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The Life and Mind of DamnBlackHeart
This is to help me stay actively writing. So expect to see rants, tips on writing, thoughts on subjects, me complaining of boredom, reviews, anime, movies, video games, conventions, tv shows and whatever life throws at me.
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Writing Research: Tincture |
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A tincture is typically an extract of plant material, made by steeping the bark, berries, leaves (dried or fresh), or roots from one or more plants in ethanol (ethyl alcohol). Traditionally, in herbal medicine, vodka or brandy is used to make a tincture. Alcohol is used in order to break down the cell wall of the plant, allowing the plants bio-active compounds to be released and stored into the alcohol.
Occasionally apple cider vinegar or even vegetable glycerin is used. The latter are sometimes used for children’s preparations, or by those who abstain from alcohol of any kind, but they’re not as effective at drawing the medicinal components from the plants.
To make a basic tincture, fill a glass jar ½ full of dried or fresh herbs and cover with the solvent of your choice. Seal tightly and allow it to macerate for 4-6 weeks. Make sure to shake it several times each day for the entire week. Once enough time has pass strain the herbs with a piece of cheesecloth, bottle the liquid (use the ones with dark, amber-colored glass so UV rays don’t degrade the product over time), then label it with the name of the herb and the date it was finished. Store it away from direct sunlight.
Administrate the tincture orally, generally ½ teaspoon (or 2.5 milliliters) drops under the tongue and up to 2-3 times a day. It can be diluted with water or juice if you prefer. You can also turned your tincture into an elixir by adding honey to the finished product at a ratio of 2:1 (tincture:honey). Tinctures are one of the many ways to administer herbs internally. Teas, syrups, and herbal pills are some other effective ways to ingest herbs.
Tinctures date back to 1000 AD when alcohol was first distilled by the ancient Egyptians. After distilling alcohol became common practice, using the mixture to preserve plants and create plant-based medicine soon followed. For therapeutic reasons, cannabis infusion has over time become one of the most popular tinctures the Egyptians used.
In 1025, The Al-Qanoon fi al Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) was published, explaining many medical topics including herbal tinctures. It was the basis for the teaching of medicine in the West from the 12th-17th centuries, making these discoveries of the medicinal uses of distilled alcohol ingrained in Western medicine.
However, distilling wasn’t commonly known in Europe until the 1400s, and became widespread around 1500, though the Irish and Scottish peoples adopted distillery much earlier than the rest of Europe. By the Middle Ages, distillation was widely practiced by physicians, botanists, and apothecaries. The Victorians were enamored with tinctures, and during the Prohibition era in the United States, when alcohol was hard to come by, moonshiners applied the principles of distillation to make high-octane booze.
Any number of the elixirs and other medicines found commonly advertised were either cordials or tinctures. It wasn’t until pharmacology moved on to emphasizing pills that the usage of tinctures greatly declined.
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 DamnBlackHeart · Thu Mar 10, 2022 @ 01:05am · 0 Comments |
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