COLD

COLD (Also known as common cold, coryza, rhinitis.)

Symptoms:

This is a disorder in the respiratory tract caused by exposure and resulting in catarrh and the invasion of microbial cleansers.  The affliction is usually mild and short, and is characterized by a chilly sensation followed by sneezing, watering of the eyes, congestion and discharges from the nose and throat, coughing, earache, and often fever.

Causes:

A cold always signals a congestion of catarrh and faulty elimination affecting the circulatory as well as the excretory organs.

Herbal aids:

Often all that is needed is copious amounts of raspberry leaf tea and some bowel cleaning.  A very powerful remedy is the infusion of dried elderberry flowers and dried peppermint leaves taken internally as hot as possible.  The diaphoretic herbs will open the pores and discharge waste obstructions.  When a cold occurs the whole system is involved.  At the first sign of a cold, one should clean the nose and mouth of the toxic accumulations (through snuffing and gargling); and after the cold is broken with the sweating aids, the patient should be sponged with equal parts cold water and vinegar to close the pores, put to bed, and given fruits or fruit juices.

Useful herbs:Ammoniac gum, angelica, bayberry bark, black cohosh, blood root, blue vervain, blue violet, boneset, butternut bark, button bush, catnip, cayenne, chestnut leaves, cloves, coltsfoot, dittany, elder flowers and berries, feverfew, flaxseed, gentian, ginger, ginseng, golden seal, grindelia, ground ivy, hemlock bark, hops, horehounds, hyssop, Indian hemp, Irish moss, licorice, lobelia, lungwort, malabar nut, marshmallow, masterwort, mouse ear, mullein leaves, nettle, pennyroyal, peppermint, pleurisy root, prickly ash, roman motherwort, rosemary, saffron, sage, sarsaparillas, saw palmetto berries, smartweed, tansy, valerian, vervain, wallwort, water pepper, white pine, wild cherry, wintergreen, wood betony, wood sage, yarrow, yerba santa.