MEDICINAL PLANTS in Folk Tradition

(Darren Dugan) #1

maternity hospitals in Worcestershire, preliminary tests having appeared to
confirm the belief that the compound then called fragarine relaxes the womb
muscles.^86 In the Highlands,^87 however, and more generally in folk medicine,
the belief is that it strengthens them. Modern pharmacology, though, is indi-
cating a story that, as so often with herbal remedies, is turning out to be much
more complicated than at first supposed. Among raspberry’s active con-
stituents are a smooth muscle relaxant as well as at least two smooth muscle
stimulants.^88 To further complicate the picture, it seems that the Worcester-
shire hospital studies may even have used the wrong plant, strawberry, in
their study (hence the name fragarine, from Fragaria,the botanical name for
strawberry).^89 This is one of many instances highlighting the need for co-
operation between historians of folklore, pharmacognocists and medical
practitioners.
Other traditional uses for raspberry include its use both for procuring
abortion in Cambridgeshire during early pregnancy^90 and, in the Sheffield
area of Yorkshire, preventing miscarriages, increasing the flow of maternal
milk and, unsurprisingly, helping painful menstruation.^91 In the Black Coun-
try of Staffordshire^92 on the other hand, it is for preventing morning sickness
that it has acquired a reputation. That is more likely to have come from the
astringent properties that raspberry leaves share with those of blackberries
and strawberries, which has made them an alternative remedy for diarrhoea
in Suffolk,^93 southern Yorkshire^94 and Westmoreland.^95 Paradoxically, though,
it is for curing constipation that they have been prized in Dorset.^96
Raspberry leaf tea has also enjoyed a strong following in some areas for
alleviating fevers, coughs, colds and sore throats (Wiltshire,^97 Norfolk,^98
South Riding of Yorkshire^99 ); that aspirin-like usage presumably also ac-
counts for its presence in a Yorkshire remedy for arthritis^100 and in a Devon
one for consumption.^101 Another group of ailments for which raspberry has
been valued in Devon is kidney stones and gravel, but for that it was a daily
dose of the jam dissolved in a glass of gin and water that was rated effec-
tive.^102 Yor kshire’s particularly wide range of uses has even included as a wash
for sore eyes.^103
Irish records, however, are strikingly scarce by comparison. Only a single
one has been traced of the use of the plant in childbirth, and that a relatively
recent one from Antrim,^104 but reticence on the part of adults about such
matters could well explain their apparently total absence in that connection
even from the very extensive Schools Survey of 1937–8. But even raspberry
leaf tea has been little-known there, if the solitary record for that from Lim-


  Currants, Succulents and Roses 141
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