Herbal Mountain Medicine: The Healing Remedies of Tommie Bass

A well-worn path leads inquisitive visitors to Tommie Bass’ simple home nestled against the bottom of Shinbone Ridge. It’s a path worn smooth by the feet of faithful, simple country folk as well as the rich and famous. Read more...

Leaves of Three, Let It Be!

At some point in your life, whether it was in the scouts or simply from an elderly relative you were given this dire warning in an effort to keep you away from a run-in with what most people simply call ivy. In other words, they wanted you to know that if you ran into a plant with clusters of three leaves, you had better leave it alone. Most likely it would either be poison ivy or oak. Read more...

Rabbit Tobacco

To the wild plant enthusiast, the seasons are similar to man’s life; spring is the time of new birth and childhood. Life begins to stir from the earth and flowers spring forth in a glorious array of colors. Later, as the earth matures and summer brings heat and dryness, life seems to settle back into patiently waiting for the heat of summer to pass. Read more...

Naturopathy
Healing: A Trip Through the Healing Disciplines

Naturopathy - The treatment of disease by natural means in order to assist the body to heal itself. Naturopathy became the result from the philosophies of nature cure, homeopathy, spinal manipulation, and other natural therapies, which evolved in the United States. Hippocrates (460-377 BC) is probably one of the earliest nature cure physicians since he taught that the body has an innate ability to heal itself. He was credited with saying “nature is healer of all diseases.” Read more...

An Interview with Herbalist Tommie Bass

From 1915 to 1996, A.L. Tommie Bass spent an incredible eighty-one years digging barks and roots as a mountain herb doctor in the hills and hollows of the Southern Appalachians. A pivotal figure in the continuity of Southern Folk Medicine, Tommie Bass developed and astounding and unparalleled pharmacopoeia of hundreds of medicinal plants. Read more...

Beauty Berry - Herbal Bug Repellent

DEET (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) is a wonderful product! On several trips to the jungles of the Amazon as well as countless hikes here in the Deep South, I have found this bug repellent to be just the thing to keep biting insects at a safe distance. DEET was introduced by the U.S. Army as an insecticide back in the 1940's and has been one of the most popular bug repellents commercially available. Read more...

Medicinal Plants of the Confederacy

While not complete, the Northern stranglehold on Southern ports and the ships serving them proved so successful that by the end of the war there were few people in the beleagured South who had not felt its’ effects.

One area that was particularly and severely affected by the blockade was the importation of the botanical and chemical medicines so desperately needed by our troops. Read more...