Garlic, history of a herb
About 50 years ago. I was on holiday in the French Cévennes for the first time. A godforsaken town of Rochessadoule. In a workers' cottage on a rugged slope with feral grape growers, tame chestnuts and druidic oaks, we lived for two weeks in a real herbalist atmosphere.The owner Monica was a Dutch, very religious but liberated herbalist who ended up here via Jerusalem, Cote d'Azur, a castle in the Ardêche. She rented part of the cottage to kindred spirits, whom, in my case, she chose according to their handwriting.
On a day trip to the Camargue, I got the first symptoms of a flu attack. Tired and feverish I came home to Monica at night. Our herb lady quickly brewed a rough soup with 25 cloves of garlic, soup that I worked greedily in. At night I slept very restlessly, began to sweat heavily and hallucinate, but... In the morning, I looked like reborn. No more flu and my body and mind seemed like light like air. For the first time, the naturopathic theory about the purification power of garlic in infections was applicable to me.
Was all this due to the power of garlic? Or the magical atmosphere in Monica's cottage? Or holes in my memory? Whatever it said, it remains a special memory for me.
Thousands of years of garlic
My own little history about and with garlic joins the thousands of years old history of millions of people before me. And as far as we know begins with the Egyptians where garlic was consumed in large quantities during the construction of the pyramids.
