sprinkled with water and then covered with the plant(s) supposed to be
efficacious in the treatment of the specific condition.30,31
Other treatments included direct application of plant tissue to wounds,
followed by bandaging or application of hot poultices of plant extracts:
We once observed a man who, accidentally, inflicted a severe cut upon
his leg with an axe; he immediately squeezed the juice of a potato into
the wound and tied it up, and in a few days it was quite well.^32The well-travelled missionary, William Colenso, wrote that he doubted
whether ‘the New Zealanders ever used any vegetable as an internal medi-
cine before their intercourse with Europeans; for severe burns, however,
they applied outwardly the ashes and charcoal dust of burnt fern fronds’
as well as many other plants such asharakeke,rengarengaandrangiora
for the treatment of what he described as sores, unbroken tumours and
abscesses, while flax leaves and sheets of dry totara bark were used as
splints for ‘broken bones, the New Zealanders being far better surgeons
than physicians’.^33
Despite Colenso’s assertion that plants were not used as internal reme-
dies before the arrival of Europeans, a sufficient number of other accounts
refer to the treatment of constipation (with flax root) and diarrhoea (with
koromiko) to indicate that treatments did exist for these conditions at least
before European settlement.^22 What is not in doubt, however, is that after
this they ‘began to find curative properties in different plants’,^28 activities
that led to the production of a number of articles, pharmacopoeias and
other books in which the medicinal uses of indigenous plants were described
at length (although not always uncritically).35,36
Leaves of koromiko(veronica, Hebe salicifolia), which were used widely
to treat diarrhoea: ‘Astringent, for dysentery, etc. The decoction is good for
ulcers, and for venereal disease.’^36
So well known was this remedy, that a tincture of the plant was included
in Volume I of the Extra Pharmacopoeiaof 1915 as a ‘remedy for chronic
dysentery and diarrhoea’.^37 Its curative properties were valued in more
recent days when young leaf tips were sent to the Maori Battalion in the
Middle East during World War II, to treat the dysentery and diarrhoea that
afflicted so many of the troops.
The bark of kowhai(Sophora microphylla, macrophylla), when ‘taken
only from the sunny side of the tree’, could be: ‘infused, mixed with wood
ash... rubbed onto skin for various rashes; steeped in boiling water for
several hours, for bruises, newly set fractures; or, with manuka bark, rubbed
onto patients with backache.’ The leaves could be boiled and then drunk for
colds and sore throats.
288 | Traditional medicine