A Woodsmans Apothocary

Description

http://www.selfrelianceoutfitters.com

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

morning folks I'm doing Canterbury what's up for - Outfitters in the Pathfinder school one what I thought we do today is I shot a fairly long series not long ago on medicinal plants called materia medica and I didn't quite exhaust all of the plants and trees that I wanted to include in that series but it kind of got later later in the year and other things came up trapping season came up classes came up travel schedules came up and I didn't get a chance to quite finish exactly what I wanted to do in that series but we'll get to it again next year and pick up where we left off for sure but one of the things that I wanted to discuss in that series at the end of the series was what I call the woodsman's apothecary and this is a concept that I came up with to be able to utilize common herbs and plants that had a lot of multi functionality when it comes to treatments or treating common ailments that the woodsman may have in a base camp scenario for the shorter term I'm going to talking about overnight or a couple days I'm talking about a week to two weeks so it would be kind of a medicine cabinet that you could keep in your wall tent your cabin your hunting camp whatever the case may be and then you could replenish that kit from the landscape because you're using materials that are common to your area although they may be processed so you may have to collect and process them ahead of time to replenish but you've got something you're starting out with already that are in a process state to be used as a medicinal treatment and it's a very small kit that I've come up with it all fits in just a zippered canvas wax canvas pouch here and this is not something that I sell it's not something I have any plans to sell it's something I wanted to discuss with you and kind of walk you through a little bit so that you might be able to set something up like this for yourself depending on the environment you live in because the plants and trees that you have may differ from what I have here in Southeast Ohio now one thing that I did take advantage of that you'll see in this kit is I stayed with that mentality of the tree he's being a four-season resource and a lot of the medicinals that I'm using in here are tree type medicine or what I call tree medicine because those are easier for me to replenish or use on the fly in Eastern woodlands in all four seasons of the year so let's kind of break this out for a minute and look at the contents and we'll kind of go through it a little bit how I've set it up as like an emergency first aid kit or a self aid kit for a more permanent type camp or a medium-term camp scenario so what we'll do here is we'll do a very similar type video to you know one of my instructors and confirmed of mine at Corpus Corner Sean Kelly what he calls a junk on the bunk and we'll just lay this stuff out here on the cotton we'll talk about as we go so again I've just got a zippered canvas pouch and this pouch came off Amazon for about 11 bucks and one thing you're going to have to have any kind of a kit is you're going to have to have a way to measure things unless you're just going to do it on the fly by hand fulls pinches dabs and things like that so what I chose to use was cupola measurement systems because it's something that's easy something that I had already within my kit and I get stored in here and it wouldn't take up a lot of room and I've got a cupola Gill cup and a cou poke a spoon so those are the kind of the measurement system that I use with this stuff when I'm making a medicinal infusion or decoction or whatever I'm doing and then I've also got several things in here like reusable canvas tea bags because these can be used not only to make medicinal infusions and things like that and decoctions without having to strain them off but they can also be used as a basis for a poultice by putting the plant inside this after it's been cooked or after it's been prepared and this can be used as a dressing or a poultice over the top of something and then bandaged on with a piece of cotton bandage or cotton t-shirt material I also have a couple larger ones in here that can be used for anything from a Milbank type bag for

straining material to storing or collecting material and also to cooking material in larger quantities in a larger pot in camp now what I've done is I've made a little list here very similar to what you have and some type of sulfate a first aid kit that you would buy that kind of is a reminder for me but it also lets other people know that might be using this kit if I were to get sick or injured and somebody else were using this kit they could open this set of instructions up and it would kind of give them a very good clue as to what to do with the contents of this kit and basically it has a list of the condition so you have bleeding breaks and strains bison stings again we're talking about common ailments this is more self aid immediate stuff this is not for long-term illnesses constipation diarrhea stomach upset immune system boosters sore throat cough sleeplessness headache fever and on down the line all the way down to antiparasitics and antivirals and then it goes into what plants work well for that what trees work well for that anything well I've got an other column here and my other column we'll talk about in a minute because there are basically a couple other contain other containers within this kit that do not have a horrible ingredient in them they have another type of natural resource ingredient whether that be activated charcoal honey or sea salt and we'll talk about that in a few minutes and then this list on the other side are the things that are contained within this apothecary so you have white oak bark salt charcoal plantain salve black walnut white oak willow there's not very many things within this kit but they treat a lot of things you can see on here that things like willow are in several places things like honey are in several places black walnut is in several places because these are multifunctional herbs that will treat lots and lots of conditions so you've got the condition and what you can use in this apothecary kit to treat it as well as other things that you could possibly get from nature as well that may not be in the sapota carry okay the next page is very similar except it gives an actual dosage or measurement to make a batch of medicine and when you're making medicinals it's not like take two teaspoons and call me in the morning it's I'm going to make a batch and drink it till it's gone maybe eight ounces every hour or two hours until it's gone but I'm going to continually take it on a regimen until it's gone I'm not going to just take a little bit dump the rest out or store it for later I'm going to use it till it's gone all right so you've got the same conditions here listed again with only the apothecary uses here that are within this kit and so as an example it says bleeding white oak bark poultice or black walnut powder so that tells me I can either use that in a poultice or I can use it just as a powder like a styptic to put on a wound like a shaving cut or something like that would be a styptic whereas bleeding might be some type of a minor cut that I'm going to use a poultice combined in some type of fabric or in one of these bags as an absorbent and something that's going to be voluntary to the wound and also to help stop the bleeding in the black walnut powder going on down here let's talk about stomach upset possible poison charcoal fugitive mixed to kupaka spoons with four ounces of water so you have specific dosages here on this page that tell you how to prepare the contents of the Apothecary this is all stuff that I just put together myself and it goes all the way down through a lot of the things and then the contents of the kit it shows what contents are within this apothecary so you know how to replenish it it's got two ounces of plaintain South 6 ounces of activated charcoal six ounces of honey six ounces of white oak bark 6 ounces of willow bark 6 ounces of black walnut hulls ground for Muslim tea bags one Milbank type bag one cup okay Gil measurement one Kapil Cass poon alright and so that's a list of what's inside the kit so those three pages pretty much give you an instruction manual on how to use this kit what to use it for how much to use and what different things you can use so inside the kit we have just a few bottles we have one amber plastic bottle of black walnut whole one amber bottle of white oak bark one amber bottle of white willow bark one amber bottle of local honey one amber bottle of activated charcoal one ten that contains real sea salt one ten that contains a plantain South which is just a salve that I made up ahead of time and put in here and then I also have one squirt bottle that I can use if I choose to store something for a short amount of time or if I need to make a different type of medicine to put in here or I need something that I need to drop our application for it's just a spare bottle within the kit and again all of that fits very easily inside here so you've got some very simple components here but you what you have is you have very common components that can easily be replenished most of them can be obtained from the landscape or from something that you've already accomplished other than the honey and the sea salt you'll have to buy those components or trade for those components but the other components and those can be substituted for other things in nature as well I'm using them because they're the best choice for this kit and they're easy enough replenished away from base camp when I'm back at the homestead or whatever the case may be it's easy enough to replenish those items but as far as the items that you're going to use the most the bark powders the charcoals activated charcoal is a little different than the charcoal out of your fire but the charcoal out of your fire

work it's just going to be less effective and it may take more of it to accomplish the same thing now I'm not going to go through here and talk about each individual application for each one of these things because I want you to do some research on your own to figure that out and also go back through the materia medica video series and look at that now what I've done is I've come up with my own materia medica for the pathfinder school and I've put this together over time and it use this to teach with and it's got about 30 plants and trees in it as well as things like honey charcoal sea salt different types of oils that you can use as carrier oils and we'll talk about that in a minute as well but I've just written a book that releases in a few months with Jason hood on bushcraft first-aid and medicinal plants and a lot of this information will be contained in that book it's already on available for pre-order on Amazon as well as on my website at self-reliance Outfitters com but a book like this that you put together yourself whether it's stuff that you've copied off the internet or whatever the case may be or your personal notes that you've written down put them in here and go through them and you'll be able to use this as a reference for lots and lots of things and I've even got things in here myself like my certificate from the Herbal Academy from the international school of herbal arts of Sciences I've got my certificates in here from that school as well but that's just because I use this as a teaching tool and I let students look through this when they are at my school as well but I have articles off the internet in here I have hand type things that I've typed notes from as well from other books and I also have direct copy paste pictures in here of the different herbs and plants so putting a materia medica together for your house or for your homestead is a good idea will help you supplement your way into something like this woodsman's apothecary now let's talk a real quick about another new book because a lot of people ask me about books I've always been a huge fan of math you would I think his books are about the best books out there as far as herbalism goes and they're the easiest to understand and he has a new book out called the hirable repertory and it's a very very good book the first portion of this book goes through a lot of the things that are in his other book about tissue States about taste of different medicinal plants and things like that and then it goes into things like a listing of the plants that are with their Latin names so that you can't refer back to that later it also goes back into there's your list of herbs it goes into the different areas of your body that those herbs have direct affinity to in your organ systems your blood and things like that and then toward the back of the book it actually goes into specifics where you can actually look things up like lactation and breast health you can read about all the different herbs are listed in here that are good for that and then specifics as far as what's going on in your body or in the person's body that you're giving these herbs to to help you decide which specific herb is the best treatment now this thing here would be something more for the homestead this is not a woodsman's apothecary type deal because when it comes to wise woman type medicine and true herbalism what you're trying to do is you're trying to get as specific as you can with the condition and the treatment and with the woodsman's apothecary muir we are more concerned with things that are called simples one ingredient for specific symptom of possibly a greater problem I have a headache what can I do to take care of the pain what can it you two possibly relax the muscles on my neck if I've got a tension headache those type of things are what I'm going to address with this I've got bleeding I need to take care of I've got a sprain or strain I want to reduce the swelling I've got poison ivy I want to reduce the itching the irritation I have a rash those type things an upset stomach those type things I can easily address with a single medicinal herb or tree with a single infusion decoction poultice something like that whereas this type of stuff is more specific - what exactly are the symptoms of the condition and what exact herb is going to work the best for that but this book is a very very good book to have at your homestead and I would recommend all of Matthew Woods books in your library at home and that will help you to develop along with internet research your personal materia medica and then from that you can develop your woodsman's apothecary to be very few items but highly multifunctional in a camp environment again this is not something you'd carry necessarily in a backpack for an overnight trip that's where you're going to use what's available in nature this is something that you would have in a longer-term camp scenario as your medicine cabinet or your first-aid kit okay folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance outfitters in the Pathfinder school and I just wanted to quickly touch base on this woodsman's apothecary know that video is probably a little bit drawn-out but there's a lot of good information in there and I learn new things every day while I'm doing research to write the books that I write to write the articles that I write to do the videos that I do I learn something new just about every day and one of the things that I learned from this book actually that I had not read before I have read and heard that traditionally skunk fat rendered skunk fat and I'm not going to say tallow because too many people get hung up on semantics and say oh talent only comes from beef and when you did a raccoon fat rendering video you called it tallow and it's not tallow it's fat well you know what that's all semantics because tallow is also defined as a fatty substance or any other fatty substance can be slang Lee called

tallow so I'm not going to call it tallow I'm going to call it stunk fat but skunk oil that's rendered from that fat not from the glands is a very good medicinal carry oil and I've heard that traditionally they used it a lot on areas of the chest for congestion of colds and I think that the reason for that from the research that I've recently found in Matthew Woods new book is that skunk fat or skunk oil rendered from skunk fat is the most skin soluble oil that there is even better than emu oil so the fact that it soaks into the skin very very quickly makes it a good carrier oil when mixed with some other type of herb that may have some type of Mentholatum or camphor in it that helps to cool you down and open up your lungs and things like that when you breathe it in a lot of that has to do with you know breathing in the essential there the essence of those oils and things like that but in aromatherapy and those type of things but the fact that skunk fat oil is so good as a carrier oil is because it's so soluble into the skin so that's something that I learned that was new and I thought it was very interesting and that's why I tell people never stop learn and continue to research because I learned something new every single day and you know you don't make this stuff up in your head you learn it from somewhere everybody learns something from somewhere and me being able to learn it and pass it on to you is just a bonus but you learning something and passing on to me is a bonus as well so comments and things like that and my youtube videos and people send me emails and things like that and I learn something new just about every day from now as well and again I say never stop learning I appreciate you guys joining me for today's video

I appreciate your views and I appreciate your support I thank you for everything you do for our school for family for business all of our sponsors instructors affiliates of friends and me back to another video s in the can thanks guys

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wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

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