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The Maori: Yesterday and To-day

Bush Remedies

Bush Remedies.

The Maori wise men and women were skilled in the lore of bush remedies. A great deal could be written on the native pharmacopeia. The virtues of some of the plants are becoming known to our chemists, the koromiko (veronica) for instance. page 172 But the doctors and chemists have not yet discovered such plants as the little papapa. Its leaves, when the outer surface is rubbed off, are very soft to the touch, and the liquid obtained from boiling a quantity is a strong soothing and healing agent. The leaves may be applied to wounds without being subjected to any cooking process. The juice expressed from the roasted leaves of the kawakawa, or “pepper-tree” (piper excelsum) makes an excellent dressing for bad wounds; I have even heard of a case where a Maori woman was cured of what was believed to be cancer through the use of this herbal remedy applied as a dressing. Flax-root juice, applied either raw or after boiling the roots, was the favourite native cure for gunshot or bayonet wounds in the war days. The edible pith of the black ferntree or mamaku (Cyathea medullaris) makes a first rate dressing for sores and chafings. It is applied raw. The leaves of the tarata and one or two other small trees, chewed and made into a kind of paste, will quickly cure raw places on a saddle-sore horse. These are just a few of scores of bush remedies. There is a wide field for research and experiment in the healing virtues of New Zealand plants. A great deal of the bush-lore of the Maori has vanished, but there remains an abundance of useful knowledge to be gathered and turned to account by scientific enquirers.