Apocalyptic Apothecary

by Ron Foster

  Herpes and Shingles

  Licorice root extract has been utilized in treating herpes simplex, sores, and shingles. Several studies show that the antiviral action of the herb may suppress the return and progression of cold sores due to the herpes virus. Easy treatment for shingles and herpes would be to ingest a capsule of this root extract 2 times a day and to use a salve made of the same extract on the affected region between four and five times a day.

  Garlic

  Now there is no Garlic in Woods Walker but it is interesting to note that garlic cloves act as an excellent antibiotic. Garlic heals many diseases and is often used as a universal remedy. In world war I, Dr Albert Schweitzer used garlic to treat typhus, dysentery, enteritis and gangrene in soldiers battle wounds. Echinacea alone or with combination of other antiseptic herbs such as garlic is used to treat typhus infection and it is useful in tick related diseases.

  Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (Tick Typhus)

  Rickettsia rickettsi

  Tick (ixodid ticks) which also lives in rodents.

  High fever, severe headache, chills, prostration, myalgia, hepatomegaly (swelling of liver), and pneumonial symptoms.

  America and Mexico. The most common reported Rickettsial illness in the States.

  That swelling of the liver bit in the chart is primally handled by the Chinese Gold Coin grass in our mixture but other herbs in the Woods Walker blend also help to reduce internal organ swelling in the body as well as external swelling of the bite site or affected limbs. There are many reasons besides the poison in a snake bite that can make an organ swell, but for now just consider my fixation on ticks in a grid down situation sucking on immune deficient sick folks and sharing other diseases you might not be prepped for appearing in these graphs.

  Type of Typhus

  Causative Agent (Bacteria)

  Vectors

  Symptoms

  Occurrence

  Epidemic (Classic Typhus)

  Rickettsia prowazeki

  Body Louse,

  Head Louse (lesser extend). Usually borne by rats.

  Fever and macular rash (spotted rash). If left untreated,maculopapularand petechial (small) rashes will appear.

  Worldwide; especially during war and famine. Poverty can be a causative as hygiene is not emphasized.

  Endemic (Murine)

  Rickettsia typhior Rickettsia felis (Cat Flea)

  Fleas; borne by rodents.

  Similar toepidemicsymptoms but milder. Tenderness, cerebral bleeding and if too severe, renal (kidney) faliure. Differentiated from epidemic typhus by Weill-Felix test.

  Worldwide; concentrated in warm coastal area.

  Brill-Zinsser Disease (Recrudescent Typhus)

  Rickettsia prowazeki

  Recovered patients from epidemic typhus. The bacteria might not been cleared completely from the body (especially in the lymph nodes) thus the disease relapses. Also, if the person is bitten by lice, it can get transmitted to another. Can be spread through physical contact.

  Mild epidemictyphussymptoms.

  Worldwide, prevalent in area once infested with epidemic typhus.

  Perhaps during the Civil war, the bacterium Yersinia pestis (Lehman & Newmann) van Loghen was not present in large numbers of the rodent populations. Yellow fever reached serious levels only three times during the Civil War (Wiley 1992). In 1864, the worst outbreak occurred in New Bern, NC, where 763 cases resulted in 303 deaths (Wiley 1992). Was it possible that these diseases were present in greater numbers but were misdiagnosed by the doctors of the period? Possibly, especially for typhus, where it may have been diagnosed in one of the "continued" or "typho-malarial" fever categories recognized at the time.

  However, let us consider for a moment that the medical community was well aware of and familiar with symptoms of plague and yellow fever during this period. Large outbreaks of yellow fever were known within recent memory for many serving as soldiers or practicing medicine at the time of the Civil War. As with plague and typhus, a large yellow fever epidemic never materialized during the war. Had any of these diseases reached epidemic proportions, history may have well recorded a different outcome based on not only who diagnosed but could treat such an epidemic correctly.

  Anyone who goes camping can tell you that enduring mosquitoes is bad enough with or without bug repellant, but it was the ensuing malaria after a mosquito bite that could prove worse for many Civil War soldiers. Folk of the 1860’s did not connect the disease with mosquitoes. One Union soldier reflected that "We are more afraid of ague here than the enemy." (Wiley 1992). Malaria was termed "simple intermittent fever" by the medical professionals, but the soldiers referred to the malady as ague or "the shakes." Malaria was so prevalent in some camps that a standard greeting was "Have you had the shakes?" (Wiley 1992). There were over 1.3 million cases and 10,000 deaths from malaria in the Union Army (Steiner 1968). Fully one quarter of all illness reported in the Union Army was malarial in character (Wiley 1992). Confederate soldiers also suffered, although fatalities from the disease were comparatively lower. In 1861 and 1862, one seventh of all cases of sickness reported by Rebel armies east of the Mississippi was malarial (Wiley 1994). Malaria was said to have greatly affected at least one campaign. The prevalence of the disease among Union troops contributed in thwarting the first Federal attempt to capture Vicksburg, MS, in 1862 (Steiner 1968); the city did not fall until the following year.

  Although malaria was a common occurrence in both the North and South camps, an effective drug - quinine - was available for prevention and cure of the disease. Union armies used over 19 tons of quinine sulfate during the war (Smith 1976). However, the Northern blockade of the Confederacy made this drug difficult to obtain in the South, which led to quinine smuggling and a black market. In 1862, an ounce of quinine cost $5.00 in New York while the same quantity sold for $60 in South Carolina. Toward the end of the war, an ounce of quinine was selling for $400 to $600 an ounce in the Confederacy (Garrison 1995). When one considers that a Confederate private made only $16 a month by the war's end, buying the drug would be prohibitively expensive but selling the drug could be quite lucrative. Federal guards detained one woman after it was found she had sewn the medicine into her skirts. She was later released when it was discovered that she was the niece of the U.S Postmaster General (Davis 1982). Another individual was evidently more successful. He managed to smuggle $10,000 worth of quinine in a dead mule (Davis 1982).

  Because of the scarcity of quinine in the Confederacy, the Confederate Surgeon General had to improvise an antimalarial potion that contained a mixture of willow, poplar, dogwood bark, and whiskey (Wiley 1994). This may seem like an ineffective folk remedy, but inclusion of salicaceous plants such as willow and poplar (from which aspirin was originally derived) may have provided some fever relief.

  Now Woods Walker tincture has many botanicals in it that serve as a febrifuges and anti-inflammatory agents but also included in it is a concentration of wild lettuce extract. Lettuce Opium, as old timers called it, is a proven pain reliever without the side effects or addicting qualities of morphine but works on numbing the same neural sensors in the brain, just in a milder way. Getting snake or poisonous bug bit hurts big time! So Echinacea, a traditional remedy used by many Native Americans for snake bite, has on top of its ability to denature rattlesnake venom some strong documented pain relievers. I will leave it up to you to research more about botanical pain relievers or the other herbs in the formula but suffice to say I wouldn’t mind having something a bit more powerful as a pain reliever and calming than a few aspirin to swallow if I got bit!

  The components which provide pain relief are known as lactones. They act on the central nervous system to calm the nerves which cause pain sensations.

  Wild lettuce has been extensively studied and repeatedly shown to reduce pain. The name “opium lettuce” is a misnomer though. While the plant will relieve pain, don’t expect the hardcore sedative effects of opium. It is more comparable to a high dosage of ib
uprofen in this mixture but you have a lot of anti-inflammatory herbs that also exhibit natural pain-relieving effects to take the edge off. It was also considered you would be taking multiple teaspoon full size doses over the course of hours should you indeed get bit, so we had to be careful of cumulative effects.

  it has similar pain killing properties as ibuprofen, but with a relaxing effect on the body, due to the nervine properties of lactucin, and lactucopicrin. The good news though is that it will relieve pain without causing the negative effects of opium. You won’t get addicted nor will you develop a tolerance to it.

  I thought long and hard about a possibly deadly encounter with a poisonous creature and did a lot of research on the inflammation and extreme swelling that normally occurs at the bite site, so if something helps with that like an exceptional good herb known to assist these types of symptoms, it’s in there. Oh yes, by the way the formulation of Woods Walker having the mild sedative qualities of several herbs in it also benefits highly from the wild lettuce extract to assist in calming the victim’s apprehensions and traumatic anxieties. Just a little bit of natural calming. Fortunately, it is rare to have a severe envenoming as many bites will have insufficient venom injected.

  Historical natural history can be hysterical to research and I wanted to share a J. H. Browne (1865) story who had his share of biting fly and snake problems. While his company was resting near the banks of the Mississippi, he soon felt the full wrath of the Arkansas sand flies and gnats. This guy was a great writer, very descriptive in his accounts of that fateful day, enjoy his story:

  “Not a minute had we reclined our fatigued forms before the sand-flies and gnats assailed us in force; and before we could affect our escape, we looked as if we had just recovered from an attack of the small-pox.

  One of my optics was closed, and my companion's lips had assumed the proportions of a full-blooded African's.

  The winged pests covered us in swarms, and for five minutes our motions resembled the wild movements of dancing Dervishes. Indeed, I doubt if the Dervishes ever danced as we did.

  With our swinging limbs and ceaseless gyrations, we must have seemed like human windmills, turning to every point of the compass at the same time.

  We leaped ourselves out of our boots and hats and coats; and, in the midst of his bewilderment, I found my associate endeavoring to put on a cotton-wood tree, and myself trying to draw a large swamp over my burning feet, and cover my head with a mud-bank.

  After a while, we began to grow used to it; but, at the same time, seriously arrived at the conclusion, that, however interesting such excursions might be to the natives, they were not altogether fascinating to civilized beings.

  So, we went off precipitately through marshes and morasses, breathing gnats and sand-flies as if they had all our lives composed our natural atmosphere; trying to wipe off the blood that had started from our faces with our boots, and to cover our pedal extremities with our handkerchiefs.

  While we were struggling along like men under the pressure of forty cocktails, we heard a sharp rattle, and looking before us with what eyes the gnats had left us, we saw two huge snakes coiled, and ready to spring.

  Rattlesnakes had no terrors for us then. We were desperate.

  At that moment I believe I would have walked in the roaring mouths of a battery or even up to the matrimonial altar, without shrinking.

  We regarded rattlesnakes as symbols of Secession, and we knew the sandflies and gnats were of the Rebel tribe. So, we attacked the venomous serpents with our boots; beating to the right and left, quite indifferent whether we struck them, or they struck us.

  We had leather pyrotechnics, boot Catherine wheels, for a short time, when the hateful rattling ceased, and we saw the snakes were dead.

  We thought we had killed them; but I know now the flies and gnats had swarmed down their throats and strangled them.

  Little inclination had we to investigate the matter, but rushed on through the swamps, and at last reached a skiff- - -whether ours or not was a question of indifference- - -and leaping into it, rowed over the river again.

  When we had reached the Tennessee shore, we fell in the back water and ultimately got on board the Flotilla, with one boot between us, no hats, physiognomies that would have set Lavater mad to contemplate, and bearing a close resemblance to the horribly tattooed faces so greatly in favor with the New Zealanders.

  I looked into the glass--a thing I rarely do, for I hate repulsive spectacles--and, as far as my defective eyesight could determine, I thought I discovered a striking resemblance between myself and the Egyptian Sphynx, and that I appear as if I might be a brother of the grotesque figure with four heads, by which the Brahmins sometime represent their chief deity... To be afflicted with boils is bad enough; but to be besieged by Arkansas gnats is absolutely beyond endurance.”

  AUTHOR REMINDER: Does having something far more medicinal than home remedies or as singularly a specific antibiotic only as Fishmox is to bug out with or go camping with make sense for everybody to consider now? I sincerely hope so, these formulas of ours is one prep that will put you way ahead of the game in the long run. There is enough more unconsidered, totally unprepared for crap out there needing medical intervention that you can catch from just sleeping on the fungus in the leaves in the woods or the public in general right now, even with all our efforts of municipal mosquito spraying and everything else to keep the disease rate down now for West Nile virus and several other bug borne diseases and pathogens.

  Can you, or dare you, even hesitate to imagine what it’s going to be like living around people with no orthodox medical care of any kind when the infrastructure breaks down?

  Having something you can go to in your medicine cupboard to handle even half of the numerous serious conditions mentioned so far, is monumental and although many people could save themselves from the effects of many diseases if they only knew what they had in their spice rack and how to use or apply it, this knowledge or that amount of drugs for most is unattainable in a short period of time.

  So far, Woods Walker has shown it was up for the task and then some, as we have yet to explore all of its ingredients. I am telling you this for a reason. Remember the Cherokee snake bite song? Convince the mind and the body will follow, believe in your medicine and know why you believe in it. The human body has the innate power to heal itself. Without this power to self-heal, even the most advanced medications and procedures would ultimately fail.

  Now as I have mentioned before, many people will be running out of their meds, consider the benefits of Self Heal/Heal All herb, because it is a rare form of plant with the attributes of physiological body modulators in it that is going to decide for itself how best it thinks to balance a body metabolism out.

  Just as curcumin is used with pepperine to reduce the cykotins that would drown you with your own fluids in your lungs by your immune system producing too many white cells from one of the super flu bugs, Heal All has this property of naturally correcting and adjusting proper levels and many more constituents to get your body to produce more or less of a cellular or physical response to many other things. It helps with allergies also and lessens reactions. High blood pressure, low blood pressure, diabetes, ulcers, candida fungal infections etc., all require some form of balancing going on to stabilize you and many people are dependent on a wide variety of pharmaceutical drugs for these functions post-collapse. That is partially why a full one ounce of Panacea Blend (120 PPM Serenity brand colloidal silver plus 10x concentrated Heal All extract powder) is mixed with a one-ounce concentrated solution of the herbs for the extra benefits we are discussing. It is the safest most powerful blend for the general public we could devise that has the power and constancy to remedy a situation with no known interactions noted in years of research and historic herbal lore.

  "Medicine is mine; what herbs and Simples grow

  In fields and forests, all their powers I know."

  Dryden

  It may happen that one or anot
her enquirer taking up this book will ask, to begin with, "What is an Herbal Simple?" The English word "Simple," composed of two Latin words, Singula plica (a single fold), means "Singleness," whether of material or purpose.

  From primitive times the term "Herbal Simple" has been applied to any homely curative remedy consisting of one ingredient only, and that of a vegetable nature. Many such a native medicine found favor and success with our single-minded forefathers, this being the "reverent simplicity of ancienter times."

  When considering the herbalist approach that was used to combine a panacea-like blend into one apocalyptic medicine, you might want to consider something to overcome migraine (as a health supplement), to strengthen kidneys (as a health supplement), to reduce fever, to improve an injured digestive tract say from or due to a possible typhus infection and or/ to help improve body liquid circulation. You might just want to close a cut or lessen a viral infection etc., many things to know and consider unless you have something as renowned to begin with a powerful herb such as Heal All to base your helpful, noncontradiction, supportive or strength enhancing additional herbs to. I have been using it just alone in a tincture with great success for a very long time but it’s a great building block to lay my formula foundation with when enhancing properties or basically giving heal all more tools and weapons to work with.