I took the liberty of reading Physica so you don’t have to.
Before reading Physica, I wasn’t aware that a bread poultice was a thing. To be honest, I thought this sounded insane.
St. Hildegard writes:
“Nevertheless, if someone has an empty brain– and because of this is vexed by insanity and is delirious– take the whole grains of wheat and cook them in water. Remove these cooked grains from the water and place them around his whole head, tying a cloth over them. His brain will be reinvigorated by their vital fluid, and he may recover his health and strength. Do this until he returns to his right mind.”
_Hildegard von Bingen, Physica p. 11
To cure my anxiety and depression I need to… tape bread to my head? I wasn’t sure if I could even entertain this.
I had an existential crisis for like a week afterward. Bread… to my head? How can this be so?
She was eerily dead on about some things I’ve read. For example, diabetes and having thick, polluted blood. Well, onsidering your blood can turn very acidic (due to ketoacidosis), this makes a lot of a lot of sense.
It’s fascinating that a woman from the Middle Ages was able to tell this so far in advance. So how could she be so off about mental illness?
Thinking a must be missing something, I decided to Google it. “She can’t be wrong, she’s a literal Saint. … My favorite one, at that.”
Lo and behold:
So, the more I dug into the work of Hildegard von Bingen, the more I realized that you just have to trust the process. A lot of her medical knowledge was extracted from her visionary experiences, and since the language of the third eye is allegory, you may have to do a little decoding to make sense of her remedies. If you can do that, a lot of her work is nothing short of miraculous.
So I wanted to do a blog series of remedies from Hildegard von Bingen. There is a lot to unpack in each of her paragraphs, so I decided to do each plant separately.
Wheat (Triticum)
Energetics: Hot
Herbal Actions: Depuritive,
Conditions Treated: Delirium, insanity, brain fog, back pain, loin (flank) pain, dog bites
Benefits: Purifies the blood
Contraindications: Very sick should avoid eating. (Good for both healthy & sick), Flour with wheat bran removed can create mucus (arises from inflammation), white bread (not whole wheat) is barely digested.
Remedies
Insanity: “If someone has an empty brain– and because of this is vexed by insanity and is delirious– take the whole grains of wheat and cook them in water. Remove these cooked grains from the water and place them around his whole head, tying a cloth over them. His brain will be reinvigorated by their vital fluid, and he may recover his health and strength. Do this until he returns to his right mind.”
Back/loin pain: “Cook grains of wheat in water, place them (warm) over the place where he Is ailing. The heat of the wheat should chase away powers of that disease. “
Dog bites: Create a paste with whole wheat flour. Mix with an egg. Place on the bite for three days and three nights. Remove and replace with a poultice of yarrow and egg white for 2-3 days. After this, apply salve or ointment like normal.
Notes:
– Removing bran from wheat weakens the benefit of the resulting flour. It produces more mucus in the body than whole wheat flour.
This is actually really interesting because Yarrow has been found to aid in wound healing.
Conclusion
If anyone needs me, I’ll be taping bread to my head.
References
[1] Physica by Hildegard von Bingen
