SEC-S16 / W5 | " Ancient Medicine"🌍👩⚕️

_{picture of an ancient Medicine from my phone}

Who doesn't know the green blue transparent bottle? If you don't know this bottle and you're a Nigerian, go and ask your parents whether rich or poor. They'll tell you what the green-blue bottle is used for and why it's so popular a bottle.

To spare the details, it was and is still used to contain herbal medicines which may include leaves of different kinds, seeds, sticks and back of woods.

They are contained in this bottle for clarity and to also store or preserve the effectiveness of the leaves. It is also put in this bottle to keep it away from children who through the visibility of the leaves from the transparent bottle may find such repulsive.

I once asked my dad why the mixture of herbs, leaves and smoke as treatment. He said, let me tell you a story.

In my country Nigeria, we are known for mixtures, concocting and preparing herbs of any kind with leaves especially. We are the greatest pharmacist after God. I'll breakdown this down for our understanding. In Nigeria like other countries, we were deeply rooted in traditional beliefs and rites that it affected the way we reason and act to situations.. The performance of herbal remedies by researching leaves is one of our traditional achievements.

• The use of herbs, roots, barks and leaves In treatment of various ailments were remedies used not just by Nigerians and is passed on from generation to generation. In fact, preservation is done on this more than ever.

• When it comes to spirituality, they do invoke spiritual forces to help treat a particular ailments. You'll see people go to native doctors for prescription and In weeks, they are healed.

• These holistic view of health that ranged from physical, spiritual and social elements forms basis of our ancient medications.

Why take paracetamol when you have headache? They'll just mix one leave and give you to stop the aching.

Why taking flagyl for stomach ache when you have ogogoro and fresh roots?

My country's ancient medication beliefs hanging on physical and spiritual sources seems weird to me but it's mostly effective than done drugs. To be honest, I prefer the physical part which involves herbs, barks , wood and spirits on form of drinks to perform this medication.

Most times from personal experience, it's always effective although taken most times without dosage which can be dangerous and come with challenges if not handled properly. Whenever I have a stomach upset, I do take the leave called Vinegar and it acts immediately without delay.

But even it comes to spiritual where one invoke spiritual forces to diagnose an illness and the cure, I'm not in support because I feel there's more harm and violation in this than anything anyone could ever imagine. I'm saying from experience not personal though.

I'll write a documentary for this if necessary. Everything around me is medicinal said my Grandma. She'll take up a leaf, wash it and start chewing of it. How hilarious!! There are various elements used as ancient Medicine then and now which I'll spell out accordingly. Let's start with the blood of Jesus leaf.

Blood of Jesus leaf

Why id it called this name? Because it produces a red colour when boiled, thick as blood. It is a very good medication for bodybuilding and serves as blood tonic. Instead of buying blood tonic at an expensive rate, just look for this particular leaf around you, cut it and boil in a container. Allow to hot then bring it out from the fire. You can use peak milk to drink it as it's very rich and essential for building the body's immune system. Women in my village don't joke with it.

This is how the leaf looks like. It looks so small but mighty. It has this healing property for anaemia and I've had experiences of people who don't have money for blood transfusion in the hospital. They'll take to drinking this leaf as alternatives.

Scent leaf	Is the most widely used and available form of medication. People use it as a spice so to speak and in cooking normal food especially rice. These leafs are medicinal and the pigment that comes from it if drank, can cure lot of diseases like malaria and heat.

This is how the leaf looks like, very small but mighty and good in healing property like wound. I can remember when I had a cut in my finger. The water from the scent leaf was squeezed out and used to stop the bleeding on my finger.

Vinegar	This is one of the leaf I dread because of how bitter it is but I heard it's more medicinal than I had thought. It also has good healing properties for stomach upset, tooth decay, and other ailments or physical application.

This is the picture of the pigment extracted by squeezing the leaf. It is folded like this and pressed to release water that is medicinal orally and physically as shown below.

Lemon grass | This is more like a weed but is very medical. It is used in treatment of heat and other skin reactions orally. It is also used to chase away cold and catarrh from the body. All you do is to boil it in water and then drink the water from the leaf. It's always green.

These are a few of the ancient medications used in my country.

Bark of trees
Aloe Vera
Utasi leaf

I'll use pictures for this scenario. Let me recall one scenario.

• Bossj23, you drank a lot of soft drinks at Emeka party yesterday. Fall out and take this medicine to cleanse your body system.

• Mummy, I won't be able to take it oh. It's very bitter except you put it in a spirit for me.

• Ohkay, I'll do the preparations. She took scent leaf and vinegar leaf, mixed them in a container and ensured the green pigment is out. She added a little water to bring out more pigment so she could take it out and put in a bottle with a little spirit.

• The mixture turned green and she put in it the green bottle and allowed it settle for a while. When it settled, she then gave me to drink of which I drank squeezing my face. It was actually effective no doubt to the point that I started drinking it almost everyday.

These are ancient medicines in my country. No too bitter or sweet. It's very effective and are used by villagers the most instead of drugs except it calls for. I invite @basil20, @patjewell and @suboohi

All pictures captured using my device