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The Importance of Herbs
By Madeline | March 3, 2008
One of the most overlooked aspects of a medieval home that was so vital to the household was the herb garden. Almost every home possessed an herb garden. In poorer and middle class homes, these gardens were tended to by the wives and daughters of the family. Obviously, then wealthy had servants who tended their gardens for them. Some herbs were harvested at certain times of the year and then dried in cool, dark places that had good ventilation, other herbs never went out of season and could be used on a regular basis and replenish itself. Of the herbs that were dried, they were good to use for up to a year before their potency would diminish.
So, how were herbs so integral to the household, you ask. Well, herbs were not just used in cooking and medicine as you would think, but also in the household. Herbs were a wonderful way to not only sweeten the air, but it was also a great way to deter pests. Interestingly enough, some of their herbs used to prevent fleas and other irritating bugs are still used today, like citrus (think citronella) and lavender. These herbs were placed in the rushes that stuffed beds to prevent bed bugs and thrown about the floors where rushes were spread as a means of preventing cockroaches and other disgusting things.
Obviously herbs were used for food as well, although they used herbs a little differently than we do today. While we probably rely more on garlic, basil and oregano, they were more reliant on sandalwood, ginger, saffron and cinnamon. Meats were heavily seasoned with herbs, not because the food was going bad (although this certainly helped if the meat was towards the end of its keeping time…) they were heavily seasoned because that’s what the popular thing to do was. The wealthy were typically able to support an herb garden capable of handling heavily spiced food at every meal and if the wealthy were doing it, well, the rest of the population would want to follow suit, of course.
The most important reason for the herb garden was for it’s medicinal purposes. A bad harvesting season with herbs could be the difference of life and death for some people. Herbs were used in many ways: putting the powder in broths and stews to consume, steeping them into a tea, leaving the leaves whole and placing them on affected areas, combining them with animal fat to create a salve to apply to the affected area, etc. We use a lot of the herbs they used today like using lemon, chamomile and honey for sore throats and coughs, peppermint used in digestive aids and calendula (marigold) to be used for bruises, rashes and abrasions - you’ll find a lot of very high end baby products on the market today include calendula oil in their ingredients (especially the “natural” products). These herbs made for health were also used as preventatives. It was believed then that illness traveled through bad smells. I find this interesting since nature itself seems to warn us away with bad smells like rotting meat, skunks, etc. At any rate, to combat the spread of illness, it was not uncommon for nobles to have small nosegays, or bundled herbs, made up for them to carry around. When they were around something that reeked, they held it to their nose to inhale.
Although we don’t have the large herb gardens today that the people of the medieval times possessed, we use many of the same herbs on a relatively regular basis. Of course, there were the crazy ones like the fox fat that was rubbed on the heads of balding men to help them grow more hair or ingesting ground pearls as a means of keeping your body immune to disease as Henry VIII did during the Tudor era. However, we certainly do have our fair share of fake “cures”, for example: The headache product that you apply to your head that is supposed to make your headache go away - if it actually works, it’s because it’s absorbed into the skin and then enters into your bloodstream, not because it’s applied to the head. There are also countless diet aids out there that claim to shrink fat and make you skinny, while you get to sit slovenly on the couch consuming massive calories and never working out - Yeah, OK… Call me when that one works - I’ll stop hitting the gym and eating everything in sight!!! At any rate, the point I’m trying to make is that regardless of the amount of technology and education we possess hundreds of years later, we really have a lot in common with the original medieval herb gardens.
Topics: Medieval Era, Tudor Era |
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