348

8

Appendix Veterinary Remedies

Considerably more than a hundred different herbs are on record as having
been used in Britain or Ireland to treat ailments of animals. Almost all are
ones that have been applied in one or both countries to human ailments as
well—though not necessarily the same ones. Many of the afflictions that ani-
mals suffer from are common to humanity, too, and it is only to be expected
that remedies tried and tested on them will have been shared. Even if the vet-
erinary ailments are not ones ordinarily met with in human beings, it is
equally predictable that herbs credited with effectiveness against a particu-
larly wide range of human ills will have come into play in the veterinary area
as well. By no means all the main multi-purpose stand-bys, however, feature
in the list that follows: noteworthy absentees include Arctium (burdock),
Centaurium erythraea (centaury),Chamaemelum nobile (chamomile),Prim-
ula vulgaris (primrose),Prunella vulgaris (self-heal) and Valeriana officinalis
(valerian); even the outstandingly versatile Sempervivum tectorum (house-
leek) can claim a place only marginally. The failure of such herbs to appear in
the records could merely be a result of the very much more limited number
of veterinary remedies that have been recorded, given that the primary inter-
est of folklore collectors is in what people do to or believe about themselves.
Ye t it is quite likely that these non-appearances are not accidental and that the
herbs in question have been tried over the centuries but found wanting. In
some cases they may simply have been rejected as just too mild, for animals
have traditionally been regarded as having stronger constitutions than
human beings and therefore able to endure, and perhaps indeed requiring,
potions of a more drastic character.