Slippery elm bark

Soaked in water and wrapped around meats, the bark retarded spoilage in the days before refrigeration.  Coarsely ground and mixed with water, it turned into a spongy mass and was molded into bandages tp cover wounds and made pill-like coverings for unpleasant-tasting medicines.  Ground and mixed with water or milk, slippery elm bark turned into soothing, nutritious food similar to oatmeal, which was used to treat sore throat, cough colds, and gastrointestinal ailments and to feed infants and hospital patients.  Slippery elm sore throat lozenges were a fixture in home medicine cabinets, and the herb was the nation's leading home remedy for anything in need of soothing.

Slippery elm is still listed in the National Formulary, the pharmacists' reference, and health food stores still sell lozenges containing the herb.  But our once-great elm forests have been decimated by Dutch elm disease, and both our landscape and our herbal healing heritage are poorer as a result.

First-century Greek physician Dioscorides prescribed bathing in a European elm bath to speed the healing of broken bones.  His prescription survived more than 1,500 years.  In the 17th century, English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper wrote: " The decoction being bathed in heals broken bones...[and] is excellent [for] places...burnt with fire.  The leaves bruised, applied, and being bound thereon with its own bark heal wounds."  Culpeper also claimed elm root decoction restored hair on bald scalps.

Colonists found the Indians using American slippery elm bark as a food and treatment for wounds, sore throat, cough, inflamed nipples (mastitis), and many other ailments.  The colonists adopted these uses and developed many more, including applying slippery elm poultices to bring boils to a head.

Even the Food and Drug Administration calls this herb "an excellent demulcent" (soothing agent).