Mathew Parke and Dr. Julia Nemirovskaya, Germanic and Slavic Languages, Russian
“We should be endlessly thankful to the people for preserving this valuable experience in medicine. Phytotherapy without a doubt belongs to a rich future.” Professor C. A. Tomilin
This project’s goals are aimed at increasing the academic community’s knowledge of plants employed by Russian traditional healers while supplying plant specimens to the university. In recent years the West has seen an unprecedented interest in traditional healing, yet because traditional healers’ methods are not usually based on scientific models, they have been largely ignored by the modern medical establishment. In the last decade, however, popular movies such as Medicine Man, coupled with the growing green movement, have raised concern that as-yet undiscovered cures for diseases ranging from cancer to AIDS may be permanently forfeited. Thus there is a growing worldwide effort to collect specimens and document healing methods used by indigenous peoples.
I began collecting plants in Russia on July 15, 1997. I eventually gathered twenty plant specimens representing nineteen species from fourteen families. I documented where and when the plants are gathered, how they are stored, what parts are used and how they are prepared prior to treating a patient. Most of the plants are common to European Russia and Siberia. Many plants, such as Viola tricolor L., or the wild pansy, are indigenous to the Rocky Mountains as well. None of them are commercially cultivated, although healers sometimes grow small patches for their treatments.
While traveling in Ukraine and Georgia during May and June, I spoke with several people about traditional healing. I found that while almost everyone over age fifty knows a few herbal remedies, only a small group of people that can correctly be called healers. Accordingly, it is correct to divide knowledge of traditional healing into two categories: common and specific. The general community has access to common knowledge and will usually utilize it without consulting a healer. This knowledge includes cures for common illnesses using common plants. For example, in Ukraine, some natives treat acne by rubbing a cut onion over infected areas. This knowledge is shared by a large group and the method requires very little preparation. Specific knowledge is usually more complex. Healing methods are often elaborate, requiring that plants be gathered during a set time of year and prepared in a certain way. Specific knowledge is acquired in several ways: by reading books published by reputable healers, by studying under an established healer, or using a system of trial and error over a period of years to develop a unique healing system. In one case a system was developed almost entirely by trial and error over a period of fifteen years and is now used to treat alcoholism.
While traveling in the St. Petersburg area of Russia, I was fortunate to be introduced to Evgeny Altinov, a healer from the Russian Far East whose Chinese grandfather taught him Tao philosophy, acupuncture and plant remedies as part of a holistic system of healing. Judging from the man himself, a picture of health standing at 6’3″ with bulging muscles, it is a system not without benefits. Although initially reluctant to meet with me (I was told he did not want to share his secrets, especially with a foreigner), we soon established a rapport. Evgeny showed me nine plants and explained their preparation and use while continually emphasizing man’s place in nature, summing up his views with the phrase “motion is life.”
As Michael Balick and Paul Cox write in People, Plants and Culture, the percentage of medicinal plants used in treatment categories dealing with skin diseases, gastrointestinal ailments, and inflammation is much higher than the percentage of drugs used in the same treatment categories in the West.1 The treatments described to me bear this out, although it should be noted that I recorded only thirty-one different remedies, a number not large enough from which to draw final conclusions. Still, it is interesting to note that 13% of the thirty-one remedies described to me were used to treat skin diseases, 19% gastrointestinal problems and 19% inflamation. By comparison, according to Balick and Cox, only 1% of Western Pharmacopoeia is devoted to dermatology, only 2% is devoted to gastrointestinal problems and only 7% to inflamation. In addition to having a different focus group of diseases than the modern medical establishment, Russian traditional healers often use the same treatments for different diseases, although the diseases can usually be grouped together. For example, to treat hives or eczema, both dermatological problems, Evgeny recommends soaking in a tub of hot water with copious amounts of Chelidonium majus L. added. For more localized applications water should be substituted with vodka with the resulting mixture to be rubbed on trouble spots.
After speaking with Evgeny and other healers, as well as consulting books recommended to me, I found there are often sharp differences prescribing how and for what the same plants are used. This is usually the result of geographic distance. For instance, Plantago major L. is used in the Russian Far East and China to stop an open wound from bleeding by placing the freshly plucked leaf at the base of the laceration. In European Russian the same plant may also be used to treat cancerous polyps. Depending on the cancer type, different methods of preparation are used. If the cancer is visible then the leaves are used to make wet compresses which are placed on the swellings. In the case of lung or stomach cancer, a mixture of finely chopped leaves with an equal portion of table sugar are mixed and left to stand in a warm place for two weeks. A tablespoon of the resulting liquid should be taken three to four times a day.
References
- Kovaleva, N. G. Lecheniye Rastyeniyami. Moscow: Meditsina, 1971.
- Sokolov, S. A., and 1. P. Zamotaev. Spravochnik Po Lekarstvyeni Rasteniya. Moscow: Meditsina, 1985.
- Balick, Michael J., and Paul Allen Cox. Plants, People and Culture. New York: Scientific American Library, 1996.
- Thanks go to Dr. Julia Nemirovskaya for her support and advice, Dr. Paul Cox for his insights, and Dr. Irina Pautovo at the St. Petersburg Botanical Gardens who assisted me in contacting healers, gathering plants and forming documents allowing me to return with my specimens intact.1 Russia has a fine medical establishment that has pioneered many of the techniques used in the West, but there is no prepared data available to determine what percentages of its Pharmacopoeia are devoted to which treatment categories.