Apocalyptic Apothecary

by Ron Foster

  As a dietary-like supplement he wasn’t sure of its effects, but supposed it would have a definite positive effect and do some good as his best shot at a malaria pill of sorts, he guessed. If he was ever travelling through a swamp or an area of known mosquito or tick-borne diseases, he was going to use it like the Brits did with their Gin and Tonics over the years.

  However, Trail Master should not be consumed for long periods of time and is better reserved for the "times of need" so he remained up in the air on that. 5 drops a day in some tea that had ginger and cinnamon, two other antimalarials, would be his regime if he did.

  Fever Tree, ‘the quinine that gives tonic water its gentle bitterness’ was also an important anti-malarial ingredient, used for centuries to ward off this deadly disease.

  Quinine powder is so bitter that British officials stationed in early 19th century India and other tropical posts mixed the powder with soda and sugar, and tonic water was created. The first commercial tonic water was produced in 1858. The mixed drink gin and tonic also originated in British colonial India, when the British mixed their medicinal quinine tonic with gin.

  Since 2010, at least four tonic syrups have been available in the US. Consumers add carbonated water to the syrup to make tonic water, allowing drinkers to adjust the flavor intensity.

  Medicinal tonic water originally contained only carbonated water and a large amount of quinine. However, most tonic water today contains less quinine and is used mostly for its flavor. As a result of the lower quinine content, it is less bitter and is also usually sweetened, often with high-fructose corn syrup or sugar. Some manufacturers also produce diet (or slimline) tonic water, which may contain artificial sweeteners such as aspartame (a poison at any level). Traditional-style tonic water with little more than quinine and carbonated water is less common but may be preferred by those who desire the bitter flavor.

  In the United States, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limits the quinine content in tonic water to 83 ppm (83 mg per liter if calculated by mass), while the daily therapeutic dose of quinine is in the range of 500–1000 mg, and 10 mg/kg every eight hours for effective malaria prevention (2100 mg daily for a 70 kg adult). Still, it is often recommended as a relief for leg cramps but medical research suggests some care is needed in monitoring doses. Because of quinine's risks, the FDA cautions consumers against using "off-label" quinine drugs to treat leg cramps.

  13

  Fond Farewells

  The house seemed rather empty and forlorn now. Parker had left for home and they hoped he was doing well. Travelling by motorcycle was not ideal for this in Zack’s opinion, particularly when trying to balance four half gallon mason jars of herbal medicine but Parker had shown him the motorcycles’ hard saddle bags handled them easily and balanced the load. Zack had remarked that didn’t leave a lot of room for water but he had mobility.

  Parker agreed water was important, but he would make it. You don't plan on carrying a lot with you anyway in case of an emergency, packing that amount of water can be very impractical, especially if you don't have a car. The alternative is keeping a purification device in your go bag that can turn water from ditches, streams, ponds and other water sources into clean drinking water.

  On the other hand, carrying that amount of medicine with him could become the base for many other medicines if they weren’t needed to be taken undiluted and the knowledge he had gained hanging out with Zack and Ann would serve him well in his new vocation as a travelling herbalist for now.

  Donna, Dee and Rachel seemed quite happy for now trading in the gated community and working a big back yard garden plot with Ezra in the gated community. They would be regular visitors to the old farm mansion that Zack and Ann were keeping and were invited to move back in come spring maybe, if crops could be grown sufficient to feed more than just the pair of them.

  Old Ezra was in his element. He could be found sitting out in front of his store chatting up the occasional passerby for news or offering recommendations for purchases when a customer came around. An uneasy truce went on between him and Rachel who was basically the acting apocalyptic on-duty pharmacist for the dispensary there in the backroom, making up special orders that Ezra got to sell the premade potions he understood without her interference.

  That didn’t mean Ezra wouldn’t try to give you medical advice you may or may not want, but he tried to keep it to the minimum and knew Rachel was listening and ready to pounce by poking her head out to scold him if he strayed into her professional realm of herbal expertise.

  Donna was the official organizer of the storefront and seemed quite happy making sure accounts were recorded, shelves were neat and ride herd on Ezra and Rachel or help either one out as needed.

  Dee was in and out the apothecary shop like the place had a revolving door. She was always flitting off to investigate a barter deal, gone sometimes for days to see about arranging trades or running her shuttle service, which now included trucking if enough goods could be found and Rod and the community could get in agreement on what she wanted to charge.

  She and Donna visited and ran supplies out to Zack and Ann as needed and carried back whatever he managed to produce in his Civil War era medicine lab. Donna had her hands full figuring out what to display in the limited shelf space of the small house converted into a store. The place was only a modest two-bedroom home with a big porch on the front and Ezra sitting out front to snag the customers, a wood heater in the main room they used for now as a table to play checkers or cards on and space was very limited. Ezra lived in one of the bedrooms and Rachel had her herbalist equipment and botanical lab setup in the other. The three ladies had a big three-bedroom house they shared not far from the store and its shed doubled as excess trade goods storage for Dee and Zack.

  Ezra had his big barrel of assorted walking canes for sale in one corner of the stores’ living room next to some fishing poles and equipment and he had filled one book case with ammo for trade and other sundries he had declared were his to barter for without intervention. This assortment rested next to his rocking chair in the corner. The rest of the place was like a country store trying to sell you any and everything Donna decided should be displayed and available for sale.

  Nick and Knobby would be leaving out for home in a couple of days after they went out on one last mission with Zack. There was a National Guard and FEMA Medical tent setup in front of the old hospital in Montgomery that Zack had his eye on as potential customers. Rod and Dee had already been over there several times and had explained to Zack that obviously the place was short on everything regarding medical supplies and it was up to him to convince the medics and the few remaining doctors that he had something to offer they could prescribe maybe herbal medicine wise.

  Zack and Ann were depending on this. It would be a miracle and a dream come true if he could trade his medicinal herb marvels for some military and relief food or whatever else they might have. He had one shitload of Chamberbitter to create some remedies off of, both drying in the barn as well as being turned into tincture soaking in a lot of the last remaining alcohol they had. For Zack to sacrifice good drinking booze for that project had made him whine almost as much as Nick and Knobby had putting their last final trade together. Zack needed booze to make medicine with and that trade item wasn’t very forthcoming because it got drunk up quickly and there was no way to replace it. Zack had the knowledge and with a bit of practice he could make alcohol in that old botanical still he had, but he lacked any grains to make a whiskey mash and was going to give a shot at making sugar water-based drinking alcohol but that was in the future.

  Meantime, Zack knew if booze was to be had, then it was time to hang out with soldiers and find him a quartermaster somewhere willing to help him out on profiting off some medicinal whiskey.

  Nick said he and Knobby were definitely up for that and knew that rationale well, but they were down to one bottle of whiskey that they were saving for their trip and didn’t want to trade it to anyone for any price
. Zack knew this was going to be a hard bargain to even mention, let alone get to see what brand of whiskey they might have hidden, but he dreaded the task of sales pitching them begging that he only needed at least half of it to mix with some noxious badly named weed.

  Phyllanthus urinaria, that green menace that beleaguered them all, more commonly known as gripeweed in south Louisiana or chamberbitter over here in Alabama, is a common summer weed in the area and it has become more of a problem in Florida over the past decade or so and also goes by the monicker Little Mimosa. It is now one of our most significant summer weeds to plague anybody’s garden or lawn.

  Many weeds in the landscape can cause a gardener to gripe. But when a weed is actually called gripeweed, you know you have a real problem on your hands. Zack had been griping about it seemingly forever, but now he had to use its unattractive names to sound like it was fairy dust or unicorn horn or something. Thing was, he understood its uses and had previously researched it to death when the grid was up and found it awfully similar in properties, scientific botanical classification, etc. as Chinese Gold Coin Grass. Well, there were no more chances of ever getting that formerly imported herb again, especially in this grid down world and he found enough similarities in his herbalist mind to get ready to substitute his nemesis weed for it in his pandemic snakebite mixture, he figured. It was a liver detoxifier too, so as far as he was concerned, it was as likely of a substitute as he would ever find, traditional or medical history of its use as a snakebite remedy lacking or not that he could quote.

  That was the thing, as far as anyone knew, Zack was the only one who has ever seen any hard facts on that plant and most herbal books if they could be found barely made mention of it regardless of its perfect Latin name specific for a remedy for kidney stone problems. Like all herbs, it had many other beneficial attributes besides being a specific for one malady or another, but it was not something commonly known like echinacea, so prescribing it was difficult and peoples acceptance was more difficult to gain than something called say Heal All which he was now in seriously short supply of.

  At least it wasn’t named for that other damn weed that he was trying to study the effects of called “The Devils Grandmother” Elephantopus tomentosus or Hairy Elephants foot. Why it got that nasty first name Zack didn’t know, but had studiously and panickily looked for it without any satisfying results after the plant identification app on Ann’s phone had said this plantain look alike had invaded his Plantain patch once it sent up flowers. Without having the devil’s grandmother botanical sending its stem up in late summer, the stuff looks exactly like a low to the ground Plantain, which there are many varieties of, broad leaf, thin leaf etc. in all kinds of representations. When Zack had collected their annual harvest of plantain tincture, he could have well mistakenly gathered some of it up, but he didn’t think so because he had included the flower spikes of the plantain species he was collecting with it. That was the big identifier to him, that he hopefully hadn’t made a mistake in his collecting, but he had been concentrating more on leaves in that mix and this stuff once it had sent up its triangular feeling hard stem was several months away in appearing at that point. Zack had first remarked eying the old Grandma’s medicine plant from a distance, he thought the Heal All was popping up on its own as a weed for another season because of the squarish stems and lavender flowers, but Ann recognized the leaves were wrong right off.

  Anything carrying that awful common name for a plant, once they confirmed the apps identification, needed their immediate attention and they were very scared they had polluted their wildcraft gathering with a possible toxic plant that didn’t need to be in something they alleged you could take internally, but all their worry was for naught.

  “The leaves damn sure taste different!” Zack said as he tried it himself once finding out you could eat it, but research suggested not, due to taste. Anything that close as a lookalike to an educated eye just glossing over it and thinking it was a plantain, if it wasn’t for its different stem or flowering phase, had worried the hell out of him. Zack didn’t mess around at all if there was any ever a doubt of any plants identification and normally Ann and Zack’s post grid herbal industry was getting products in quantity rather than wildcrafting from known herbal lab suppliers if it wasn’t for their own or friends’ garden therapies. Fresh is always best and there are differences at each stage of a process or season when it comes to herbs, they had learned. Not any more though, if you didn’t have the feel for it and herbal knowledge now, there was no app or book out to save your butt or an internet to consult.

  The traditional uses, phytochemical composition, pharmacological activity and compounds isolated from different species of Elephantopus, family (asteraceae), is diverse. The plant is a genus of about twelve plants out of which the majority are natives of the southeastern USA. It is used in traditional folk medicine for the treatment of nephritis, oedema, dampness, pain in the chest, fever, scabies, arthralgia due to wound and cough of pneumonia. It is also used as a tonic, febrifuge, and diaphoretic against cough, bronchitis, and asthma.

  Ann and Zack had spent part of one summer on their little 3 acre homestead fighting with a dying lawnmower and lacking time or money to fix it themselves took a toll on the old place before the grid had gone down, but instead of griping about it they were now busy trying to remember all those life lessons of plants growing taller in all stages. All sorts of plants had sprung up in all kinds of stages in between mowing and it was a constant amazement for them both as they pointed out to each other new questions, what flower was that? What a weird looking plant, I wonder if it’s good for something etc. and this field study and observation took up a big part of their lives.

  The sun would be going down soon enough and it would start getting bone chilling cold out here quicker than anyone knew or was prepared for soon enough. Those that hadn’t gathered or toiled in the soil to try to save some produce like squash for winter or cut firewood would be gone soon enough come spring. Those that survived the hardships of winter would need spring tonics and wouldn’t laugh at the concept that the lack of vitamins over the chilling wet dreary days hadn’t lowered their immune systems to the point they didn’t have the energy to plant a spring crop.

  Old folks like Zack and Ann needed extra help and the strength of youth to go on, society needed to keep the wisdom of these old apocalyptic apothecary’s alive if they didn’t want to go back to the dark ages of no real medicines and death. A deal could be cut, respect could be given, work would be shared. Health and hope would be received in return and this fact would make it a better place for all in this new life. The new world would be reconstructed, from the old knowledge of the past and the electric generators would turn again as we all get by with a little help from our friends and some healthful remedies from the generations that came before.

  THE END. AUTHOR NOTE: I know you may have been overwhelmed processing all that herbal data that was in this book but just like that fictional story of finding an old tome of knowledge from the Civil War on a dusty bookcase somewhere, perhaps what I have written might serve the same lofty goal. Learn now a plant or two and its merits to relieve the suffering of others. To give the gift of health or true hope is the highest ideal I can hope for by my teachings to others, if we can give someone but one gift in our lives let it be health, self-worth and knowledge to do for themselves and others. Be blessed, study, and believe that nature will allow you the strength to succeed in life if you are aware and apply its teachings.

  Go back to school here temporarily or by your own desire of knowledge to formulate and explore herbal medicines for yourself as you read. Remember the reason why the SNAKEBITE medicine approach was the best way I could deliver my message in this book. If you can now recognize why something might be good to combine with another and cause no harm, identify for yourself a useful herb and teach about it and give it to a friend, then you and the multitude of you will ask questions and have hope like no tomorrow that we will all get through
this.

  All my best,

  Ron Foster

  9/4/2019 a day late and dollar short ?? That’s what we Preppers do, leave wisdom behind and practical solutions for when we are gone.

  Here is a poem from herb faery artist and poet, Cicely Mary Barker:

  The Song of the Self Heal Faery

  When little Elves have cut themselves,

  Or Mouse has hurt her tail,

  Or Froggie's arm has come to harm,

  This herb will never fail.

  The Faeries' skill can cure each ill

  And soothe the sorest pain;

  She’ll bathe and bind, and soon she’ll find, that they are well again.