Aboriginal Pharmacopoeia

[Ed Dunkel]

Grevillea

Only a small number of Grevilleas play a role in bush medicine, here are a few:

G. heliosperma - finely chopped and placed in boiling water, creating a watery liquid used as a wash to treat skin sores and ailments.

G. pyramidalis - paste made from the bark rubbed into women's breasts to induce lactation. Bark also used to make coloured paste for ceremonial markings. Fruit used for skin scaring (cicatrices), when rubbed into scars painful blisters well up, with continual aplication cicatrices form.

G. stenobotrya - leaf ash is mixed with native nicotianas to make a 'chewing tobacco' with a mollifying effect

G. striata - exudate and resin used as a substitute for pitch. The charcoal also used to stop haemorrhage from spear wounds etc.

One unidentified species was used to cure ear-aches and restore hearing when the thick white liquid made from bark, mashed and placed in water, was poured into the ear.

(P. Olde & N. Marriott)

E D

[Darklight]

One of the things which interests me about white perception of Koorie plant use( don't know if Iv'e mentioned it before ) was the classification of some plants under the term 'tonic'.

It's an out of fashion term in pharmacology these days IMO, implying a broad spectrum application of dubious efficacy. But having spoken to a couple of ppl who've used some of these plants for specific purposes is that they work very well for a range of specific symptoms.

Perhaps there is a similar approach to health and wellbeing amongst some groups of Koories, Murrays etc that there is in traditional chinese medicine, where the emphasis is on maintaining a high standard of wellness rather than treating maladies as they arise... That might explain the denigration of traditional Australian knowledge by European investigators who would possibly be hampered by cultural constraints, especially once the use of tonics became unfashionable within Western medicine ( around the first half of last century ).

Just my 2c.