Native to my region are: Hypericum buckleyi (Buckley's St. Johnswort, Granite Dome St. Johnswort), Hypericum cistifolium (Roundpod St. Johnswort), Hypericum crux-andreae (St. Andrew's-Cross, St. Peter's-Wort), Hypericum densiflorum (Bushy St. John's-Wort), Hypericum fasciculatum (Peelbark St. Johnswort), Hypericum galioides (Bedstraw St. Johnswort), Hypericum hypericoides (St. Andrew's-Cross), Hypericum lloydi (Sandhill St. John's-Wort, Lloyd's St. John's-Wort), Hypericum nitidum (Carolina St. Johnswort), Hypericum nudiflorum (Early St. John's-Wort), Hypericum prolificum (Shrubby St. John's-Wort), Hypericum stragulum (St. Andrew's-Cross), Hypericum suffruticosum (Pineland St. John's-wort) and Hypericum tenuifolium (Atlantic St. Johnswort, Sandhill St. John's-Wort). One is naturalized, Hypericum frondosum.
Saint John’s Wort is one of the most useful and storied herbs in Herbal Medicine.
Dioscorides wrote:
Hypericum is a shrub twenty centimetres high, full of reddish branches, with a yellowish flower that (crushed with the fingers) yields a bloody juice — which is why it is called androsemon. It has leaves similar to rue. The small pods are somewhat rough, long in the circumference, the size of barley, in which is a black seed smelling of rosin. It grows in tilled and rough places. It has a diuretic strength, and inserted as a pessary moves the menstrual flow. A decoction (taken as a drink with wine) drives away fevers with paroxysms ocurring every third or fourth day. A decoction of the seed (taken as a drink for forty days) cures sciatica. The leaves (applied together with the seed) heal burns. It is also called androsemon, corion, or chamepitys, because the seed issimilar in smell to the rosin of pine.
Ascyrum is also a kind of hypericum, differing in size, bigger in the branches, more full of sprigs, and with the small leaves appearing a purple colour; it bears yellow flowers, and fruit (similar to hypericum) smelling of rosin, and bruised (as it were), staining the fingers with
blood, so that it is called acrosemon for this. A decoction of the fruit (taken as a drink with a pint of honey water) is available for sciatica. It expels much bilious excrement. It must be given continuously until they are cured. Smeared on, it is good for burns. It is also called ascyroides, or acrosemon.
Androsaemum differs from hypericum and from ascyrum being a shrub of thin branches, full of sprigs. The little stems are a purple colour, the leaves three times or four times bigger than rue, which send out a juice similar to wine when bruised. It has many wings on the top open on each side and feathered, around which are small little flowers of a yellowish colour. The seed is in a little cup similar to that of black poppy (as it were) marked with lines and points. The filaments yield a rosin-like smell when bruised. Two teaspoonfuls of the seed of this (pounded into small
pieces and taken in a drink) expel bilious excrement, and it especially cures sciatica. One must sip water after the purge. The herb (smeared on) heals burns and stops blood. It is also called dionysias, or ascyron.
Gerard wrote of Saint John’s Wort:
A. St. John's Wort with his flowers and seed boiled and drunken, provoketh urine, and is right good against the stone in the bladder, and stoppeth the lask. The leaves stamped are good to be laid upon burnings, scaldings, and all wounds; and also for rotten and filthy ulcers.
B. The leaves, flowers, and seeds stamped, and put into a glass with olive oil, and set in the hot sun for certain weeks together, and then drained from those herbs, and the like quantity of new put in, and sunned in like manner, doth make an oil of the colour of blood, which is a most precious remedy for deep wounds, and those that are through the body, for sinews that are pricked, or any wound made with a venomed weapon. I am accustomed to make a compound oil hereof; the making of which ye shall receive at my hands, because that I know in the world there is not a better, no not natural balsam itself; for I dare undertake to cure any such wound as absolutely in each respect, if not sooner and better, as any man whatsoever shall or may with natural balsam.
Take white wine two pints, olive oil four pounds, oil of Turpentine two pounds, the leaves, flowers and seeds of St. John's Wort, of each two great handfuls gently bruised; put them all together into a great double glass, and set it in the sun eight or ten days; then boil them in the same glass per balneum Mariæ, that is, in a kettle of water with some straw in the bottom, wherein the glass must stand to boil: which done, strain the liquor from the herbs, and do as you did before, putting in the like quantity of herbs, flowers, and seeds, but not any more wine. And so have you a great secret for the purposes aforesaid.
C. Dioscorides saith, That the seed drunk for the space of forty days together, cureth the sciatica, and all aches that happen in the hips.
D. The same author saith, That being taken with wine it taketh away tertian and quartan agues.
Mrs. Grieve tells us:
A herbaceous perennial growing freely wild to a height of 1 to 3 feet in uncultivated ground, woods, hedges, roadsides, and meadows; short, decumbent, barren shoots and erect stems branching in upper part, glabrous; leaves pale green, sessile, oblong, with pellucid dots or oil glands which may be seen on holding leaf to light. Flowers bright cheery yellow in terminal corymb. Calyx and corolla marked with black dots and lines; sepals and petals five in number; ovary pear-shaped with three long styles. Stamens in three bundles joined by their bases only. Blooms June to August, followed by numerous small round blackish seeds which have a resinous smell and are contained in a three-celled capsule; odour peculiar, terebenthic; taste bitter, astringent and balsamic.
There are many ancient superstitions regarding this herb. Its name Hyperieum is derived from the Greek and means 'over an apparition,' a reference to the belief that the herb was so obnoxious to evil spirits that a whiff of it would cause them to fly.
Medicinal Action and Uses---Aromatic, astringent, resolvent, expectorant and nervine. Used in all pulmonary complaints, bladder troubles, in suppression of urine, dysentery, worms, diarrhoea, hysteria and nervous depression, haemoptysis and other haemorrhages and jaundice. For children troubled with incontinence of urine at night an infusion or tea given before retiring will be found effectual; it is also useful in pulmonary consumption, chronic catarrh of the lungs, bowels or urinary passages. Externally for fomentations to dispel hard tumours, caked breasts, ecchymosis, etc.
Preparations and Dosages---1 OZ. of the herb should be infused in a pint of water and 1 to 2 tablespoonsful taken as a dose. Fluid extract, 1/2 to 1 drachm.
The oil of St. John's Wort is made from the flowers infused in olive oil.
An Irish Herbal states:
It provokes the urine and breaks up the stone in the bladder. It stops diarrhea and cures fevers. The seed, boiled and drunk for forty days, heals sciatica, and if pounded, it makes an effective application to burns, wounds and boils.
Fr. Kneipp wrote:
St. John's - wort , on account of its great effects, formerly bore the name of witch's-herb. Now-a-days both itself and its services are quite forgotten.
This medicinal herb has a particular influence on the liver ; its tea is an excellent remedy for it. A small admixture of aloe -powder increases the effect, which can be observed chiefly in the urine , whole flakes of morbid matters are sometimes washed away with it.
Head complaints arising from watery matters or obstructions of phlegm in the head, or from the gases rising to the head ; stomach spasms, slight obstructions of phlegm on the chest and lungs are healed at once by tea made of St. John's-wort.
Mothers, who are caused a great deal of trouble and anxiety by their little bed - wetters, could tell us much about the strong effects of such tea.
If St. John's-wort is not to be had, common-yarrow (Achillea millefolium L.) may be used in all the given cases.
Brother Aloysius tells us:
It is used for lung complaints, chronic catarrh, asthma, chills, bladder catarrh, and if the urine is thick. It is also used for hysteria, jaundice, absence of menstruation due to illness, green sickness, blood spitting, leukorrhea, pneumonia, rheumatism, fever, intestinal blockage, dysentery, nervous cramps and uterine cramps…. Leaves and flowers boiled* in olive oil are a good remedy for sores and contusions. For shivering and shaking in those who suffer from nerves, this oil should be rubbed on twice a day. For bruises, a cloth dipped in this oil should be placed on the affected area. To strengthen the tendons, rub them twice a day with this oil
*The old German herbalists often recommended cooking herbs in oil to make an oil infusion. Modern herbalists have found stronger properties from herbs slowly steeped in warm oil.
Fr. Künzle wrote:
St. John's wort can be recognized immediately by the blood. If you squeeze a half-open blossom
between your fingernails, blood will come out; the useless variety has no blood. You can find St.
John's wort in sunny edges of meadows, on empty farmland, on semi-dry soils, very often in
mountainous pastures and in the Alps. The latter are the smallest and have the darkest blood.
The leaves and blossoms of St. John's wort, made into tea, clear the head, clean the mucus from
the lungs, stomach, kidneys and bladders; if the infusion is red, take a sip of this tea every hour; it also often helps with blood cramps and abdominal pain.
St John’s wort oil is very famous.
This is how you prepare the red oil: take a couple of handfuls of St John’s wort flowers, crush them until they bleed, put them in olive oil, put the glass in the sun for ten days until the oil turns red; take as many fresh flowers again, crush them again, put them again in the same oil and again in the sun for ten days; you can do it three to four times until the oil turns dark red.
Use of this oil: It quenches internal and external gangrene in humans and in cattle, it relieves pain from burns and scalds, also from lumbago and rheumatic pain by rubbing it in. It is also used internally for colic; it is used for stab wounds, cuts and bruises and should therefore not be
missing in any home.
If the small, well-behaved cat gets a “need”, give him a few times St John’s wort oil; if an honest, hard-working domestic chicken has symptoms of cough or watery eyes or some inner burn, so that it stands around with its tail hanging, give it some oil.
Maria Treben tells us:
This plant grows in meadows, hedges, woodlands and on roadsides. It reaches a height of 60 cm., is much branched and its golden-yellow flowers, grouped in umbels, are easily recognized by the red juice they yield, when pressed between the fingers. The flowering plant is gathered for infusions and baths, the just opened flowers for the preparation of St. John's Wort oil.
Old Christian beliefs connected the fragrant, red juice of the flowers with the blood and wounds of Jesus Christ. The fact is that St. John's Wort oil is the best wound oil, it soothes the pain, is anti-inflammatory and healing. Legends dedicate this herb to Saint John the Baptist.
In earlier times, maidens twisted garlands of St. John's Wort and wore them, dancing around the fires on Saint John's day. ln this mysterious night, branches of the herb were thrown into the water to show the maidens who would be their suitor in the next year.
According to an old custom, the farmers in upper Austria fed St. John's Wort, placed between 2 layers of bread, to the animals to keep them free from all diseases. In these days it is done only rarely.
St. John's Wort tea is used for injured nerves and nervous affections, for injuries caused by a blow as well as a consequence of strain.
For trigeminal neuralgia, two to three cups of St. John's Wort tea are sipped daily and he affected area is rubbed with St. John's Wort oil. A tincture of St. John's Wort, easily prepared, is described as, Arnica of the nerves" and is effectively used for nervous complaints, neuritis, neurosis, sleeplessness and nervous debility.
Speech disorders, fitful sleep, hysterics, sleeps walking are remedied with St. John's Wort, as well as bed wetting and depressions. My experiences show that for all these disorders, besides the use of the tea internally, sitz baths can be very beneficial (see "directions"). 1 sitz bath a week, followed by 6 consecutive foot baths. This course of treatment is recommended for all nervous complaints.
Girls during puberty should drink 2 cups of this tea daily for a length of time. lt strengthens the female organs and promotes regular menstruation.
A much valued natural remedy is St. John's Wort oil. No home should be without it. It is easily prepared (see "directions") and keeps its healing properties for two years. lt is not only used for open wounds, fresh wounds, contusions and glandular swellings and as an effective massage oil, it relieves sore backs, lumbago, sciatica and rheumatism. To have an effective remedy for burns and scads, the flowers are macerated in linseed oil. This oil is also used for sunburn.
Babies, suffering from abdominal pain, are easily soothed by gently rubbing their tummy with St. John's Wort oil. I know a farmer's wife who uses this oil for all injuries, even on the animals. Her husband once hurt his hand badly in a machine. Compresses made of St. John's Wort soon eased the pain and the wound healed without problem. Another farmer treated his horse's external foot-injury with this oil.
A doctor diagnosed a swelling of the lymphatic gland in the abdomen of an 8 year old girl. Every time she was affected by the cold, internally or externally, she suffered from abdominal pain, especially in the morning. Her mother read that St. John's Wort oil is used successfully for all glandular swellings. Therefore she rubbed the child's stomach with this oil, every time she complained of pain, with success.
DIRECTIONS
INFUSION: 1 heaped teaspoon per ¼ litre of boiling water, infused for a short time.
OIL: The flowers, picked in the sun, are placed loosely in a bottle and fine olive oil is poured over them. The flowers have to be covered. Well stoppered, the bottle is left to stand in the sun or near the stove for a few weeks. After a time the oil becomes red. lt is strained through a cloth, the residue well pressed out and stored in dark bottles. For burns and scalds, linseed oil can be used instead of olive oil.
TINCTURE: 2 handfuls of flowers, picked in the sun, are macerated in 1 litre of rye whiskey or vodka for 3 weeks, in the sun or in a warm place.
SITZ BATH: A bucketful St. John's Wort (stems, leaves and flowers) is steeped in cold water overnight. Everything is brought to the boil the next morning and the liquid added to the bath water. The bath should last for 20 minutes (see General Information "Sitz Bath").
The Ashkenazi Jews used Saint John’s Wort:
As in other parts of the Soviet Union, between the world wars traditional healers in the Pale relied on Hypericum perforatum as a remedy for many of the ailments their communities suffered. Out of almost one hundred towns and villages examined between the wars, the vast majority reported medicinal knowledge of St. John’s Wort, attesting to the herb’s important role in Eastern European folk healer’s repertoire. The herb was commonly found in meadows, on hills and among the shrubs of Ukraine.
In Letichev, Ashkenazi traditional healers treated skin disorders with the herb.
Folk healers relied on preparations of St. John’s Wort to treat various intestinal ailments and kidney troubles in almost twenty settlements…. Those same folk healers, plus several others… most likely feldshers, treated cases of diarrhea and bloody diarrhea using preparations of St. John’s Wort…
The plant tops with flowers were used for respiratory ailments such as cough and shortness of breath, pneumonia and lung diseases…
For kidney, blood and metabolic diseases, healers in Shvartz-Timeh, Savran, and Bizrula turned to this herb.
For headaches caused by anemia or dizziness, a decoction of the herb either washed the hair of both the young and old afflicted with this ailment or was given as a drink…
If a person or a cow was bitten by a mad dog in Bazilia, a decoction of St. John’s Wort was given to help cure the infection.
… an ointment was prepared for head colds.
A plant tincture was used for washing wounds…
Fresh or festering sores in Khelnik were treated with an ointment that combined the fresh or dried flowers with better and was applied locally.
The most interesting applications of St. John’s Wort in the Pale are the remedies for nervous system conditions. These treatments seem to anticipate contemporary research done in the last part of the 20th century that highlights the plant’s ability to calm anxiety and depression.
In Poland, Saint John’s Wort seems to have been as much as popular deterrent to evil spirits as a medicinal remedy:
Hung in a window, it protected a house against lightning. Up until the 20th century, it was also believed to protect new mothers and infants against evil spirits when tucked into crevices and the chimney of the house. For this same reason, the midwife often tucked a sprig of the plant under a new mother's pillow and hung some around the neck of the infant until the child’s first bath. This was especially true in and around the rural countryside of Krakow. By the 16th century, it was used as a diuretic and for healing wounds, burns and ulcers. The fresh flowers were soaked in spirytus and applied to new wounds as well as old ones refusing to heal.
A Russian Herbal tells us:
According to an old Russian proverb, “It is as impossible to make bread without flour as it is to heal people without St. John's Wort.” This herb was so popular in early Russia that Czar Michael I issued a special order that no less than one hundred pounds of this herb be collected each year to be delivered to the court.
The Cherokee used two varieties of Hypericum:
Hypericum hypericoides: To give babies strength, bathe them in a warm or cold root tea. “Some babies will walk at eight or nine months with this.” Make a tea with as much as you can hold in your hand To break a fever, drink this and go to bed. For snakebite.
Hypericum perforatum: The top leaves are made into a tea for bloody flux. Beat roots fine and make a cold root tea. Drink as much as you can for bowel complaint.
The Lumbee also used this herb:
This plant was called yupha tacit ne, or racoon tree leaves, in the traditional Lumbee language. Mr. Vernon Cooper, a Lumbee healer, made a tonic using Saint John the Worker by combining the male and female varieties (small and larger plants) so that they could be used by either men or women. He suggested that “early stage” of diabetes individuals use this tonic. For “later stages” of diabetes, Mr. Cooper called “sugar in the bone” or neuritis, he would occasionally use Saint John the Worker, Wild Cherry bark, and Ground huckleberry. He also used a tonic of the female variety of Saint John the Worker to treat “body trouble in women.” The Cherokee make an infusion of Saint John the Worker to be sniffed up the nose to treat nosebleed. The Alabama used a tea made from the entire plant to treat dysentery.
Resources of The Southern Fields and Forests tells us:
Hypericum Perforatum (Johnswort).
Astringent, sedative ami diuretic. It is beneficially administered in suppression of urine, chronic urinary affections, diarrhea, dysentery, worms, jaundice, menorrhagia, hysteria and hemoptysis. Externally applied to caked breasts, hard tumors and eccbymosis, it proves of service.
Fluid Extract — Dose: i to 1 dram.
King’s American Dispensatory of 1898 states:
St. John's wort is an herb abundantly growing in this country and Europe, and proving exceedingly annoying to farmers. The flowers appear from June to August. It has a peculiar, terebinthine odor, and a balsamic, bitterish, rather astringent taste. It imparts its properties to water, alcohol, ether, oils, or alkaline solutions. Other species of Hypericum are possessed of medicinal properties, notably the Hypericum sarothra, Michaux, pine-weed or orange-grass, growing in sands, which has aperient qualities. An allied plant, the Ascyrum crux-Andreae, Linné, or St. Andrew's cross, has been locally applied to glandular indurations and swellings. Hypericum contains a volatile oil, a resin, tannic acid and coloring matter (Blair, Amer. Jour. Pharm., Vol. II, p. 23). Pectin is also present. The red coloring principle is a resinous body known as hypericum red. The odor of this principle is similar to that of the flowers. Karl Dieterich (Pharm. Centralh., 1891, p. 683) macerated the flowers with 90 per cent alcohol, and obtained a tincture of a rich red color, containing a mixture of two coloring matters, a yellow principle soluble in petroleum ether, and a red coloring matter, insoluble in this solvent. The red principle, in solid form, was a resinous mass of a green lustre, soluble in alcohol with red color, and resembling carthamin red; insoluble in fatty, but soluble in ethereal oils. Acids dissolve it with red, alkalies, chloroform, benzol and carbon disulphide with green color. The substance does not possess any advantage over other indicators in alkalimetry. When exposed to air in thin layers, it turns greenish at once. The aqueous extractive matter of the flowers contains calcium, magnesium, potassium, and oxalic, sulphuric and carbonic acids.
Action, Medical Uses, and Dosage.—Astringent, sedative, and diuretic. Used in suppression of the urine, chronic urinary affections, in diarrhoea, dysentery, worms, jaundice, menorrhagia, hysteria, nervous affections with depression, hemoptysis, and other hemorrhages. Hypericum has undoubted power over the nervous system, and particularly the spinal cord. Homoeopathic physicians regard it as the arnica of that structure. It is used in injuries of the spine and in lacerated and punctured wounds of the limbs to prevent tetanic complications and to relieve the excruciating pains of such injuries (Scudder). It is highly valued by Webster in spinal irritation when, upon gentle pressure upon the spinous processes of the vertebrae, burning pain is elicited. Throbbing of the whole body in nervous individuals, fever being absent, is said to be a good indication for hypericum. The usual method of administration is: Rx Tincture of hypericum, gtt. x to xxx; aqua, fl℥iv. Mix. Sig. Teaspoonful every 1 or 2 hours. Externally, hypericum may be used in fomentation, or used as an ointment for dispelling hard tumors, caked breasts, bruises, ecchymosis, swellings, ulcers, etc. The blossoms, infused in sweet oil or bear's oil, by means of exposure to the sun, make a fine, red balsamic ointment for wounds, ulcers, swellings, tumors, etc. A very excellent ointment for tumors, ecchymosed conditions, etc., may be made by adding to 1 pound of lard, ½ pound of the recent tops and flowers of St. John's wort, and ½ pound of fresh stramonium leaves; bruise all together, expose to a gentle heat for an hour, and strain. Dose of the powder, from ½ to 2 drachms; of the infusion, from 1 to 2 fluid ounces. The dose of the strong tincture is from ½ to 10 minims. Ɣ The saturated tincture of the fresh herb (℥viii to alcohol, 76 per cent, Oj) is nearly as valuable as that of arnica for bruises, etc., and may be substituted for it in many instances.
