friends and relatives to consider, that’s what’s most important I guess and they are missing them like no tomorrow. Could be they are thinking they can possibly help out with just their presence maybe, times being what they are. You didn’t be an asshole about it did you, Zack, and try to bring up the point again about nobody knows just who is living or dead these days and talking about the worst, did you? Folks don’t like you messing with their hopes or dreams of loved one’s interests, as you well know.” Ann said reminding Zack he could be a bit callous and abrupt about his ways of telling folks to be realists in their disaster expectations of someone’s longevity.

  “Oh hell, Ann, you know as well as I do according to most folks, I am always going to be an ass about doing that, but how else other than what I do daily are you going to remind folks they might be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire for a wrong decision? What happens when they get home, that is if they ever even make it that far only to only to find people dead and dying and the situations is worse than what you got staying right here? By the way, Parker is wanting to carry two gallons of my “fix what ails you and flu medicine” with him without paying any compensation but I said that was o.k.” Zack said, raising one eyebrow and staring at Ann judiciously for her opinion on them providing such a quantity and possibly life changing amount of expensive and rare “Kill Ya Or Cure Ya” medicine he had been mentally formulating with the addition of other herbals to stretch his dwindling stores of Heal All tincture or previously purchased plant extracts he couldn’t replace.

  He had added, as a medicinally useful filler, common plantain to his panacea mixture as an extender by exchanging green plant material in equal parts for his much less common panacea herb Heal All on a volume for volume basis already to be used for less chronic cases and to keep the medicine flowing. Now this old way form of mixing formulas by eye had really nothing to do with weight of herbal material because different plant materials weigh different things like a pound of oak wood or a pound of lavender flowers. With some roots and herbs, you had to really keep in mind that potency comes into play also, like poisonous toxicity in poke root for some cancers or a powerful heart influence effect like the plant foxglove they make digitalis out of for heart conditions all need to be considered in very minute amounts or were toxic and not beneficial.

  With benign botanicals but still highly effective medicinal plants like plantain and self-heal, his renderings need not be so carefully calculated and his knowledgeable observation of the physical characters of using broad mucilaginous leaves versus small leaves and large drying flower spikes might be considered haphazard by some. But in his mind the choices were completely a reasonable and effective concoction to serve the needs of man or animal. Less is more, no sense taking rattlesnake medicine for a cold, if you realize what I am talking about, even though it would work. It was me against old technology, back to nature now, but convince folks they didn’t need a Ferrari to get to the drug store.

  Every herb excels in one thing or another and many have similar or the same benefits of others, but ultimate strength is not so important in considerations as herbalism or organic chemistry shows us a kinder to the body entirely holistic undiscovered world of how the complexities of plants give you exactly what’s needed, no more, no less if you remain scrupulously aware of it to avoid side effects no matter how safe most are.

  If one name could say it all, Zack wanted to remind folks this one definitely does say it all in effectiveness and safety.

  Heals All is often considered to be the best all-around medicinal plant. That is message presented and the hope of medicine chests filled by mindful educated people. Other names for it include selfheal, heart-of-the-earth, and woundwort. According to legend and also Peterson's Guide to Medicinal Plants, Heal All will take care of problems with lungs, liver, kidneys, blood, joints, cancers, ulcers, tumors, swellings, and back trouble. Why is it people forget their history and common knowledge of the blessings of this earth?

  Heal All: Several studies on human cells (including a 2011 report published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention) indicate that prunella vulgaris may help induce apoptosis (a type of programmed cell death essential for stopping the proliferation of cancer cells). However, there is currently a lack of scientific support for the claim that prunella vulgaris can treat or prevent cancer in humans.

  Author note: The herb is not harmful, with no known interactions so why the knowledge of centuries is lost or even the awareness and hope of proven results not remembered today to have on a medicine shelf to try in times of need and hope of proven cures? They brainwashed most people into believing in their chemical medicines they could profit from while limiting knowledge of natural cures (which they cannot patent) and calling it “folklore”. I grow it, wouldn’t be without it, question is… why don’t you have any set aside? I cannot come up with any rational objection to this blessed herb not to have at hand for any and every sickness of man or beast to offer some respite to known or unknown illness.

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  8

  CHAMBER BITTER

  “Well, I guess you all are well aware and know by now the garden is all dying and weed overgrown, I got beat by nature big time. I ain’t never seen a good crop get ruined so fast and get all overgrown so quickly. We were only gone for 3 days and the place looks like hell and like we never weeded a lick, but we know we used to bust ass trying to make the place nice and productive.” Zack said with his head bowed sadly while talking to his gathered farm house clan.

  “What the hell is that damn weed that infiltrated our garden anyway?” Rachel asked wondering what the tenacious ferny looking mimosa-like weed was.

  “That shit, my friend, is our very own personal noxious bad weed, hell to figure out how to deal with and we ain’t getting fed from that patch of dirt any time soon. We are screwed, the garden is dead except for a few hold out veggie plants we might can get a fruit or two off of maybe. I have dealt with this nasty weed crap before and I can tell you from firsthand experience you can hardly get rid of it, no matter what you do. We screwed, blued and tattooed. It’s one of those devils’ spawn weeds that’s a foreign invasive species we got stuck with and even if we had some herbicide and weren’t scared to use it, that dang weed would fight us for every inch of dirt and barely be affected. It is called Chamberbitter and it grows super-fast just like Kudzu.” Zack said miserably that he couldn’t farm a good crop for his friends like he said he could previously.

  “Where the hell did it come from? We have been pretty good about weeding and just left a few of those edible or useful weeds you said wouldn’t hurt things much.” Donna said crestfallen that it seemed all their hard work seemed for naught now.

  “Can we just try pulling it and mulching between rows?” Ezra asked, thinking they could fight that green nemesis.

  “No, look here. Under these leaves it’s nothing but seed pods.” Zack said, showing them a piece of it he had brought along to the meeting.

  “That stuff would end up growing on top of the mulch. I am telling you, it’s just that bad, mulching would help but no sense in doing it this late in the season. As for where it came from, who knows, we get weird plants I call hurricane flowers all the time blow in on the wind. What’s bad about this stuff is it’s like time release devastation and doesn’t bloom until the soil gets to be
about 75 degrees and then it explodes, it’s a couple inches now, and it will make it to just under a foot and stay there and expand territory after that. No, we are screwed on this crop. Like I said I got experience with this nasty garden-eating stuff. You can mow it to the ground and the seed pods go everywhere and even in manicured lawns it still produces more seed and tries to takeover.” Zack said ominously.

  “Is it edible?” Rachel asked, studying the weed on the table.

  “Yea but it doesn’t taste good. Remember, it has the word bitter in its name! Go ahead and try some if you want, it won’t hurt you.” Zack related.

  “So, what are we going to do now?” Donna asked as Rachel started to tentatively nibble a tiny leaf as she watched in anticipation of a horrible face indicating it didn’t taste good.

  “Well, it’s not all bad: that’s because it’s a powerful medicinal and that fact might just save our bacon if we can manage to trade some of it for food.” Zack said and then went on to explain more about the wonderful attributes of this noxious weed they were stuck with screwing up their food supply and possibly their living arrangements; however, it might end up being their salvation too!

  Chamber bitter, scientifically known as Phyllanthus urinaria, is a member of the Spurge family (Euphorbiaceae) and is native to Asia and has spread as a weed all the way through the tropics. It also occurs in tropical Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, but it is not common there. North Florida, Alabama, all the way to Texas has this weed growing in abundance. Other popular common names of the plant are Stone breaker, gripe weed, little mimosa, Chanca piedra, shatter stone, meniran, stone breaker, quebra pedra, zhen chu cao, ye xia zhu, kilanelli, leaf flower and komikansou. It is a warm-season broad leaf annual and typically appears around May or June when the soil temperatures have warmed to approximately 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The genus name, Phyllanthus, is derived from Greek words which mean leaf (“phyll”) and flower (“anthus”). The specific epithet urinaria normally refers specifically to the plant’s use in traditional medicine to treat urinary diseases. It is commonly known as Chamberbitter or Stonebreaker, due to its use as an herbal medication to get rid of urinary tract stones.

  The plant normally spreads widely by its seeds which are located on the bottom sides of the branch. It is a weedy species in gardens, lawns and nurseries in tropical areas. It is considered as a pest of rice in Southeast Asia. Nowadays, the plant is considered to be one of the best medicinal herbs particularly for the management and treatment of kidney stones.

  “Now, I have got a lot of notes on this plant that I accumulated over time but I ain’t going to get into them at the moment. You all can read some of them later, if you want, but let me tell you what I know and don’t know about the plant first and how we are going to try to price this stuff based on what it does for a person just like the pharmacy’s do.” Zack began before Ann looked at him askance, as well as Rachel about him wanting to jack the price just based on disease when it looked like they had an acre of it they couldn’t get rid of.

  “Don’t be looking at me all “Holier than thou” until you hear me out some more. Rachel, you remember what happened to us on that naturally growing Heal All herb we have once people found out it was growing in big patches around here.” Zack said about his market going to hell price wise once it became common knowledge to everyone because of Rachel’s exuberance to share herbal lore with others.

  Donna was a lot craftier when it came to selling it for a reasonable price by reminding folks about the cost of labor, rarity of dropper bottles and alcohol these days, proper supervision in making the tinctures etc. but the cat was out of the bag when it came to how common it was if you knew where to look for it yourself.

  Zack had been grousing loudly for days how underappreciated his herbal medic advice was and the fact it never seemed to get paid for or the medical advisements appreciated like they should. He figured he should at least get a small fee for having to listen to folks’ maladies and figuring out special dosages or additional sickness specific herbs to add to a mixture to give it some extra umph when needed by a patient.

  Ann and Rachel had told him in their opinion he was better off to just look at himself as a pharmacist of sorts and the advice he gave was free just like the old timey apothecary he was acting like, but he reminded them both in no uncertain terms, that those jobs usually had a doctor prescribing something and he would be just filling it, instead he was attempting both jobs.

  He had finally given up arguing about the price with them and instead he colluded with Nick and Knobby to set the price higher on medicinal alcohol and put some better profit back in it. It seems everyone could accept a set price on very rare alcohol in their minds better than he could convince them of his patches of heal all plants being used up and the new higher pricing was common for now.

  That wouldn’t last long though, the huge batch of heal all tincture they had originally made up was getting exhausted and no vodka or any other spirits were now commonly found to make tinctures with. Besides, the midsummer growing season for it was over. Zack and the herb pharm house had gotten people to quit using it for everything and save it for more stubborn ailments by substituting easier to find, but less panacea type herbs. However, the efficacy of the true Heal All plant extract made it the first thing everyone wanted to grab or use first, regardless of its short supply. It wasn’t until Donna reminded them that many that had chronic debilitating diseases that were off their meds now so they needed to try to save the good stuff for them and use the more common but highly efficient and available things like plantain for bug bites and such instead.

  Rod, over at the gated community, was capable of making an average of 10 ppm colloidal silver to fill in some gaps with his expensive, but low voltage colloidal silver maker and this helped many maladies but antibacterial doesn’t do anything for your innards, as Zack was prone to say, regarding heart diseases, diabetes, etc.

  They were also currently in a scientific and medical pissing contest regarding how many parts per million of colloidal silver was good for what. Before the grid went down, Zack and Ann, who totally believed in the power of silver were wrapped up in everything colloidal silver for their small co-pack business and had researched and studied a lot about the various processes and competitor labels on the best offerings of this time proven colloid and had done more than their fair share of researching and comparing the best products to theirs and chose for their bulk lab supplier a process using industrial quality high voltage equipment.

  The internet business offerings of colloidal silver products are fraught with scams, misinformation, unreliable science data, etc. and it would take a month of Sundays to even begin to explain it to the uninitiated, but they did their best. Through a great deal of negotiating, personal expense for secondary lab testing and plant they had come up with the most reliable and potent form of true colloidal silver you could buy at an affordable and fair price. Now that the apocalypse had hit, the business was technically closed, but they had remaining in inventory several gallons of colloidal silver that represented the wealth of the world to them and truly life and death for some others. What to do with all this bounty was a bone of contention with Zack and Rod, as there was no arguing their trademark offering of Serenity Silver represented a 12X better and more potent product to what could be helpful in an apocalyptic world.

  Zack took great pleasure in advising Rod, that just one 4 ounce bottle of his label could be diluted with distilled water to produce 48 of Rod’s lower ppm inferior stuff and would be still very effective but the real pisser was when he also told him that his and Ann’s true colloidal silver was 200% better even diluted. This was because of his former supplier’s special three-month manufacturing process, one that could no longer be duplicated now, to make the nano particles so small and uniform for easier absorption by the body.

  “So, if I am understanding you right, Zack, you want to start using colloidal silver instead of alcohol to make tincture with? That’s an aqueou
s solution and you and I both know using high proof alcohol as a solvent makes a difference in the herb’s potency, normally we try to choose the right proof of alcohol for species, cost and availability. Now if we had us some super strength off the shelf liquor stuff like Ever Clear booze, we could make decisions based on dilutions and what the plant is, like a root, leaf, stem, bark etc. or what specific constituents of the botanical we are trying to extract. I got that part, and I know making a tincture with straight water is a legitimate herbalist practice, but we already know that it doesn’t preserve the end product for a long shelf life like the addition of alcohol does. My question is, even though you told me it’s common for colloidal silver to be used as a preservative in cosmetics etc., what does it do to tinctures?” Rachel asked as everyone present leaned forward to hear the answer.