shotguns, covering the common problems that herbs are most appropriate for,

and where subtleties are unnecessary (or could not be defined legally on the label

and therefore could not be communicated to the innocent user). Besides, if you

can't make it simple, you don't know what you're doing.

When we pack for our endless numbers of field trips we pile boxes with

enough tinctures, salves, fluidextracts, patches and herbal junk to outfit a

dispensatory for a practicing Physiomedicalist in 1885 (another one of those

schools of Medical Practice long extinct, may Flexner be cursed!). What we

ACTUALLY end up using, however, if we get sick, are those same old formulas I

used to wholesale. We always run out of Neutralizing Cordial, Hayden's

Viburnum Compound, the latest version of some analgesic balm I put together in

pharmacy lab and Mouth Tincture. We dutifully drag back all the subtle stuff

until the next field trip.

I figure it's our version of the gallon jars of organic soybeans and mung

beans (for sprouting) that were bought in the holy flush of some dietary

asceticism in 1987 and, in over 470,000 households across this land, get dragged

sheepishly from house to house with NOBODY willing to either use them or risk

Bad Karma Points by tossing them...an alternative lifestyle equivalent of the

Christmas Fruitcake from Hell, and related to the Ma Rollers, Pyramid Hats,

New Zealand Green Lipped Mussel Extract bottles, Willard Water and the half-

finished Orgon Box that clutter the symbolic attics of those of us that have

resided in North American Alternative Village.