GARLIC--THE KING OF WONDER MEDICINES

This wonderful bulb was known to the Egyptians  around 1550BC, Chinese, Greeks, Romans and further on through history. Professor Paul Bergner of Rocky Mountain Center for Botanical Studies in Boulder Colorado tells us in his great book, The Healing Power of Garlic, that all of the methods the ancients used through recorded history are used today in every culture. They even used it as an antibiotic back then. They cured the common cold with Garlic. Maybe they did not cure baldness but they were able to treat an appendicitis without surgery. There are literally hundreds of ailments that  were regularly treated with some form of Garlic. One of the most surprising experiments is in treating HIV. There are experiments going on right now that are yielding results.

Literally billions of people regularly take this medicine for far out things like viral encephalitis, fungal and yeast infections, diarrhea, TB, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. You name it and in one way or another it is being used as a form of treatment.  The great ancient writers like Plato and  Paracelsus the Swiss physician of the 16th century, Pliny the Elder, Hippocrates, and the list could go on for pages—they all practiced medicine, healed with it and wrote and experimented constantly. The results through the millennia have been nothing but unbelievable. 

So why don’t we have more basic research in this beautiful healant? Well there is actually a good amount of it going on, but it gets little press and publicity. As a natural medicine we see much of the usage in folk and old world medicine. It, as Bergner describes, can be taken many ways on and into the body. It can be made into a salve with a mixture of honey, as a drinkable syrup mixed with vinegar or even alcohol, tablets made from dried garlic or garlic extract.  The results will all be the same.

But is Garlic an herb or a wonder drug? We love it any way we can get it and then we come to its flavor in foods. There is really nothing like it to lift a bland salad or tomato sauce or meats.