Show 248: Club Moss

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The name.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Down to the clan, the.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Clan to the.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Hey, y'all, welcome to this week's show. The audio may
be a little different this week. I decided to do
the podcast outside because it's just such a beautiful day.
We have had one of the hottest summers I can remember,
without a doubt. I mean, it rarely gets to the
nineties in the mountains of North Carolina, but it has

(01:54):
this time. And one hundred off the mountain, and so
I'm sitting out back on the porch and you might
hear the occasional passing vehicle from the road. It's about
an acre off. Let's see a nice big deer in
the backyard right now. She might come up and say
hey to us. You never know, but it's just really nice.

(02:19):
It cooled off. It's only like, I don't know, seventy five,
seventy six today, sunny and dry for once. We've had
a very very very rainy summer, and this is nice.
So you may hear a train. There are some tracks
about I don't know, three miles from here. You may
hear a train. I cannot help that. You may hear

(02:39):
a bird or a deer that may she's right over there.
She may come up and kind of bark at me
because she thinks I'm in her space. You never know,
I have. I think I've just explained this before. I
have sort of pet deer. I guess it was let

(03:00):
me think two years ago, maybe three. Yeah, it was
for my little buddy died, my little dog. That was
a year ago and a week actually, and I was
out here in the backyard then, just sitting with him
as he was passing away. And yeah, I don't like
to think about that very much, but yeah, this dough

(03:24):
had twin fawns and she drove them away before they
were able to take care of themselves. This is what
deer do. Deer are not like Bambi from the movie. Okay,
deer don't know their parents. The mother will kick them
in the head and make them leave as soon as
she's ready to move on. And these two fawns really

(03:45):
couldn't take care of themselves very well. So I made
sure they had forage, and they would come up and
kind of sleep beside me by the porch while I
was doing my podcast a couple of years ago. Well,
now they're grown and they have little fawns of their own,
little tiny spotted fawns. And yeah, they're just kind of

(04:05):
hanging out over there right now, and she's looking at
me like, I think I remember you, but I'm not sure.
You may be a threat. I don't know. But anyway,
I'm gonna light a cigar and the smoke will probably
keep them at a decent distance. So yeah, if you
hear me pause every now and then, I'm just taking

(04:26):
a little puff on my cigar. So let's talk about
the herb of the week. You know, before I talk
about the herb of the week, can I talk about
my frustration of the day. It is televised baseball. Man,
I grew up on baseball. I love the Atlanta Braves.
They were on almost every day in the summer on TBS.
And now I'm, for some reason, in a blackout area.

(04:49):
They think I'm in the Washington Nationals territory. And I
wouldn't watch a Nationals game if you paid me. That's
not my team. And so I very occasionally get to
see a Braves game. And Braves just beat the Reds.
That was great. But televised baseball has changed so much
in the last couple of years. It's awful. It's horrible. Actually,

(05:13):
you know they changed the rules. They don't. I mean
I used to watch an eighteen inning game. You know,
the game would end in the ninth inning they were
still tied, and they'd play an inning, and they'd play
an inning, and I mean I'd be up until four
in the morning to watch a game until somebody took
the lead and the inning ended. Right. Well, now, of

(05:34):
course you only get like two innings and they just
call it a tie. That's an American to start with.
We don't have sports in America that end in a tie.
That's why soccer will never be an American sport. No
matter what anybody says. A game that can end a
tie is not an American game. We played a win,
or we don't play. That's the bottom line. But the

(06:01):
whole sport has changed so much. I mean, they don't
let the players, you know, run over the basement, try
to knock him off the base, not the ball other hand.
That's you know, that was a big part of baseball.
They don't do it anymore. Now you get a pitcher
comes out for like three four innings and he's changed out.
You never see a guy pitch a doubleheader, you know.
I remember when John Smoltz used to pitch eighteen innings

(06:21):
in a row, and if it went to overtime, he
was still out there. And Bobby Cox loved that and
he'd cheer him on. He'd go out and give him encouragement.
You know, Snicker's a good guy. He's still an old
style player. But the rules have changed. It's become a
very effeminate sport. He took the masculinity out of it.

(06:43):
You don't see fights anymore, you don't see people playing
hard anymore. But my main complaint now is like you
get two minutes of baseball, that's it, and then three
minutes of commercials. Boom, the pitchers on a timer, he
has to throw a pitch in a certain you know
amount of time. The game has played very fast, and

(07:05):
it's like two minutes of baseball, three minutes of commercials.
Then they'll come back and they'll do five minutes on
you know, the playing field and the seating and the food,
or another game you're not even interested in. It's like
I just watched a two hour game and I think
I saw ten minutes of baseball. I'm not happy with this. Really,

(07:28):
they have killed the sport that I loved. I was
a good baseball player I grew up, you know, Chipper
Jones was my hero. Gosh, Brian Justice. I mean, so
many great players. I got to see, Nolan Ryan, I
mean so many just legends, and the Jones boy, Andrew Jones,

(07:53):
Chipper Jones, well JD. Drew was always in that category.
I mean, these guys were just and now it's just like,
who are these guys? I mean, they trade players every
other day. You got new players coming on the team
all the time. You don't get any loyalty to the players.
I mean this year, I mean Alby's is still there,

(08:13):
and that's I mean, I don't know one or two
other players. It's just like, well I got to see
one game this month because I'm not in their district.
I'm not in their area apparently, even though I'm in
North Carolina, so I get what's on television because I
stopped subscribing to MLB. When they change the rules and everything,

(08:36):
just yeah, but it's like I watched a two hour
game and I saw ten minutes of baseball. That's not
I don't get it, you know, I mean, well, anyway,
major League Baseball has just really changed. The rules are different,
everything's different and it's not the game it was. But

(08:57):
everything's now behind a paywall. And okay, I'll pay for
a game if it's worth watching, but not, No, it
just doesn't seem to be the same. And I mean,
most kids don't have a dad in the home anymore,
so who's going to introduce them to baseball? Everything's behind
a paywall, so it's not like they get to see
a free game like I grew up on it with TBS.

(09:18):
You go to the ballpark, you're gonna pay hundreds of
dollars just for the tickets, the parking, I mean everything that.
The food is ridiculous, the beer is overpriced. I mean,
you know, as far as I can tell, major League
Baseball is destroying itself. And I'm not even sure in
ten years anybody's even going to be watching it. And

(09:40):
what is that greed? Yeah? Probably d I definitely what
five ten years ago, after Bobby Cocks retired, the Braves
were all about DEI. I mean, you had Ramirez? Was
that same? No, I'm sorry, Gonzales did the manager for

(10:04):
like five years there when the Braves sucked and did
not win any games because all they cared about was
we need to have a few black guys and a
few Mexican guys, and a few Dominicans and two white guys.
And we don't care if we win games anymore. We
just want to look like we're diverse. Well they didn't,
they didn't win games. They came back fantastic team with

(10:26):
Akunya Junior and and yeah Albi's and you know, some
really good players, and you know they're really good. But
I mean, basically, when they traded Martine Prado just to
get a slate of ethnically diverse players, the whole team
went down the toilet. And now with the with the

(10:47):
rules changed, the way the game's played now, they said
they had to make it fast because people now the
attention span to watch a game anymore. Well, I'm sorry,
I'm me to sit here and do about an hour
long podcast. You know, hey, I'll see to their wishes
and maybe do a thirty minute podcast today. People who
want to learn about herbs or who like my perspective
on life, which is apparently somewhat controversial these days, we'll

(11:10):
sit here for a half hour an hour and they'll
listen to my podcast. But apparently major League Baseball thinks
the average American has a I don't know, minute and
a half attention span, and then we got to go
something else. And let's go look at a game over here,
and let's look at the you know, the ballpark, and
let's look at a different ballpark in a different part
of the country, and let's interview somebody. And you know,

(11:32):
you don't get to see the game anymore, And that's
not right. You know what life is all about. As
I sit here smoking a cigar, having a little adult
beverage on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the sun shining, the weather,

(11:53):
there's a nice little breeze. The deer are still milling
about over there, looking at me like you know, they
don't want me. Hear now, the squirrels have come out
and looked at me a couple of times. Life is
about slowing down, be in the moment. Don't be anxious
about anything. You know, I think it was Saint Francis

(12:15):
desal said, worrying, being anxious, being in a rush, being
you know, all that is actually a mortal sin, because
Jesus said, be anxious for nothing. Slow down. You know.
I just cooked up some chicken, nice chicken with some
tight curry seasoning on it in the oven. Let it

(12:38):
bake for I don't know, half hour. Got a little
brown on top. I'm going to take that off the
bone and mix it into a little coconut curry sauce
and have it over some rice. Slow cooking, slow cooking,
slow living. You're only on this planet for how many years?

(12:58):
I mean, you know, this is August. I turned forty
eight this month. Maybe I'm being a little reflective, but
I think, you know, when I was younger, I kind
of rushed through things. I didn't savor things as much
as I should have. Now I think back, I think,
you know, that was a really nice day, you know,
with that special person. I wish I could relive it.

(13:19):
I wish I could go back and just spend a
couple more minutes. Could have been a girlfriend, could have been,
a friend, could have been you know, my grandparents, could
have been, somebody that's gone. And I wish I'd just
taken a little more time, just a little more time.
I don't know what the rush is. People. It's natural
when you're young to kind of be in a rush

(13:41):
to grow up. I get that I was. I guess
it's natural when you get a little older to think
you know, I wish I had taken a little more
time just to talk with people, just to enjoy a
beautiful day, just to go fishing, you know, go down
the creek, drop in a line. I don't know. I

(14:02):
don't know why everybody's in such a rush. I really don't.
It's not my lifestyle. I'm slow walking, slow talking, always
have been. But you know, my mind is usually moving
very fast, and I just want to kind of pull
it back sometimes and just just enjoy a Sunday afternoon.

(14:24):
You know, when I was a kid, I hated Sunday afternoons.
You know I did. Why because on Sunday afternoon, back
when we had three channels, there was nothing on television
except maybe a ballgame. Hey maybe that's one of the
reasons I got into baseball, right, But it was quiet.
You know. My grandmother be cooking something all day to

(14:45):
put on a big, you know, big feed in the evening.
I can't even imagine how she did it all. I mean,
every meal was filled peas and butter beans, rice potatoes,
corn bread, bee fish or chicken, vegetables from the garden.
It was just like this massive feast. Every every Sunday

(15:07):
dinner was like Thanksgiving for most people, if you even
take the time to cook Thanksgiving dinner anymore, and I
don't know, I guess a lot of people don't. But
I hated Sunday afternoons. They were so long they seem
to go on forever. And now I just look back
at it, especially on a day like this, I think

(15:27):
if I had one of those Sunday afternoons back, just one,
just one back on the farm, just one Sunday afternoon,
does seem to go on forever. There was like, you know,
twenty seven hour days when you were kids, you know,
And I think that's also something that has to do

(15:48):
with perspective. I think when you're a child, the days
seem longer, and when you get older, the days seem
to move faster. And you know, you can't as an
adult tell a child savor this, enjoy it. There's gonna

(16:09):
be a time when it's gone. So if I leave
you with anything today, we're gonna talk about herbs. We're
gonna talk about one of my one of the most
interesting herbs. This is like a podium. This is club moss.
This is one of the most interesting useful herbs that

(16:29):
it's one of those that was around me all the
time growing up, and I didn't even know what it was.
I thought these were little pine trees, so they're not.
They're actually a form of moss that grows like a
little tree. And I remember like going in the woods,
going down by the creek, and they'd be just these
hillsides covered in club moss like a podium. I never

(16:51):
knew what it was, and you know, maybe as a kid,
I wouldn't even appreciated what it was, But now I
know it is a medicinal herb. And if I could
go back in time to those long days, those long
summer days, especially when you know you'd be out, I
don't know, maybe y'all from the city, I don't know,

(17:13):
But if you're in the country on a Sunday afternoon,
a Sunday evening in the summer, the day went on
till nine o'clock, nine to thirty ten o'clock, right, and
you were just outside, and it was boring as a kid.
But now I look back and think, if I could
just go back one day, just one and you know,

(17:43):
it's a lot to think about. It really is. My
great grandmother is sitting under the big oak tree with
the chickens pecking. She's shelling peas the dog I'm playing
with in the sand, because it was really sand down
in the eastern part North Carolina. The old women gossiping.

(18:06):
That's what women do. The women talk about other women.
That seems to be the way things are. A great
grandfather coming in. Something had to be done with the cattle,
you know, maybe one of the cows had gotten out.
It seemed to go on forever forever, and then you'd
have this big meal and people were laughing, and now

(18:41):
it's quiet. It's very quiet, well anyway, like a podium.
So there are eight varieties of club moss, that's the
common name is club moss. Club that have documented unerbral medicine.

(19:02):
And this is you know, I read a whole book
on medicinal ferns and fern allies and this is considered
a fern. Ally it's one of the most ancient plants
on the Earth. When ever life first began on this planet,
the first things to grow were ferns and mosses, and

(19:22):
like chin liken leitchen however you want to pronounce it,
and asparagus oddly enough and believe it or not. If
you could go back to like ten million years ago,
asparagus grew as big as trees and ferns bigger than
your house, and little club moss was growing right along

(19:44):
with this. There are let's see, well native to my region.
We actually have several We have common club moss ground pine,
which was when I saw most growing up, running cedar
or fan ground pine. They look like little tiny pine trees,

(20:07):
but they're not. And this is a really interesting use
in Native American herbal medicine, but it's also very widely
used in European herbal medicine. In fact, this ancient plant
was found to have a certain level of radium, so

(20:29):
some of them are slightly radioactive, but because of that
they have a really unique energetic feature interurbal medicine. Now,
the Lumbee, that's the tribe I grew up mostly around.
I guess in my childhood I was probably more around

(20:50):
the walk a Maaw because my grandfather was actually a
game warden and park ranger and justice of the peace.
The Walkamall Lakes area Walcomall Lakes are kind of in
Bladen County and kind of going down toward Whiteville and
almost as far as Wilmington. Really unique area of the country. Actually,

(21:14):
they're these odd deep lakes that were formed by a
meteor shower millions of years ago. These big meteors hit
the ground and made these huge pits and they filled
with water. And the Wakama are from there. The Hiliba
Sapony are a little bit further north. I've known many
people from that tribe, and those that are more of

(21:37):
my heritage. We're a little further south of there, the
Santee and the Chikora, The Santea and Chiquora Redbone, certain
Catawban tribes all became part of the Lumbee tribe, and
the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina is the largest non
non federally recognized Indian tribe in the entire country. There

(22:00):
are at least fifty thousand members. They seem to be
a mix of at least five Native American tribes, especially
the Chiquora, which is I'm like, actually the chief of
the Chiquora tribe until recently was like my third cousin
or something, you know, not what one would normally think

(22:22):
of if you grew up on television. You're thinking about
like the Sioux and the Cheyenne and the Apaches, and
such very different. Okay, Western tribes are totally different than
Eastern tribes, and people say, well, the Indians did this
or the Native America. No, it's like, really, they're individual
tribes with very individual appearances, cultures, histories. When it comes

(22:50):
to herbal medicine, you can't say that you know this
is a Native American plant. Well, one tribe used that,
the other tribe never heard of it. Because the Iroquois
are totally different than the Sioux. Okay, totally different. So
the Indians I grew up with, many of whom are
my relatives through mostly marriage. I don't have a as

(23:11):
far as I know, any direct Native American blood. I may,
I may. I'm not saying I don't because we really
don't know. Because the Lumbee tribe, which is a mix
of tribes, seems to have much of its heritage in
the Lost Colony. When Sir Walter Raleigh first came to

(23:32):
America and put his first colony right almost at the
border of what's now North Carolina Virginia, they were English
and Scots Irish mostly, and so you have a lot
of Lumbee that have names that are English or Scots
Irish names. You have Lumbees that have red hair and

(23:53):
green eyes. Very different, as I said, from like the
Aztecs or something. The uh, the these people are not
how would I put it if you grew up on
television and you think of like the what was his name,
like chief somebody I can't remember his name, the crying

(24:15):
Indian in the commercial uh for you know, littering. You know,
there was this Indian chief who was very regal and
very stoic and very he was actually a very good guy,
a very noble person. Someone would throw some trash outside
of the road and they had this commercial in the seventies.
A little tear would run down his cheek and you know,

(24:37):
it was very moving at the time. The lumbee are
mostly just regular guys who drive pickup trucks and root
for the Atlanta Braves and wear baseball caps and love
to hunt and fish, and you know, they're just as
American as anybody else there. You only know if you

(25:03):
know the last names, or you can recognize the very
specific accent and certain words that are used, and of
course colored skin, you understand these are lumbies. But they're
just rural folks from North Carolina. Well anyway, They have
a really interesting history of herbal medicine because it's a

(25:24):
mix of all those tribes that became part of the
Lumbee tribe. The Lumbee tribe also took in a lot
of runaway African slaves, so you get this mix of English, Scots, Irish,
a good five different at least Catawbin Eastern tribes. They
also have a strong affiliation with I think it's the Iroquois,

(25:47):
is that right? Or the Mohawks, one of them up
in New York. They're considered to be like a kin tribe.
They're herbal medicine really bridges all these cultures, and the
Lumbee used like a polium. I'm going to try to
pronounce this flabbolithforme f l A B E l l

(26:12):
I f O r m E. They used it specifically
for arthritis. It was called the rheumatism plant, and it
could be when we look at it from a modern
herbal perspective, the radium content in this ancient moss or

(26:33):
lichen actually fern ally, if you want to put it
that way, had an effect on inflame joints now. Is
that weird? Yeah, in our modern thinking it is. But
if you were to go back to say nineteen eighteen nine,
in nineteen twenty, let's just put it in that range

(26:54):
when the curies had really studieddoactivity and plutonium and such
as that. You know, they came up with the X
rays and their studies eventually learned led to the atomic
bomb and all that. But you know, at that point
in time, we discovered that there was there were certain

(27:18):
minerals I guess there are about four that are radioactive.
They would glow in the dark, some of them, and
of course you know they can be cause horrible cancers
and all that. This became this huge popular trend of
these tonic drinks made from radioactive materials. You would actually

(27:40):
go down to your local drug store and you'd buy
a little bottle of a soda pop that glowed in
the dark, and people had this concept that it would
kind of recharge the natural battery of the system, and
to an extent, it did. When the body is exposed
to radium and these low levels of radioactivity, there actually

(28:04):
is an anti inflammatory effect. However, when it was isolated
and put into these drinks, that actually became very popular.
During prohibition, people couldn't drink alcohol. A lot of athletes
choose them. There was a very famous golfer that promoted
a radioactive tonic drink, and eventually, of course, that concentrated

(28:28):
level of radioactivity caused cancers. In fact, the guy who
really promoted it, his name escapes me right now. He's Scottish,
probably a mac something. His jaw fell off, So yeah,
you don't want to do that. But in the natural state,
the club moss is actually very anti inflammatory, reduces pain,

(28:53):
is somewhat sedative, relaxing and according to the book, a
really good book if you can get a copy of
it's called well, let's see Medicinal Herbs of the Lumbe.
I think maybe the name I don't know, I have it.
I quote a lot in my book, so you can
find it really interesting herbal book. Some of the herbalists

(29:16):
in that book I actually knew when I was a child,
and you know, they were normal people. You know. It
wasn't anything like you know, I'm a medicine man. No,
they were just people that used home remedies, much as
my great grandparents did, who probably has some of the
same heritage. The book says two or three handfuls of
the entire plant were covered with water and boiled, and

(29:39):
a cloth was in soaked into the tea and applied
as a wet compress to the painful areas. You will
find this throughout herbal medicine history in countries all over
the world where they take club moss or ferns and
they use them as a compress or a soak or
a poultice, and they're actually very good for sore, tired

(30:02):
muscles and flame joints. And that's probably actually the radium
component of this ancient plant. So you know, I find
that very interesting. Going up to about eighteen sixty, resources
of the Southern Fields and Forest tells us that a decoction,

(30:22):
now a decoction is what we might call a strong tea.
You take a woody plant. It could be a bark
from a tree or or it could be the stems
and twigs or something, or a root obviously a root,
and you put like you know, one ounce of the
herb in two quarts of water, and then you boil
it down to one quart, or it could be two
cups of water. You just boil it down to it

(30:42):
reduces by half. They said that as a powder it
was a metic, but as a decoction it was diuretic
and anti spasmodic, so it helped remove excess fluids from
the body and reduce muscle cramping. Now we actually go
back to folk medicine hundreds of years ago. Would people
just take the plant and stick it in their shoe

(31:04):
to help with, you know, cramps of the feet in
calves like which you might call it Charlie horse, or
just to reduce tiredness, to help with sore muscles. They
said that it is effective, most effective and most efficacious application,

(31:27):
and really good for sore muscles and joints, but was
also an emetic cathartic. It could cause diarrhea and vomiting
if you took a strong decoction of it, or especially
the powder of the plant, that would be able to
actually reduce the decoction until what was left was a powder,
or it could be the ground up plant. But usually

(31:49):
what you're talking about is you've you've boiled it up,
you've extracted the essence of it essentially, and you've boiled
it down into a pharmacy quadrug essentially, And it could
really make a person very sick and had a somewhat
narcotic effect, but it was in eighteen sixty very popular

(32:10):
in Sweden to destroy vermin, especially in veterinary medicine, but
also in children. It would get rid of anything from
intestinal worms to license scabies on the skin, applied topically,
and there were various ways of doing that. But it

(32:31):
was also good for helping with ulterate sores and blisters.
It has what it would do if you had an
ulceraate sore in your skin, it would actually slightly irritate it,
and this again would probably be the radium component. It
would open the sore and let it drain. So that's

(32:51):
not something we do much anymore, but you know, in
the eighteen hundreds it was still used for that purpose.
In eighteen King's American Dispensatory, which was essentially a pharmacy manual,
describes like a podium and says that it grows in
all parts of the earth, and it does seem to

(33:13):
there's a variety of club moss which grows just about
everywhere except maybe the deserts. They talked a lot about
the ones that grew in Germany and Russia and Sweden
and how it was harvested, and it isn't such an
interesting plant, as I said, It is a variety of
moss that looks like a tiny little pine tree. So

(33:36):
they go into the description of it and how you
could tell it apart from certain coniferous or evergreen shrubs,
and they said, well, they talked about various ways to
use it as well to prepare it as a drug
in the pharmacy, and apparently if you heated it too fast,

(33:58):
it would basically explore with like a vivid flash of
blue flame and it would hiss at the same time. Again,
this is a slightly radioactive plant, So I'm glad we
don't have to experiment with it like that much anymore.
If you're in a forest and there's a forest fire

(34:18):
and you see a bunch of club moss, I'd get
the heck out of there as quickly as I could go,
because that's going to go up like you know, tender.
And yeah, it's kind of interesting in that regard. And
there may have been some old like ghost stories where
someone would see like a blue light and that was
the radioactive plant burning and it looked like a ghost

(34:43):
to people. So that's another interesting It was why I
call it mysterious, like a podium. There's so many legends
that go with this plant, fairly common plant that maybe
we don't we kind of overlook these days, but under
actions uses and dosages. It says the agent for a

(35:03):
long time was used as a dusting powder for protective
purposes in arisiplis, herpes, altars, and eczema. In other words,
you could dust it on the skin and it would
help prevent that inflammation, especially from viral causes. Says that
druggists used it in preventive pills, but that pyrotechnis also

(35:30):
used it in manufacturing their wares. What does that mean, Well, again,
I told you about that burst of flame and that
blue light. You can make gunpowder out of club boss,
so I mean it has had so many uses and wow, yeah,
you can absolutely make gunpowder out of club moss, urine

(35:54):
and charcoal. That's yeah, you could. It wouldn't be it
would be like a very slow burning black powder. You
could increase the nitrate in there and it could actually
be a gunpowder. And it has been used for that
purpose for many, many thousands of years actually, I mean
whether it was making fireworks or shooting a bullet or

(36:15):
making dynamite, club moss has been used for that. But
they mentioned that it was useful in fevers and could
also be used in conjunction with in combination with quinine
that the two had different properties and would help was

(36:36):
good for an irritable stomach and would help a diarrhea, dysentery,
constipation and colic. And interestingly, the European version of club
moss is still used in the Great Swedish bitters. It
is still actually one of the essential ingredients of the
Swedish bitters. I just ordered a new batch. Sweetish bitters

(36:57):
are probably one of the only herbal formulas I don't
make myself. The reason is it contains like thirty two
or twenty two different ingredients. Some of the herbs don't
grow in my area, and so I get the Swedish
bitters from Germany using the old recipe from doctor Samps,

(37:18):
who was a pharmacist in Sweden who lived to be
over one hundred years old. That's where it gets the
name from, but it may actually go back to Paracelsus,
the great physician pair of Celsus. He may have been
the one who took various bitters formulas such as theoryac

(37:41):
and myth drate and adapted to them into this formula
that was considered a cure off for everything from insomnia
to cancer. So I really do believe in the Swedish bidders,
and that's one I order myself. I get a brand
called schwiden Balsam. It comes from Germany and it's rather expensive,

(38:02):
but one batch that lasts you for a good six months,
so definitely worth keeping on hand. It is sort of
a panacea. It has anti viral properties, it has anti
inflammatory properties, it has anti cancer properties, it's good for digestion.
I could go down the list. It's good use topically
for burns, for swollen joints, for arthritis. It's amazing stuff.

(38:23):
So they mentioned in King's American Dispensatory that like a podium,
is an efficient gastric sedative, means it calms the digestive system,
it helps reduce cramping, and was also good for those
with highly colored urine. So what does that mean. Well,
it's a diuretic and so it's going to help you
rid the body of excess fluids. So if there's any

(38:47):
kind of urinary tract issue, kidney issue, it can be
very effective. And it's found in value of dyspepsia. Dyspepsia
is an old term we don't use much anymore. It
was once called America's National disorder. And that's because before
about nineteen hundred, people didn't have refrigeration or pasteurization or

(39:08):
anything like that. A lot of the food they ate
was bad, a lot of the meat was rotting, and
people had a lot of iningestion. So these bitter's formulas
were developed to help settle an upset stomach and help
you not to get food poisoning. And that was called dyspepsia,
especially the burping and all that. And yeah, club moss

(39:32):
is very good for that, also good for digestion. It
increases appetite, helps with pyrosis, which is essentially bad breath, flatulence, indingestion,
fermentation in the gut. That was actually a lot more
common back then. Again, when you had a lot of
tainted meat and bad water, you could get bad bacteria

(39:54):
in there and it would kind of fight it out
with your natural gut bacteria, but it would cause a
lot of gas and cramp being and Lycopodium was one
of the very best remedies for that, but most especially
was used for urinary disorders, spasmodic attention, retention of urine
and cistitis. Cistitis is essentially the result of a bad

(40:17):
bladder infection, which can actually damage tissue. You could really
die or really have damaged organs from cistitis. And so
there are I'll say there are many five primary herbs
that can be used to treat cystiitis. The most common

(40:37):
is dandelion, route but now origeron's really good, that's Canada, fleabane, gosh,
there's there are a lot, really, so several members of
the mint family. Most of the mints are actually really
good against cestitis. But like a podium or club moss

(40:59):
is one of the very best helps with lithic uh. Well,
this kidney stones or bladderstones, pain in the kidneys and
uterus of bladder, unpleasant sensation in mixturation. That's a sort
of a minstrel issue uh gonnrhea, gleat, et cetera. So
very good for the entire genitourinary tract, I think is

(41:25):
the correct way to say that, but also very good
for kidney disease. One of the best serves for kidney disease.
Blood in the urine is actually specific for bloody urine.
That's yeah, that can be very serious, and that's it's
actually a specific and for tuberculosis and coughs with bloody expectoration,
when you're coughing up blood or you have a congestive

(41:48):
headache with dizziness. Yeah, club moss is actually one of
the very best remedies. And you see one of the
reasons I say with club moss, so let's mistee sious. One.
It does have that kind of radium component to it,
and there's a lot of myth and everything associated with it,

(42:09):
and it's used in gunpowder and everything else you can
think of. But but it's not that much used in
modern herbal medicine. You will not find many herbalists in
America that use club loss, even though it grows all
around us, and specifically for bloody urine or coughing up blood.
It is the go to under specific indications and uses.

(42:33):
It says for intractable forms of fever, so a long
term kind of low grade fever, vomiting of blood, avoiding
of high colored red urine, that especially if it's stains
the clothing. In other words, if you can't really control
the flow, dyspepsian interingestion in ingestion, especially with urinary symptoms.

(42:57):
Sandy deposits in the urine, So again we're talking gravel essentially,
palpitations of the heart, constipation, spasmodic retention of urine in children,
cystic cater and adults that's cystitis again with mucus. And
that's when you know it's gotten pretty bad and burning,

(43:19):
really painful. Mixturation you'reinloaded with mucus or blood and deposits
of red sandy phosphates, cough with bloody expectoration, congestive headache, dizziness,
and tendency to fainting. So okay, so all those are
really serious. I mean, like, these are things that will
kill you. These are things most people go to the

(43:40):
doctor for, and you should. If you have any of
those symptoms, you should probably go to a doctor. I'm
not saying that the doctor does not have a role,
but consider how important this herb is. These are things
that can kill you. And there's a little thing out
there that looks like about a six inch tall pine
tree four to six inches your foot at most, and

(44:02):
it you know, as an herbalist, I can't say it
will cure anything, but it's useful in all of these
issues which can be super super serious. So I think
it really ought to be far more used in herbal medicine.
I mean, there are I don't even know how many

(44:24):
varieties are worldwide. There's only one I know of that's
actually toxic, and it grows in Brazil, So if you're
in Brazil, be careful about that. But it actually has
some medicinal values as well. And yeah, now let's get
up to modern use. Botany of Day says that club
moss has been used as a homostatic for nosebleeds. That's

(44:47):
another aspect I totally forgot to mention. Okay, so club moss,
being a fern ally or moss as it's called, reproduces
through sportes. If you look at a fern, you'll see
all these like little black dots when it's mature on
the back of the fronds. Fronze are like leaves, right,

(45:08):
we see these little black dots. Those are not actually seeds.
They're more like the spores of a mushroom. Each one
of those can produce an identical plant to its parent plant.
It's really, I mean fascinating. These are plants like mushrooms
that develop before botanical sexual reproduction reproduction. These reproduced by

(45:35):
spores the club moss actually has huge amounts of spores.
If you get a mature club moss and you shake it,
you could fill your palm your hand with the spores
of this club loss. That's actually what people used in gunpowder.
By the way, it's it's a very volatile compound. But
if you have a nosebleed and you snip it up
your nose, it'll stop your nose from bleeding if you

(45:57):
were in the woods. This happened to a friend of mine,
a very good friend of mine JC. He was out
in the woods, probably thirty years ago, and he got
a deep there's a train, I hear a train, Yeah,
there's a train coming by. Anyway, he got a deep
puncture wound. I mean he was bleeding to death. He

(46:18):
found a couple of puffball mushrooms and he puffed the
spores into the wound and it stopped the bleeding. Now
he had already lost so much blood. He was blacking out,
and he took an ink pen and wrote on his
leg that you know it's black because of the spores
that I used to stop the bleeding. Had he not

(46:39):
done that, when the paramedics found him, they would have
thought he had gangreen and they may have removed his leg.
So the spores of club moss are one of the
very best things to stop bleeding. It's a stiptic. That
is one loud train. We normally do not yet trains
that loud. I wonder what that is because that's like

(47:03):
three miles away. I'm sure you all can hear this,
maybe five miles away. Yeah, that's a different kind of train.
That may be a military train. Actually, you Sometimes they'll
ship weapons and equipment through the old lines. They don't

(47:29):
get as much attention as the main lines, and that
may actually be a military train. Huh. I wonder what's
going on. It doesn't bode well, but we won't worry
about it anyway. The spores of club moss are a stiptic.
They will stop bleeding, whether it's from a nosebleed or

(47:50):
cut or anything like that. Now, most often I will
use pine pitch. Pine pitch is easier to use. It
doesn't turn your skin black, but it hasn't any set
bit quality. But so does club moss, so it's a
really good alternative. If I didn't have either, I would
use cayenne pepper, just plain o cayenne pepper. Out of
the urban spice cabinet in your house. It's finally ground.

(48:12):
It's a little finely ground powder and you can put
that on a cut and it will stop the bleeding.
But yeah, that's probably about the most common use for
club moss still these days. And that's just going to
be from like outdoor people survivalists like me. You know,
we're gonna look for something like that. But I mean, really,

(48:35):
it has incredible powers. I mean really, it's one of
our most potent medicinal herbs. And they also mentioned in
Botany for a Day that Native Americans use the tea
as an analgesic to relieve pain, if for childbirth. I
don't know how they used it, and they don't specify

(48:56):
which tribe. And again I have a big problem with
that because you can tell me that the Choctaw used something,
or you can tell me that Cherokee used it, but
Native Americans used it doesn't mean anything. It may actually
be made up when you read something like Indians use
this plant for that. If they don't list the tribe,
don't believe it, really, because it can actually get fairly dangerous,

(49:19):
and club must does have a certain amount of danger
to it. Because it is a metacathartic. It can cause
you throw up, It can cause you have diarrhea, it
can cause you to have it can be how would
I put it, It can overstimulate the heart because your body's
going through such a catharsis. So we do want to

(49:40):
use it carefully. Plants for future says. A decoction of
the plant is analgesic that means reduces pain, anti rheumatic,
carminative that settles the stomach, mildly, diuretic, stematic, and tonic
tonic for digestion. It is used internally in the treatment
of urinarya and kidney as rheumatic arthritis, catarrhal cistitis so

(50:03):
again that cystitis with mucus, essentially gastritis, et cetera. It
is applied externally to skin diseases and irritations. The plant
can be harvested year round and is used fresh or dried,
And that's true. It's very useful in that way. The
spores are decongestionent, diuretic, and stematic, applied externally as a

(50:25):
dusting or of powder. They're good for various skin diseases, wounds,
and are inhaled to stop bleeding noses. They can be
used to absorb fluids from injured tissues. The spores are
harvested when ripe in the late summer and can be
used as a dusting powder to prevent pills from sticking together.
That's another reason it was a very popular herb in

(50:48):
earlier times when pharmacists would make pills. They would use
it like we would use corn starch now to keep
pills from sticking together, and probably has some good medicinal
use on its own. It has a wide range applications
including dry coughs, mumps, and rheumatic pain. Also used in
homeopathy and ground pines. Specifically, the list is energesic, antispismodic

(51:12):
of blood, tonic, diuretic, and tonic decoction has been used
as an herbal steam for the treatment of rheumatism, spores
of the plants or dust in wounds or inhale to
stop bleeding noses. They can be used to absorb fluids
from injure tissues and to permit pills from sticking together again. Finally,

(51:33):
we'll stop with the Pierson Field guide to Eastern Central
medicinal plants, common blind common ground pine, or running club moss.
This is like a podium club attom. This is the
one I have like all around my house. American Indians
use plant tea for postpartum pains. Again, who are these Indians?

(51:54):
You know? If you don't tell me who, I don't
believe it, but anyway, apparently also used for fever and weakness.
In folk medicine, spores were used for diarrhea, dysenterian rheumatism,
also as a diuretic, a gastric sedative, an aphrodisiac. Yes,
believe it or not, ground pine or club moss has
been used as an aphrodisiac. Why is that? Probably because

(52:18):
of the radium, Just like those tonic drinks that were
sold back in the eighteen nineties nineteen twenties in that era,
the very small amount of radioactivity does seem to have
a slightly stimulative effect in that regard. Also uses a
styptic externally for baby's chafing. Yes, this was once commonly

(52:42):
used as a baby powder. If you put it on
your baby's butts so you know they didn't get source.
We'll just leave it that way and rashes and all that.
It was. Actually that was the main use for it
for a good hundred years. All the baby powders you
would buy were the spores of club moss, but they

(53:05):
stopped doing that because they could potentially cause cancer if
it used too much, so you might want to be
a little careful with that. Also used to remove tangles
and matter from hair and to remove vermin from hair. Yep,
just like well various powders and minerals, you can dust
into the hair and then comb it out. You could,

(53:25):
it would remove the lice. Was also used for herpes
exima dermatitis, especially in the folds of the skin, and
for aerysypolis. The spores were called vegetable sulfur and they do.
They have a sulfurous content, and we're used to coats, pills,
and suppositories. A Chinese species of the club moss family

(53:46):
is being researched as a potential treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Again,
if we cope back to those tonic drinks, it was
supposed to help with dementia, so there may actually be
something about that. And they warned that club moss clevatum
contains a toxic alkaloid. We have discussed that, and yes,

(54:10):
these plants do have a certain level of toxicity. Certainly
would not use him in large doses or for long
periods of time. But one of the most to me
fascinating plants. I mean, you've got a medicinal herb that
has a little radiation to it and can make gunpowder

(54:30):
and is also like the go to for coughing up
blood or cystitis or you know it stops bleeding wow,
and is one of the components of the Swedish bitters.
And when we go back to Paracelsus, the fastest pair
of Celsus, Bombastus fine Hohenheim, the most controversial herbal doctor

(54:53):
of all time. He's also the father of toxicology. He
was very big in using poisonous plants and toxic heavy
metals and radioactive ingredients, essentially as the precursor to chemotherapy
and such. So when we think of who may have

(55:15):
invented the great Swedish bidders, to me, that's another check
mark in his favor, because that would have been one
of the plants he used. And I know that he
did use that plant. It said well, at least books
written about his herbal medicines included he didn't. He never,
to the best of my knowledge, wrote a formal herbal

(55:36):
but he did write about his formulas and such as that,
And yeah, I say that's probably another reason we can
probably credit the great controversial alchemist, faithful Catholic, pugnacious, little fighter, rebel.

(56:00):
Can you say about Paracelsus? He was a real character.
He cured the diseases doctors couldn't cure in his era,
and was hunted and accused of witchcraft and by the guilds.
Basically the Protestant medicinal medical doctors and pharmacists and apothecaries

(56:22):
at the time said he was he was a witch,
and he was a Catholic, and he had to be killed,
and he was an alchemist and what else do they
accuse him of a necromancy? They said he spoke with
the dead. Probably none of that is true. Probably his
greatest crime was giving the knowledge of people with medical

(56:47):
degrees to common people. Because he was actually hired on
to teach at a major medical school in Germany, and
instead of teaching in Latin, which would have prevented the
common man from understanding his lessons, he not only taught
in common German vernacular German, but invited in people who

(57:09):
hadn't paid tuition and to this day. You don't do that.
I don't care. If you're at the University of North Carolina.
You don't let people in who haven't paid and give
them degrees and licenses to practice medicine, even if they
know more than anybody else. That's just not done. It's

(57:30):
not kosher, and it hasn't been for seven hundred years.
But anyway, at least we now don't have to necessarily
get worried about being burned at the stake or drowned.
You know, a witch was supposed to drown and if
you weren't a witch, it would float. Yeah, it wasn't

(57:51):
fun to be on the other side of the political
and medical establishment. It still isn't today. They'll just crucify
you in your business life and take all your money
and put you in jail. But at least you don't
have to worry about being burned at the stake. You
may have to issue a statement I didn't kill myself

(58:12):
in prison, but that's about as bad as it's going
to get anyway, y'all. I hope you enjoyed this one
a little different. I'm a little I guess reflective today
and it's just nice to be outside it's a Sunday afternoon,
and it just reminds me of so many Sunday afternoons.
And time passes too quickly, it really does. If you're

(58:41):
you know, I always say people create their own problems.
People are always going around worried about what somebody else
thinks about them, or thinking about a conversation, wishing they
had said this, wishing they hadn't said that, angry or upset,
or their feelings are hurt, or worry about finances or anything.

(59:03):
Sometimes there's a valid I mean, if you've got a
sick family member, you're going to worry about them. But
it passes so fast. What's here today is going to
be gone tomorrow and you're not going to get it back.
You're never going to get back, and just stop every
now and then, take a walk, take a bicycle ride,

(59:26):
go lay down on the hammock, throw a line into
a creek, and just thank God for the moment. It's
you know, they have a saying in Yorkshire, a very
unique part of England that a lot of my heritage
comes from. Don't worry about it will probably never happen.

(59:49):
And you think about that, how many things do we
worry about? That actually happen. How much time could we
get back if we didn't. But we can't get time back,
so don't do it in the first place. It doesn't
solve anything. The Bible says, let today's problems be sufficient
for the day. Let tomorrow worry about itself. Yeah, we

(01:00:13):
have to be responsible, we have to save, we have
to have insurance and such as that work hard for
the future, and you know when we might not be
able to work. But most things we worry about never happen.
Those that do. We didn't have any control over the
over in the first place. So what are you doing?

(01:00:35):
Maybe you just go take a walk in the woods,
spend time with somebody that matters. Why you still got them?
Go walk your dog. I'll talk to you next time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
The information this podcast is non intended to diagnose or
treating any disease or condition. Nothing I say or right
has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not
a doctor. The US government does not recognize the practice
of verbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating herblens. Therefore,
I'm really just a guy who studies herbs. I'm not
offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I

(01:01:14):
write or say is accurate or true.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
I can tell you what earths have been.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
Traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience,
and if I believe in herb has helped me, I cannot,
nor would I tell you to do the same. If
you use an herb anyone recommends you are treating yourself,
you take full responsibility for your health. Humans are individuals,
and no two are identical. What works for me may
not work for you. You may have an allergy of

(01:01:39):
sensitivity and underlying condition that no one else even shares
and you don't even know about. Be careful with your
health by continuing to listen to my podcast or read
my blog you read it. Be responsible for yourself, your
own research, make your own choices, and not to blame
me for anything ever.

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Show 248: Club Moss

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