Picture this with me. You are out enjoying a Summer day with family and friends. Your children are running around and playing in the grass, finding goose feathers, laughing, and generally enjoying themselves. Then one of them begins to cry loudly. A bee stung them. What do you do?

This event happened to our family, my son was the one stung, and as an individual on the Autism spectrum, he gets quite worked up at the sight of bugs let alone a painful encounter. Luckily, I had just learned about a new to me plant that I saw growing amongst the grass. I grabbed a few leaves, chewed them up, spit them into my hand and applied the green mess to his bite. Within minutes he was back to his cheerful self. As he ran off, he told me I should collect more of that plant for the next bee sting leaving my husband and myself speechless. Incidents like this had ruined days in the past.

What was this lovely little plant? Plantain. And, plantain will always be one of my favorite plants.

When you were young, you were probably taught to grab some mud to put on a bee sting. This is a pretty effective remedy as well. What do mud and chewed up plantain have in common? They are both effective at drawing things out of skin as they dry. This is very effective for bee stings, splinters, mosquito bites, spider bites, and other injuries where you need to pull something out of the skin. There are other great plant medicines that have other effects when applied topically too. That’s the focus of today’s article.

Herbal Poultices

An herbal poultice is a smooshy (technical term) moist substance that is applied to the skin. They are used to draw out foregn substances, disinfect an area, promote healing, and soothe burns. The plant material is mixed with either hot or cold liquid and either applied directly to the skin or spread over a piece of cloth and then applied to the skin. Sometimes clay, epsom salt, ground flaxseed, or charcoal is added but not always.

Not all herbs make good poultices, so make sure you know what you are working with before you use it.

Let’s explore a few different types of poultices and a few herbs that work well for each purpose.

Drawing Poultice:

A drawing poultice works exactly as described above. As the poultice dries, it will pull unwanted substances such as bee stingers, slivers, mosquito saliva, stinging nettle hairs, or other toxins out of the skin. I like to apply these poultices directly to the skin for a better drawing effect. They may need to be repeated depending on your situation, but often as in my son’s case, one application is enough to do the job. The sooner you apply a drawing poultice the better.

Great ingredients for a drawing poultice:

Mud
Clay
Charcoal - can leave a tattoo
Plantain
Ground Flax Seeds.

Vulnerary Poultice

A vulnerary is a substance that promotes wound healing. For poultices, we are looking to heal the skin, but many of these same herbs when taken in tea form can help heal your digestive tract too! These poultices focus on healing the skin, so you want to make sure you have cleaned any wound well before applying a vulnerary poultice. I like to spread the mixture onto a cloth and fold it over allowing the moisture to make its way to the skin without bringing any additional plant material with it. This is to prevent introducing a foregn body into the wound while you are encouraging it to close. These poultices tend to be repeated often 2-3 times through a day to speed the healing process.

Great ingredients for a vulnerary poultice include:

Plantain
Calendula
Comfrey
Chamomile
Gotu Kola
Aloe gel
Rose petals

Anti-inflammatory Poultice

An anti-inflammatory poultice can be particularly helpful for chronic inflammatory skin conditions such as psoriasis and eczema. These poultices will combine vulnerary effects with anti-inflammatory effects helping to heal the skin while also promoting wound healing. These poultices may be used daily as needed to calm chronic skin issues. Again, I tend to apply these poultices to a cloth maintaining a barrier between the physical plant substance and the skin. When the skin isn’t open, I will apply the poultice directly to the skin if more convenient.

Great ingredients for an anti-inflammatory poultice include:

Gotu Kola
Chamomile
Calendula
St. John’s Wort
Turmeric (will stain your skin yellow)
Aloe gel
Rose petals

Pain relieving poultice

These poultices are applied over a painful joint to ease discomfort. The moist heat combined with the effects of the herbs can be soothing. Honestly, I tend to work more with oils, salves, and liniments when it comes to joint and muscle pain, but poultices do have their place as well. These poultices tend to be applied to the skin directly and then covered with a clean cloth due to the difficulty of keeping a poultice in place over the irregular structure of a joint.

Great ingredients for a pain relieving poultice include:

Arnica
St. John’s wort
Menthol crystals
Peppermint
Wintergreen

Making a Poultice

Making a poultice is actually quite easy. There are a few basic steps involved:

Decide what herbs and substances you will be working with and collect them.
Chop, blend, grind, mix your ingredients together
Add hot water or use an herbal tea such as chamomile to make a paste.
Apply the poultice to your skin or cloth and then skin
Leave in place until dry.
Repeat as needed.

An extremely easy way to make a poultice is to use the plant material left over after a cup of herbal tea. This also gets more of the medicinal properties into your system helping you heal. The material left over after making a plant medicine is known as the mark. Simply take the mark and apply it as a poultice. If you don’t need a poultice right away but you are drinking a tea of chamomile or other great vulnerary herbs, you can freeze the mark and save it for later. I learned that trick from herbalist Julie James who hosts fantastic herbal medicine talks weekly on her Facebook page. She is a great resource for diving in deeper with herbal medicine!

I hope you are ready to begin playing with herbal poultices. They along with herbal teas are a great, easy, and quick way to begin adding more herbal medicine into your daily life.

To our health!

Treating Skin Issues with Poultices