What the heck is the Doctrine of Signatures?

You might not believe it, but I do at least glance at my own notes or flip through my texts before I do a write up on a plant here on the blog. I have a mind like a sieve and I'm very liable to forget something - at least for the duration of writing the post - so I like to be sure.

But I'm going to use today's post as a sort of test for my brain. I'm going to give you a brief rundown of the Doctrine of Signatures without checking my notes. I want to see how well it's 'stuck' in there.

So, here we go ... stream of consciousness style, if you don't mind.

First, let's define the Doctrine. Essentially it's a way of gleaning clues - signs or "signatures" - from the plants as to what they might be able to do for us as medicines for our bodies and our spiritual and emotional realities. We look to the form of the plant (ie the shape & textures of the flowers, leaves, stems & roots) where we might see a similarity to a human organ or body part. We look to the colours of same, where we might see the colour of blood or bile or bone. We look at the growth habit of the plant as these tend to indicate adaptations the plant has to make and lastly the environment it prefers to grow in and its role within the environment (as discussed re alder, last time). It's rarely just one signature but their combinations that suggest the uses of the plants.

Discerning the signatures takes the eye of an artist, a working knowledge of human anatomy and experience. It's no "primitive system based on superstition" as I've seen it described. Once you learn to work with it, the bodies of plant and human weave themselves together in the mind's eye and something just clicks. It's one thing to understand in theory, but once you get out there and start looking at the plants .. well, it blows my mind.

Examples?

Everyone's favourite example is eyebright. The red streaks in the tiny flowers of that wiry little plant look (somewhat) like bloodshot eyes, and they do indeed help to clear up eye gunk from conjunctivitis or allergies when used as a compress or eyewash. Taken internally, the tea or tincture works too, which it seems to do by relieving sinus congestion which in turn takes pressure off the eye. Eyebright also brightens our 'outlook', so it can nice to have around when we're not quite depressed, but maybe the world "through a glass darkly". So here we have a bit of a pun, almost, but still, it's a signature. For my take on fun with eyebright, including pics, how we use it 'recreationally' (yes, really!), and a success story in comments, see this old post .

Large leaves are the signature for lungs because they resemble lungs -  comfrey and mullein are examples. Both of these plants have textures and patterns to their leaves that resemble the cilia of the breathing apparatus in human beings, too. Cool, eh? Comfrey and mullein are both moisturizing and healing to lung tissue, mullein is particularly good at dealing with 'tickling' coughs (I'm still working on that mullein monograph). As you may know, comfrey has been vilified for a few years now due to theories about liver damage, in some places it's even illegal to sell it for internal use (silly, if you ask me, but you didn't so we'll drop that for now) so mullein is the preferred lung helper. (But I still say we shouldn't entirely discount comfrey.)

Hollow stems or tubular flowers are the signatures for healing the 'tubes' of the body, like the esophagus or the eustachian tubes of the ears. Elder, which has hollow stems, and monarda, with its tubular flowers, come to mind, a reader used the former and I used the latter, both of us successfully, to clear ear problems .. there's a plant that's used for fallopian tubes but I'll be damned if I can remember it's name and I promised myself I wouldn't cheat so we'll all have to remain in suspense for now.

Yellow is the signature for jaundice and therefore bile - dandelion and yellow dock are examples of plants that support the liver and gall bladder, although of course they do other things as well. But speaking of the liver, what's the signature for the liver in burdock? It's one of the liver plants, isn't it? But there's no yellow ..

No, but there's purple, and purple is the signature for toxins in the blood. What's the organ that detoxifies the blood? The liver. There's plenty of purple in echinacea, too, both in the flowers and in the joint between the leaf and the stem. Echinacea is an excellent blood purifier, it's most herbalist's first choice for treating bacterial infections (using it for mere colds is considered by some to be waste of good medicine). The 'cone' of echinacea, protruding or swelling up from the petals, resembles a boil or pimple and echinacea is an excellent remedy for those. The rayed petals and the tingly sensation of the taste are a signature for 'diffusives', these are the plants that send their medicines quite quickly through the body. They're often combined with other plants to speed things up. Monarda's flowers are rayed as well, although they arrayed differently, as a crown around the round 'head'; that's another plant with a diffusive action that can be added to a formula as a sort of catalyst.

That rounded head is seen again in burdock, this time with the petals (and then the seeds with their little hooks) sticking out like pins on a pincushion. Burdock seed is very diffusive. It has similar properties as the slower working roots and leaves, but if you want that medicine fast, use the seeds - but carefully, because burdock can be very cleansing. Burdock seeds have that sharpish/salty taste in common with echinacea.

You might be getting the idea by now - it's an intricate system of patterns laid overtop of other patterns and understanding it involves the use of all our senses. That's something we're biologically wired for, the use of our senses, integrating the information they give us to understand the world, and our brains are very, very good at making extrapolations.

I won't suggest that the Doctrine of Signatures is the best way to learn about medicinal plants; at the very least it makes a useful mnemonic device. But it might be more than that .. I can't help but wonder if getting outside among the plants, using our brains and senses in this (dare I say it) more evoluntionarily appropriate way as opposed to just learning by reading is good for us, the way eating real food instead of junk is good for us, or getting out into the sunlight instead of living indoors all the time is good for us. 

In any case, it's very much a part of how I learn, so you'll find me referring to it quite often when I write about the plants here.