The following is a brief excerpt from Holly's award-winning documentary book Women Healers of the World, with Scottish journalist Mary Beith:  https://www.hollybellebuono.com/women-healers-of-the-world

The Tricky Bits of Studying Ancient Gaelic Healing

It was no easy task: Mary Beith discovered that the rich tradition of Scottish healing includes a great diversity of plants as well as minerals, insects, animal parts (antlers or goat’s blood), and live animals (it was not uncommon for traditional Gaelic pharmaceutical doctors to prescribe the ingestion of or ritual magic with live mice and spiders).  “I must make clear,” she said, “that my researches into the traditional remedies of the Highlands and Islands do not deal only with herbs. The old treatments employed a variety of materia and there was a big emphasis on what we may now regard, according to our perspective, as either superstitious, spiritual or shrewdly psychological approaches involving rituals and incantations.”

Mary's collections of traditional remedies swelled with the contributions and recollections of the West Highland Free Press’s readers, rural doctors and nurses, historians, archaeologists, sociologists, pharmacists, practicing herbalists, crofters, fishermen, teachers, and poets who sent her their cherished family information or professional folklore. Mary earned a well-deserved reputation as the pre-eminent chronicler of Gaelic pharmacy and many people traveled to hear her lecture on ancient medicinal history and the magical relationship to the natural world that no longer exists.

I asked her what was difficult about keeping the heritage of Scottish herbal pharmacy alive and she answered emphatically, “It’s not really difficult, at all. Highland people are very much aware and proud of so many aspects of their heritage and they have long memories. However, there’s always that feeling that the people with first-hand knowledge are forever dying off and if only one had started decades earlier… But then, collectors have been making such complaints since at least the 17th century. An interesting new development is that the new Centre for Health Science, in the grounds of Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, has a central courtyard where many of the traditional herbs have been planted with brief accompanying notes on how they were once used. Scientists at the Centre have already begun experiments with, and analysis of, some of the old herbal treatments. The Centre... is keen to keep the heritage alive and also hopes to fund the translation into English of some of the medieval Gaelic medical manuscripts held in the National Library of Scotland. In the talks I have given to locals in village halls and schools, and to professionals and students in hospitals and universities, there has been an equal interest from both lay and qualified people. It’s their heritage!”

Ethnobotany: Keeping the People in Gaelic Pharmacy

Mary kept her collecting of plant information people-based. The late professor Kirsty Larner of Glasgow University’s Sociology department stressed to her the importance of combining the social history of the people with their use of remedies—evaluating the medicine and magic of the people only in the context of their social history. The two go hand-in-hand and cannot be separated without losing the importance of one or the value of the other. 

The people’s remedies naturally reflected their problems at the moment, as well as what was in season and could be gathered, Mary said. “A lot depended on what was available in any particular district. For example, in the Badenoch area of the central Highlands, resin from pine trees was much used, especially in the form of plasters for skin cancers (or what were assumed to be cancerous sores or growths). Wild carrots were similarly used in other areas for such problems. Because of its absorbent and slightly antiseptic qualities, sphagnum moss was extensively used for dressing wounds, for women’s periods and as a forerunner of disposable nappies (diapers) for babies.”

Gaelic pharmacy is a rich, vibrant blend of herbal and “other” materia that combined to form a cornucopia of healing techniques. The Scots employed a huge range of plants for their traditional remedies: thyme, honeysuckle flowers, St John’s wort (external applications only), primrose, eyebright, meadowsweet, betony, dandelion, chickweed, mint, a variety of seaweeds… all these and more were once in constant use, says Mary, so that her only real problem as a chronicler was making sure that people who tell her stories of the old herbal treatments knew exactly which plant they meant. “It’s usually best if they can show an example, preferably growing, but a good illustration in a book will do,” she says.

To read more about Mary Beith and the other 21 amazing women healers I interviewed, see the book Women Healers of the World, available here, now celebrating its 10-year publication anniversary.