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What is it?

The dried leaves of Thyme, the familiar, low growing, woody, long-lived shrub with its dinstinctive scent. Thyme is a tough little plant that may grow straggly under difficult conditions but is likely to survive nevertheless. 

How has it been used?

In traditional medicine Thyme first and foremost a remedy for coughs that are dry, unproductive or painful, Thyme has a way of softening and loosening the cough to help the body do, with much less effort and discomfort, what it had been trying to achieve by coughing in the first place. Thyme also has a potent antimicrobial effect which speeds the resolution of infections in the lungs.

~ Thyme’s other traditional uses include:

• a mouthwash and gargle for ulcers or infections in the mouth and throat.
• internally for painful menstruation.
• internal small doses for irritable bowel and colic.
• internally and as a compress for a chronic grumbling appendix

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Personal experiences

Thyme makes people cough more rather than less at first but it changes the cough from dry and irritating to being looser, wetter and more productive. Thyme works extremely well in baths too where it opens the lungs and provides deep relaxation to those muscles that are exhausted by the coughing.

For a single dose a small amount of Thyme in a tea, such as half of a level tsp may be ample to get the medicinal effects and higher doses may be no more helpful but merely harder to take. Likewise no more than a drop of Thme as the essential oil, two at the very most, is ample in a bath or burner.

Acute bronchial infections will yield to a strong tea of Thyme made in the morning and then kept sipping through during the day. That might mean starting with several tsps of Thyme in a litre of water (along with other herbs as required) and getting through it all in a day.

Thyme combines perfectly with Elder flower, Chamomile, Mullein and White horehound for bad coughs or lung troubles.

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Excerpt from Felter & Lloyd's Kings Dispensatory from 1898

Thyme is tonic, carminative, emmenagogue, and antispasmodic. The cold infusion is useful in dyspepsia, with weak and irritable stomach, and as a stimulating tonic in convalescence from exhausting diseases. The warm infusion is beneficial in hysteria, dysmenorrhoea, flatulence, colic, headache, and to promote perspiration. Occasionally the leaves have been used externally, in fomentation. The oil is valuable as a local application to neuralgic and rheumatic pains; and, internally, to fulfil any of the indications for which the plant is used. It forms a good preparation for nervous and spasmodic diseases of children. It may be given in teaspoonful doses to a child 3 years old, repeating it 3 or 4 times a day, sweetening and diluting it, if desired. A strong infusion of the Thyme slightly sweetened, is a valuable remedy for whooping-cough, convulsive and catarrhal coughs, and stridulous sore throat, the favorable result occurring at the end of a very few days.

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