Roots of Healing: A Woman's Book of Herbs

Book Review by Leslie Quinn

Author: Deb Soule
Illustrated By: Susan Szwed
Published By: Replica Books - 1st rep edition (February 2000)
ISBN#: 0735100942
Hardcover $24.95

The founder of Avena Botanicals, Deb Soule, a 20-year herbalist, gardener and wildcrafter, has written an insightful book for women in all phases of life and herbal awareness. The chapter "Remembering Our Roots" traces the path of women herbalists and healers throughout history. During the Middle Ages amidst severe crop failure, overcrowding, and unsanitary health conditions, women healers tended to the sick and dying, despite warnings from church fathers, government officials, and male medical professionals. Women became scapegoats for natural disasters, targeted as the cause for all suffering in feudal times. From the 14th through 17th centuries, witch hunts were conducted by the Catholic and Protestant churches and the male-dominated medical profession. Three anti-witchcraft acts were passed in England between 1542 and 1602, not to be repealed until 1736. The "witch craze" died down with the industrial revolution and the spread of scientific ideas.

It was not until 1952 in the United States that "witchcraft" was recognized as an organized Goddess-based religion and protected under the law! Throughout the 1700s, doctors relied on various barbaric practices: purging (blood letting), vomiting, leeches, and the like. In the 1830s the Popular Health Movement was started by women dissatisfied with horrific medical practices. Ideas of good nutrition, clean water and air, exercise, sunshine and herbs were their basis. This movement also supported women becoming physicians and strengthening families through health education. A New Hampshire farmer, Samuel Thompson, who learned about herbal remedies from a woman herbalist, created a herbal movement from the 1820s until about 1845. The movement split into the Physio-Medical Institute, which focused on creating medical schools, hospitals and dispensaries based on herbal treatments. The Eclectic Medical Institute was formed primarily by men who were educated botanical practitioners using indigenous plants. Little credit was given to the Native American people's knowledge of healing plants, which they graciously passed on to other cultures. Their lands and communities were destroyed, and this continues today. Homeopathy became popular around the 1840s, boasting over 2/3 women practitioners in the 1860s. The A.M.A. was created in 1848. Women healers established nursing as a profession during the latter 1800s. They also founded spiritual healing organizations such as Christian Scientists, and trained to be allopathic doctors. During the 1880s, a handful of women's medical colleges were established; however, women's medical writings and teachings were not recognized. Women doctors were also perceived as an economic threat to the male-dominated medical world. In 1910, an annual report which reviews AMA guidelines and their applications in medical schools, opposed any form of homeopathic or holistic healing. As a result, botanical and homeopathic schools began closing their doors, unable to compete with allopathic schools. Since the 1900s, the AMA has made huge advances with surgical technology and antibiotics, yet very little progress in changing its attitudes about treating the whole person.

The Women's Health Movement began in the 1960s to help women reclaim their bodies and their control over health care choices. The hatred and fear of women and nature from the Middle Ages still exists; institutionalized oppression, such as sexism, racism, homophobia and ageism are fed by a class system that still supports white male power. The information in this book shares women's healing wisdom for optimum nourishment; it also contains health and resource lists for herb books, health, homeopathy, gardening, cooking, spirituality, plant and seed sources. There are herbal recipes in each chapter. Deb reminds us to be grateful caretakers of the earth. Herbs can teach and heal if we remember our connection to the earth and those who have gone before, moving from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the light of nondiscrimination and freedom to control our own health and well-being. A portion of the proceeds of this book will go toward a teaching clinic that will offer free herbal and homeopathic care to low-income women and families, as well as donations to a wildlife rehabilitation center in Maine. This book is beautifully inspired writing - blessed be!