Herbal Poultices

Well, I’ve done it again. I’ve managed to make myself busy to the point of ignoring the blog for way too long. I will get back to some other survival archery stuff later. Right now, one of the primary subjects at hand at my school (The Human Path) for the next several months is herbalism – plants and healing. We are running a long series of classes, from the Primitive Core Basic to Wilderness First Aid Certification, to basic herbology, to a week-long disaster relief scenario in the fall. The scenario will include everything from setting up a remote clinic to herbal and wilderness first aid to sanitation and water purification to security issues, and a lot more.

First step in creating a poultice: Finely powder the herbs and mix them together


Herbs can be suspended in mediums like alcohol, vegetable oil, vinegar, etc., to allow their use later. This is a convenient way to keep and use herbal remedies such as an herbal salve. This is probably a familiar concept to most readers – “tinctures,” “salves,” etc.

However, there is another way that is less convenient but almost always more effective. Namely working with fresh or raw plant material directly, and not suspended in any type of medium.

A poultice is a good example of using the raw herb in a less-convenient yet much-more-effective manner. Making a poultice involves macerating the herb as finely as possible (remember, the more surface area of the herb that is exposed, the more effective it can be) then wetting it in a medium that will help it absorb and be metabolized through the skin or wound.

Depending on the type of wound, condition or infection you are treating externally and the herbs you have available to work with, the first step is to mix those macerated or ground herbs together. Once you have done this, you can proceed to add some type of fluid to help hold the herbs together as well as assist in their being absorbed through the skin.

The fluid or solvent used can be a number of things. It can be clean or purified water, aloe gel or juice, vegetable oil, honey, and a number of other mediums that are good for the skin, good for the particular condition and contain enough water content to mold the dried or fresh herb into a usable wet paste.

One of my favorite fluids to use is honey. Honey has anti-microbial properties to it even by itself. Plus it is very nourishing (and will be metabolized through the skin in this way too). The honey to use is untreated, raw, unfiltered… and most importantly unheated honey. Heating honey over 120 degrees F will destroy many of its medicinal properties. Raw honey will be fairly solid at room temperature, so the best way to gently heat it (to make it mixable) is in a double boiler (put it in a pan that floats on water inside a bigger pan and heat the bigger pan) rather than directly on the heat itself. This ensures a consistent warming that will not overheat the honey. Try to use only stainless steel and glassware when heating herbs. Avoid teflon coating and aluminum.

In this case, slightly heated, raw honey is added to the powder mixture, along with a few other things


Once your fluid has been mixed in with the powdered or macerated herb, and you have it to the consistency that is like thick glue, you can spread it on the skin directly, and then cover with a bandage, or spread it on the bandage and then place that on the skin. I like to use 4 x 4 gauze and open it or layer it to the right size first, then spread on the poultice mixture and apply to the skin.

You can wrap the poultice onto the skin using either ACE wrap type bandage, or the self-sticking elastic bandages. Ace wrap is kind of “old school” but I prefer it because poultices have to be changed frequently. ACE Bandages can be washed, even boiled, and re-used many, many times. They’re not as convenient as the self-adhesive bandages but they are a heck of a lot cheaper when you end up wrapping the poultice 4 or 5 times over a 24 hour period.

This brings me to a couple of final tips about poultices:

1) You need to plan on using a lot of herb. You want to soak the entire area of the skin and more with a thick (think 1/2″ thick) layer of herb mixture.

2) You need to change out the poultice frequently – like every 2-4 hours if possible. This varies depending on the type of injury. The more critical and severe the injuury or infection, the more often you need to change out the poultice.

3) In most cases you need to give the area of skin some time to “breathe” without the poultice on it as well. So if you are working on an infection, for instance, and want to keep a poultice on it, allow for about 8 – 12 hours of poultice, then at least a few hours of letting it breathe and dry out. Usually you can accomplish what you need with anything but a severe infection, within a few days of doing this. Remember, you’re just trying to restore enough balance to the area for the body to be able to take back over doing what it does best – healing itself.

Poultice can be used with any kind of sterile or clean (depending on what it’s being used for) cloth


Sam Coffman