What a fun class this was! Unable to find an herb awake this early in the year, I decided to take a break from a single herb and instead focused on Medicine Making techniques.

We started by discussing the medicinal uses of honey. There are so many wonderful things to say about it that it is hard to know where to start. Studies have been done in New Zealand using honey to treat 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree burns, gangrene, diabetes and many other diseases, testing honey against huge name drugs and honey blew the socks off of them all. When treating a deep wound, there is no need to clean the site first as the honey will draw out all the debris. It is recommended to fully pack the wound with honey, soak a gauze pad with more and tape over the wound. Unless it is oozing a lot of fluid, the bandage only needs changing once a day. Honey will pull the debris out, remove the necroses from the site, heal the skin from the inside out and offer some pain relief.

Research has been done to prove using honey effective in many types of wounds including surgery incisions (which are healed w/o the use of sutures) and perineal tears just to name a few.

Placing a drop of honey in each eye once a day can help with night vision, improve eyesight and dryness. I am currently testing this out myself. An herbalist who taught a class on Healing With Honey at the SEWHC in North Carolina last fall stated "it burns like the dickens for about a minute but then starts to feel good." I have even noticed the severity lessening with each treatment. I have also successfully treated sore throats with turmeric and honey and used it when I and my three youngest children had whooping cough this summer. Honey has been proven to kill strep and staph infections so any time there's a sore throat, you can bet it will be part of the artillery.

For more information on the glories of honey, you can read all about it at Waikato Honey Research Unit.

We made a salve using honey and deer tallow. This salve in an ancient Egyptian recipe. We also mixed powdered slippery elm bark with honey to make throat lozenges. This is simple to make: just drizzle a bit of honey in with a lot of powdered herb and mix into a thick paste. Roll into balls the size of marbles. Roll in more powder to remove stickiness. These will last for several years in a cool, dark place.

Earlier in the day, I had boiled some wild cherry bark down and made a syrup using the thickened decoction and honey. We continued boiling it down and made cherry cough drops. Sampling them, we all agreed that they were tasty enough to be candy. After they cooled, they were broken into pieces and dusted with powdered sugar.

Next month, we'll be back on the herbal trail, learning about the goodness of Yellow Dock.