Going Herbal

It appears, at the Davidson home, that we are going herbal. Due to a sinus cold that lingered for more than two weeks, and thanks to a lady in the neighborhood who has done her research into the world of natural remedies, Michelle is finally recovering from her cold. She's taken some odd concoctions -- garlic and parsley pills -- and she's been doing something or other with grapeseed oil. She confided in me tonight that the stinky pills she's been taking taste bad going down, but are even worse coming up.

It all has to do, or so says our neighborhood remedy researcher, to cleaning out the liver and helping it do its job of ridding the body of toxins, something I thought was primarily the duty of the bowel. Part of me can't help but to think of Tim Conway doing a bad imitation of Euell Gibbons, roaming about the set muttering "Many parts of the pine tree are edible" while taking bites out of chairs and tables. But this gal is going to hook me up with some pretty wicked lemon and peppermint oil, which, she says, is the cure-all for seasonal allergies. Given that the current allergy medication I take takes at least a week to kick in and occasionally leaves my fingers numb as it works its wonders on the sinuses, I can't say that I'd come out any worse, going the herbal route.

But it is a little comical -- because when I lived in France, just about every ailment is pegged to liver difficulty there. That reminds me of an Asterix and Obelix comic book, from which I've pulled a few panels for our amusement:


Here, Obelix defends Dogmatix's bone from the foraging Roman (starved into oblivion in a reducing spa where the food is limited to boiled vegetables) by threatening a "poke in the liver" in retribution.

That was inspired by this even, depicting his chief's illness (due to, his wife says, overeating) and sensitive liver:

Ouch! the chief yells. Obelix asks, "Can I try too?" with the predicted effect.

So I'll keep you up to date, sporadically, on our entry into the herbal realm. I'm optimistic we'll see some results. Why not let chemistry involving natural elements have an equal chance with chemistry brewed up in a pharmaceutical plant? Nature is where most of that stuff gets started anyway.