Witches' flying ointment – Part 3

Deadly Nightshade berry harvest

You will remember that in Part 1 of this series we looked at the general properties of herbs which could potentially be used as anaesthetics, and in Part 2 we looked at how to grow and preserve some of these herbs.  The herbs of particular interest are Henbane, Wolfsbane (aka Monkshood), Belladonna (aka Deadly Nightshade) and Jimsonweed (aka Thornapple).  Now in Part 3, we are going to take the first steps into making them into useable medicinal preparations.

This is still a work in progress.  I haven't been able to produce a working herbal anaesthetic yet, but I'm happy to tell you where I've got to so far, and where I'm planning to go next.

My current problem is finding or working out a recipe.  These would have been known to Roman physicians and medieval monks, village healers and “cunning-folk”, but they were probably mostly passed down orally from mother to daughter or master to apprentice.  If they were written down, the manuscripts are now incredibly rare, old and valuable and almost indecipherable unless you have a good working knowledge of Middle English and Latin.

Here is an example of what a medieval medical recipe looks like:

Spelling and handwriting need improvement

Does this mean anything to you?  No, nor me neither.

There is an ongoing project at Cambridge University called “Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries”.   This started a few years ago, and the original plan was to digitise, transcribe and translate a collection of medieval medical texts and make them freely available online.  The digitisation has largely been completed, but the transcription and translation has not, mainly because it is much more labour intensive and the project has had ongoing staffing and technical problems.

If the Cambridge project is ever completed it will be really helpful for my work, but for now I am doing my best to reinvent these recipes from first principles.

Most of the active ingredients we are interested in – tropane alkaloids such as hyoscyamine, atropine, scopolamine and aconitine – are only minimally soluble in water, but dissolve better in organic solvents such as alcohol or oil.

So I tried making an oil-based ointment using a modern herbal recipe.  In order to do this I let the dried plant material infuse in olive oil for two or three weeks.  I then strained out the solid material leaving only the oil containing the active ingredients, and thickened it into an ointment by combining it with melted beeswax.

The ingredients for making a herbal ointment

Straining the oil through a fine
mesh to remove solids

When applied to the skin, this had no noticeable effect, anaesthetic or otherwise.  Further research suggested that maybe the beeswax was a mistake because the melting point is too high (62°C to 66°C) and it would remain solid at body temperature (37°C) and possibly bind the active ingredients, making them unavailable.  Medieval practitioners would probably have used an animal fat such as lard (melting point 30–40°C) or butter (melting point 32–35 °C), both of which would be liquid at body temperature.  I am going to do some further research into this.

In the meantime, I am trying an alternative method which is infusing the herbs in alcohol in order to make a tincture.  100% pure ethanol would be ideal for this, but difficult to make or obtain, so I am using 37.5% proof spirit which can be bought at most liquor or grocery stores as, for example, rum or vodka.  

Fresh Belladonna root

The same root, infusing in 37.5% proof alcohol

I'll let you know how all this works out in my next post.     

Slaynt vie, bea veayn, beeal fliugh as baase ayns Mannin