(Thyme)
Over the
last weeks, especially during the weekends, the woods of Lesvos were teeming
with mushroom hunters. Even on steep slopes of the pinewoods you saw earth upturned
and mushrooms thrown away, probably because they were worm infested.
Mushrooming seems to be the newest craze here on the island and I wonder if
that’s because it has received publicity in the media, or whether it’s due to
the magnificent weather — or is it the crisis that forces people back to
nature.
An
average Lesvorian only knows the pèperites (peppered milk cap; Lactarius
piperatus)
which grow mostly under the carpet of pine needles. They can be found in large
numbers, they grow quite large and that’s why the island people cut them in
pieces and then fry them. I don’t know any people who use mushrooms for medical
purposes, but indeed some mushrooms have healing powers. And that has been
known for a really long time: Ötzi, the iceman
and the oldest European mummy, who was found in 1991 in the Italian Alps, was
carrying some mushrooms with him. He lived in the copper Age, many thousands of
years BC (5000 - 3300) and the tinder fungus
he had with him probably served as a tool for making fire and it’s thought that
the birch polypore
he also carried was used as a medicine.
I didn’t realise
that those leathery fungi, which mostly grow on tree
trunks, could make a fire. When on the lookout for this family of fungus, it’s mostly
the ox tongue (Fistulina
hepatica), a thick
and tasty mushroom to be baked like a steak, that I am searching.
According
to the ancient Egyptians, mushrooms were food for royalty, and a
Hadith
says that truffles were the manna that Allah sent to the Israeli people and
that their juices are a medicine for the eyes. I know some Lesvorians who are
sure that you can find this delicacy on the island, but I have never seen
Lesvorian truffels, nor have I seen people looking for them, although the
island still has plenty of oak trees, on whose roots truffles so like to grow.
Digging
for treasures under oak trees? You don’t have to dig into the ground in order
to find something valuable. The Belgian born Alain Touwaide, who works at the famous
American Smithsonian Institute, is the scientific leader of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical
Traditions. This
institute studies traditional medicines, originating in the Mediterranean, and
especially the medicine practiced in Greece by the ancient wise men like Theophrastus, Aristotle and Dioscorides. Hippocrates, who also
belongs to this list, said: “Be the food your medicine and your medicine the
food”.
Touwaide
studied all the books and papers these sages wrote, because all of them had something
to say about the medicinal uses of herbs. Now Touwaide is looking for even more
ancient papers containing descriptions of the old medical traditions in order
to digitalize them and so preserve them for the future. The modern
pharmaceutical industry is also learning from this old knowledge. And now we
come to the treasure he found: in the beautiful library of the Limonos
monastery near Kalloni he discovered many old scripts describing ancient and
traditional ways to use herbs.
Touwaide
believes that Lesvos can have a meaningful part in preserving the ancient ways
of healing. This big island has a very rich assortment of herbs and many of the
island people still believe in their healing powers. Looking for chorta (herbs
and wild vegetables) is, on Lesvos, even more popular than mushroom hunting,
especially in the winter when the new plants sprout from the earth.
Lesvos
is mostly promoted as the island of Sappho, but it also is the island of
Theophrastus,
known as the founder of biology; and Lesvos was the island chosen by Aristotle,
as the preferred area for his studies written up in his famous book Historia animalium.
But
here on the island, similarly to elsewhere in the world, it still remains
easier to see a doctor and then the pharmacist than to go into nature looking
for suitable healing herbs. Maybe the crisis is now making people return to
natural herbs. Why take chemical pills for each small ailment, pills that could
poison your liver or damage, who knows what, other parts in your body. I say:
back to Nature that has plenty of natural remedies, back to the herbalist who
has studied them, or back to the grandmothers who know the secrets of home
remedies like cough syrup, calming herbal infusions, wild vegetables for when
you have a puffy feeling or an ouzo for stomach pain.
Alain
Touwaide is right in wanting this ancient knowledge to be preserved, afterall,
in earlier times people fell ill and recovered thanks to the healing herbs.
Even though modern medical science can heal more ailments than the traditional
herbalists, the mighty pharmaceutical industry also destroys a lot and is far
too expensive.
And
Lesvos? That is still the home of biology, offering plenty: from precious
papers in the monasteries to a multitude of mushrooms and herbs. A paradise
that, maybe because of the crisis, is rediscovering its blessings.
(with
thanks to Mary Staples)
©
Smitaki 2013
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