Stomach: chamomile or peppermint tea
Bronchial issues: licorice (tea, or candy if I'm feeling decadent)
Cough: wild cherry bark tea (the cherry bark is an active ingredient in commercial cough drops and syrups)
Fever, pain: willow bark tea (salycylic acid)
Symptoms that seem to be virus-like: elderberry tea
Symptoms that seem to be bacterial: heavy doses of garlic and red pepper (in most cases, alternate the antiviral and antibiotic treatments above until better or until sick enough to give in and go to the doctor)
Insect sting or similar: poultice of plantain leaf
Burn, sun or heat: aloe vera goo
Poison ivy exposure (best before symptoms):rinse with rubbing alcohol to break up the oils, then wash well. Plantain poultice for any that breaks out anyway.
Most any cut, mysterious dog rash, etc: wash with Dr. Bronners tea tree oil soap
Happily, I grow and/or gather everything listed except the tea tree oil soap ( no tea trees in this part of the world), and we go through one large bottle of the soap every couple of years. We don't buy much in the way of remedies.
This is something I really want to learn to do- identify and gather herbs and plants for medicinal uses- but my father (a mycologist) instilled a healthy fear of gathering wild things in the woods after a few friends of his died from eating wild-gathered mushrooms (and they were legit experts on mushrooms!). I know herbs are not generally as dangerous as mushrooms, but I'm still scairt! Do you have any recommendations for a way I can learn about gathering these things?
I forage a lot, or did when I had the time to, enough to make a significan percentage of our food (less than gardening and hunting, but still significant). Even with that, I will not tackle mushrooms! There are just too many bad ways to die there.
To get started, assuming you don't have older relatives or friends who grew up foraging, get yourself a book (any of Euell Gibbons' are good) and start reading. I started with a combination of older relatives and books.
Then, start your foraging with things that are easy to identify (a flower, a distinctive fruit...) and take it in baby steps. I started with dandelion and the native ( not African) violets here -- the flowers show you what the plant looks like. The violet leaves went into salads, and the dandelion flowers became fritters (the leaves are good to eat, but only when they're young. Mature dandelion leaves won't hurt you, but they're unbearably bitter). So, the next year I had looked at enough dandelions to know them well and I harvested leaves before the flowers came in. Etc.
An apple tree is hard to mistake. Nuts like hickory, walnut, pecan. Even acorns are edible, but there's a laborious process to get out enough tannins to make them palatable.
Wild cherry could be mixed up with a couple of other trees, but not once you've looked carefully at illustrations, picked some of the fruit, and squeezed it to see if it has small seeds (bad) or one big one (good). Do be careful with cherry until you're sure, though.
Read up first so that you know which plants have dangerous analogs. Start slowly and be sure before you eat. Even then, eat only a little the first time. Even if it's not poisonous, you want to be sure you don't have an undiscovered allergy!
You can grow a surprising quantity of herbs on a windowsill, too.
