ABOUT
- Herbal Medicine
- The Clinic
- Richard Whelan

HERBS
- Alphabetically

CONDITIONS TREATED
- By Group
- Alphabetical

CLINIC INFORMATION
- Clinic Hours
- Clinic Location

This months ~ FEATURED ARTICLES
	High Blood Pressure
.
FEATURED HERBS
	Kola Nut
.
FEATURED VIDEOS
	Pregnancy Nausea

What is it?

It is the very astringent and bitter bark of the Willow that has been historically used in herbal medicine. Willow is of course the well-known tree found in many parks and gardens. Willow’s graceful drooping branches give it a sweetly melancholic appearance; ‘the weeping willows’.

How has it been used?

Willow branches are more pliable and less likely to split than most types of wood and so it has been used since the earliest civilisations for making baskets, fish traps, items of wicker and even the framing of homes. It is certain that Willow bark and leaves were also widely used as a natural anti-inflammatory treatment for many thousands of years in Europe and the Americas and there is no doubt that Willow would work if you needed it.

Pain and inflammation are reliably reduced or even eliminated if sufficient amounts of Willow are taken so it was the subject of early scientific enquiry. In 1828 the French chemist Henri Leroux was the first to isolate one of the ingredients in Willow that was able to treat pain and inflammation; salicin. A small amount of it was as effective as a much larger dose of the crude herb but it caused such terrible stomach aches that it wasn’t for another 70 years that the German chemist Felix Hoffmann developed salicin into the much more digestible acetylsalicylic acid that the drug started to achieve the fame that it continues to this day. Hoffmann’s employer, the now giant Pharmaceutical company Bayer, called this new substance aspirin.

TOP | HERBS A-Z LIST

Personal experiences

I have tried both Willow bark extract and Willow bark tea and I can certainly relate to why the public responded to aspirin with such enthusiasm as an alternative for their aches and pains. It is not just the bitterness, Willow is full of tannins as well (you can make paper and rope from it!) Drinking a cup of strong Willow tea is about as face-puckering an ordeal as you could imagine and you really do have to more than a sip or two to get enough of the salicylates that carry those anti-inflammatory affects. Much therapeutic benefit can still be gained with smaller doses of Willow for inflammatory mucus conditions of the gut and it can be very effective in creams for weak or inflamed tissues. Aspirin can be bad news if it is taken overlong or in too high a doses. but as a short term measure, which is how I understand Willow was only ever used as well, it is safe, it works and it can quickly relieve a great deal of unnecessary suffering.

TOP | HERBS A-Z LIST

Excerpt from Felter & Lloyd's Kings Dispensatory from 1898

Willow bark is tonic, antiperiodic, and an astringent bitter. It has been given in intermittents, dyspepsia, connected with debility of the digestive organs, passive hemorrhages, chronic mucous discharges, in convalescence from acute diseases, and in worms. In chronic diarrhoea and dysentery, the tonic and astringent combination of the willow renders it very eligible. It may be given in substance, in doses of 1 drachm of the powder, repeated as indicated; or of the decoction, 1 or 2 fluid ounces, 4 or 5 times a day. The decoction has also proved efficient as a local application to foul and indolent ulcers.

TOP | HERBS A-Z LIST