Are all medicine cabinets created equal?

The short answer is “No!”. 

Stocking our home medicine cabinets

Stocking a home medicine chest is someone’s responsibility. Is it yours? 

Some of you may know that I have a particular interest in herbs used during the Age of Sail. During this period, from about the mid 16-19th centuries, it was commonplace for ships to have medicine chests onboard. There are many parallels between these chests of old and our current medicine chests.

Ideally, the task of stocking a medicine chest was placed in the hands of someone who knew about health. This may have been a ship’s doctor. However, not all ships could afford to pay a physician or, for that matter, anyone who had a sound background in health, or caring for the sick or injured. Sometimes any-ol’-body was put in charge of this task. Other times it was nobody.

What about your home? Who stocks your medicine chest? Are you thinking about those that you live with? Their ages, common health experiences, or the types of accidents and injuries that your household faces regularly? Does your medicine cabinet support pets? While it’s true that we cannot always plan ahead, often we can do just that.

Begin at the beginning

Why not pause? Make a cup of lemon balm (Mellissa officinalis), or chamomile (Matricaria recutita) tea. They’re each soothing separately as well as blended together. Both are poking their leaves through the soils just now. Both are wonders to be tasted fresh. On this cool spring morning, a “nice cup of tea” offers the perfect opportunity for me to sit and consider how I most often rely on the contents of my medicine cabinet. Do the contents serve me? When and why do I reach for remedies? Which do I reach for most often?

In my home, yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is a part of my medicine cabinet. It’s dried and coarsely crushed. I rely on yarrow as a primary intervention whenever I cut myself in the kitchen.

First, I ready a bandaid and there are usually many bandaids in my medicine cabinet for countless cuts arising both indoors and out. I take a pinch of dried yarrow, apply it to a cleaned abrasion and cover with a bandaid. Yarrow is an anti-inflammatory herb. It’s also a hemostat, so it stops bleeding. I keep it in my kitchen, with herbs and spices and in my medicine chest.

Dried herbs were often in limited supply aboard ships, due to vermin and moisture. However, dried herbs can most often be safely stored in our home medicine cabinets without these concerns. Ideally, our dried medicinals should be refreshed each growing season while some, like skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) need to be replenished about every six months.

Propolis is another herb that has a place in my medicine cabinet. I store propolis tinctured. Propolis can be applied much like the commercial preparation, “New Skin”. This all natural resinous remedy is a supreme antimicrobial. Produced and applied by bees as a sealant in hives, its application on a wound promotes healing. I am however slow to apply it on deep punctures to avoid sealing in an infection. 

Also, when bandaids are placed on fingers, toes and knees for example, they often do not stay in place due to continuous movement. The application of a propolis tincture solves this conundrum.

I pay close attention to the amounts of both yarrow and propolis on hand. As someone who has her hands in the dirt often, and can be found traipsing through the wood, fileting a fish or dicing garlic, these medicinal herbs get restocked regularly.

Did you know that aboard ships, resins, vinegars, oils and tinctures had a longer shelf life (so to speak) than did dried herbs? Pellets too.

Speaking of pellets …

I also keep homeopathic arnica on hand. I prefer Boiron’s. I keep two or three vials in my medicine chest and another in my car. Arnica montana, or sometimes called mountain daisy, is a wonderful medicinal herb. I reach for it immediately when I’ve really and truly bumped myself and want to address swelling and bruising. Arnica is also a wonderful anti-inflammatory support when I want to reduce reduce muscle pain and stiffness from too much gardening!

Do I take arnica pellets daily? No.

One cabinet does not fit all.

There’s no standard solution to the question of what to put in a medicine cabinet.

In addition to herbs, my medicine cabinet is stocked with a variety of accoutrement. I have scissors and wraps; tweezers and a sewing needle for removing splinters, a magnifying glass and an eye wash cup. These are basic tools. Most medicine cabinets are likely to have these while medicinals will vary.

My medical materials, or materia medica, are largely stored in one place and clearly labeled.

Labeling is important

There is no “long answer”. The “short answer” is, “Labeling is key!!”

Here’s the thing. Of course it makes sense to identify each component in a medicine cabinet. Do we date them? Regularly check for expiry dates as we’re checking stocks? Do our labels encompass application in any particular situation? If we are the ones stocking a medicine chest, others might not know, for example, that arnica pellets are great for acute injuries or that yarrow can be relied upon to quell bleeding.

Understanding how contents are to be used is key. As an herbalist, if someone is in my home and is unfamiliar with herbal remedies, my absence could result in the inappropriate use of a remedy, no matter how carefully I stock my medicine chest. That’s why more info is key.

We also need to consider literacy! Often aboard ship, it was the case that literacy varied considerably amongst crew members. Some were of course highly literate, others not. Sometimes, numbers were used to circumvent issues associated with illiteracy. Depending upon the members of any household, color coding remedies, incorporating images and having an inventory may be of help.

Containers matter.

If we’re making our own remedies, then we have the opportunity to choose containers wisely. 

I say this because in my clinical herbal practice, I have some clients with limited use of their hands. Small bottles can be difficult to manipulate. In a time of crisis, frustration only adds to the crisis and may result in simply not working with a remedy, however beneficial, as frustration mounts.

Additionally, there are numerous sources for food-grade plastic containers to avoid breakages when it comes to glass.

Access & Ambience 

Aboard ship, narcotics were often kept in secret compartments and dispensed by a select few. In our own medicine cabinets, we certainly need to be sensitive to storage issues for a variety of reasons.

While narcotics may be absent from many an herbal medicine chest, we can and do rely on any number of potent herbs, as well as herbs that may result in unintended adverse outcomes when dispensed in large doses.

Accessibility matters in another way also, i.e., with respect to reliance on local flora. Stocking a medicine chest with medicinal preparations that have been prepared from local flora keeps financial costs down and lessens the reliance on shipping. It also offers an energy to healing that far away medicinals may not.

Another way to think about access is “reach”. We certainly want to ensure that we store our medicine chests safely. However, they need to be within reach. Storing preparations “out of reach” makes access very difficult, often nigh on impossible, in moments of need.

And ambience? My aloe plants add a little something to my living room. And they’re accessible. While I do not purchase commercial aloe preparations, the three plants in my living room are there at the ready. Their leaves can be slit, and the inner gel applied to wounds. Aloe is also especially helpful, for example, when drawing the sting out of burns. So is the topical application of honey!

As this is a time when we’re tidying up our gardens and, for me burning brush (and of course let’s not forget colder months when we begin to stoke our fires and wood stoves), both of these herbal remedies are invaluable when working with burns. A small pot of honey is a sound remedy to add to a medicine cabinet.

If we are going to adequately stock our home medicine cabinets, then it’s important that we consider a multitude of variables. Those listed above offer just a sampling of where to begin. We absolutely need to consider the who, the why and the how as needs will vary.

During the Age of Sail, it behooved each captain to maintain a healthy crew. Without a healthy crew, a ship couldn’t sail as efficiently (or at all). More to the point, the reputation of each and every ship was associated with its owner and its captain. Few wanted to sign up to work on a ship knowing that the health of the crew mattered little. 

When was the last time that we gave the contents of our home medicine chests more than just a fleeting thought? Just last week, I made a note to buy more bandaids. I am committing to purchase them today!

It’s time that I review supplies, reassess my needs and ensure that the herbal medicines I need to support my health and those close to me are up-to-date; that my medicine chest is fully stocked, easily accessible and ready to use for myself and others. There’s nothing worse than reaching for something and finding supplies have run out.

How about you? Are you interested in building an herbal medicine chest? Do you have the herbs at hand to keep your ship afloat?