My boys kept me super warm last night with their perfectly running fevers and kept me up with their irritating coughs. So I'm off to give hugs and make soups, and syrups, and herbal pastilles and sleepy teas and probably some kinda cookies, maybe big soft ginger molasses cookies....because you've gotta have lots of herbaly goodness and hugs and kisses and cookies when this kinda madness goes down.

Herbal medicine is the medicine of the people, and plant medicines are not only simple, but safe, effective, and pretty much free. Our ancestors used plant medicines, and our neighbors around the world use plant medicines, and you can use plant medicines for healing just the same. It's super easy and super fun and I even let my littles help sometimes.

People often ask me "Why such a silly name for a fever herb?" So, I'm clearing up this matter right away: the name boneset implies that this plant is used to treat broken bones, but actually has nothing to do with that, well.......not really. The names of plants often reveal useful information about them, but they can also be very misleading. With a name like boneset, you are likely to lead one astray since the plant was traditionally used in the treatment of fevers, not to mend broken bones. However, with a quick understanding of how the name came to be, it all makes a little more sense.

Boneset's name comes from its traditional use as a treatment for "breakbone fever," an old term for dengue fever. Dengue is a mosquito-borne, viral disease that causes muscle pains so intense that people imagined their bones were breaking, hence its traditional name.