Balsam—Curing Russians since Catherine the Great

By Kelly Raftery

It was mid-October 1992 and a group of grad students were going to see the Presidential candidate speaking outside that cold Michigan night. We were all bundled up with scarves, gloves and hats to stand in the cold and as we headed out the door, one of my Latvian classmates showed us all a flask, which she slipped into coat pocket, informing us that it was “balsam, it is like a mitten for your tummy.”  And, as the evening went on the flask was emptied and indeed, we all stayed quite warm.   

Balsam is good for what ails you—no matter what that might be. Cold, flu, low blood pressure, digestive ailments,

Catherine the Great, cured by balsam.

all cured with a hearty dose of balsam. Bottled into ceramic flasks since the 1700s, balsam is rumored to have gained its reputation as a healing elixir from a visit that Catherine the Great made to Latvia. The Empress fell ill with stomach complaints and was given balsam, brewed by a local pharmacist named Abraham Kunze. Catherine’s illness subsided, she was saved (supposedly) from death and balsam became known as an effective remedy.

The recipe for balsam has been and is a closely held secret. Once you open the special ceramic bottle and pour a dram, you will see that it is a thick, black liquid that pours more like molasses than vodka. Balsam is 90 proof alcohol with anywhere from 17 to 23 other natural ingredients mixed in. Among the botanicals that can make up a balsam are grasses, herbs, roots, berries and other fruits. The actual mix is proprietary and varies from brand to brand, but can include linden blossom, mint, ginseng, black peppercorn, birch bud, bilberry, valerian, raspberry, and honey. The taste is bitter and sweet all at the same time, somewhat like drinking cough syrup. Regardless, balsam is on the menu in many a Latvian restaurant, served over ice cream, in cola, or as shots. Apparently, it is a “must do” for the brave and hearty tourist seeking to experience the “real Latvia.”

Riga Black Balzam
photo by Fanny Schertzer

The most popular (and most frequently exported) brand of balsam is Riga Black Balsam that can be found in many well-stocked liquor stores, particularly those in Russian speaking enclaves such as Brighton Beach in New York.

A number of years ago I suffered from digestive issues that took me from doctor to doctor seeking relief. In frustration, I finally consulted a Chinese traditional medicine practitioner, who began my treatment by poking me with needles and then handing me a tiny bottle of medicine that she sold off the shelf of her office. Always a skeptic, I took the bottle home, where it laid in a drawer for a while, until I finally talked myself into measuring out the required droppers of liquid into some water. I lifted the cup to my nose, sniffed delicately, breathed out and then took all the brackish brown liquid in to my mouth and downed it with a quick swallow. I stood in my kitchen dumbstruck and then called out to my husband, “Hey, you know what this stuff is?  It’s balsam!”  It did not have the alcohol content of the balsam that I knew, but it certainly was a similar combination of botanicals.

My stomach issues eventually resolved and that tiny bottle of plants and herbs marked a turning point, a start on the road towards healing for me. I don’t know if it was the healing properties of the herbs and roots or the fact that the taste reminded me of all the times I had drunk balsam over the years. I seem to recall drinking balsam at my wedding in Kyrgyzstan, a local brew made from wild herbs picked in the mountains. With each sip of that medicine, I was reminded of a different time in my life, from that cold night watching candidate Bill Clinton introduce Hillary to my Kyrgyz wedding surrounded by my new family. I have this cough I can’t shake; I wonder where I can buy a bottle of balsam?

Western vs Traditional Medicine

By Leslie Hsu Oh

Photo credit: http://arowantree.blogspot.com

“Yew, Mom,” I said, peering into the pot.  “I think I see a cockroach, some snake skin...”

“Les, please don’t look at it.  You’re not helping.”

We had driven from Southern California to San Francisco to see a Chinese doctor who, after examining X-rays of Mā Ma’s liver cancer, prescribed a soup made up of thirty-two ingredients. One of the largest Chinese pharmacists in Los Angeles prepared three bags for her to boil and drink each day. The house smelled of bitter licorice tinged with herbs for a month before Mā Ma decided she couldn’t drink a drop more.

Another Chinese remedy required boiling a long, weed-like grass with a blue duck egg. A friend who was cured of liver cancer gave us the name of an old school teacher who lived about an hour away. I yanked long strands of grass from this man’s yard, filling several plastic bags for Mā Ma. The teacher looked like those Kung Fu masters in old Chinese movies. He tugged on his long stringy beard while he gave us instructions on how to plant them in our yard.

Once a month, we drove to a duck farm where I combed rows of eggs for any that reflected blue. The owner of the farm was a kind man with a smile that seemed to disappear on the sides of his face and a bushy beard which shook when he laughed. He wouldn’t take Mā Ma’s money for the eggs, but accepted boxes of fruit and flowers. Then, one day, we started bringing fruit and flowers to a veteran’s hospital, where he lay on a bed looking weaker and smaller every time we visited. We stopped going to the farm after Mā Ma received a phone call. She cried all night long.

If it were up to Mā Ma, she would’ve tried traditional medicine only. She had her limits. She wouldn’t pay more than a certain amount of money on non-Western treatments. Drinking urine was out of the question. But her doctors and insurance company had limits that Mā Ma believed ended her life. The insurance company would not pay for anything but Western biomedical treatments. Bà Ba and I forced her to choose one Western treatment, even though we had watched my eighteen-year-old brother die from the same disease after aggressive Western treatments that included a liver transplant.  Finally, she selected chemo embolism, but still had doubts. She asked her doctor, “When you inject the alcohol around the tumor, won’t you be pulling out cancer cells into my abdomen through the needle track?”

Her doctor answered with annoyance, “Ninety nine percent I guarantee you that it won’t. Try to be a patient, not a doctor.”

In the end, she was right. About a year after her diagnosis, she died with numerous cancer cells clustered like grapes along her abdominal cavity.

Since Mā Ma’s death in 1994, I’ve dedicated much of my life to making it easier for folks to access traditional medicines. On the Navajo Reservation, a plan I developed in graduate school with Chinle Comprehensive Health Care Facility blossomed into an Office of Native Medicine where patients can see traditional healers and receive ceremonies performed in a hogan and a Native healing room. Alaska Natives can receive free services at Southcentral Foundation’s Traditional Healing Clinic. For non-Natives, most traditional healing services still remain out-of-pocket.

Living in Alaska allowed me frequent lunch dates, home visits, and medicinal plant harvesting trips with traditional healers such as the renowned Rita Blumenstein, whom I recently featured in a cover story in First Alaskans Magazine and offered our readers a sneak peak in “Native Traditions of Giving” and “Life Off the Grid.”

Rita Blumenstein talks to a plant before she harvests it.
Photo credit: Leslie Hsu Oh

On Mother’s Day in 2011, my kids and I drove Blumenstein to a secret spot where she harvests petrushki. My daughter Kyra, who was five, and my son Ethan, who was two, peppered Blumenstein with questions on the long drive. She blew them kisses and told me exactly what I needed to hear, that I am a good mother.

With sprinkles of water from gray skies cooling my cheeks, I followed in Blumenstein’s footsteps along the shore. Over a decade of being part of her life, I was still in awe that this internationally revered woman makes time in her packed schedule for me.

Tightening her bright blue hood around her face, she broke out into a mischievous smile and beckoned me close. She stretched out both hands, leaned down towards a round low shrub, and closed her eyes. Her lips moved and I wished I could have heard what she said.

She pulled out a plastic bag from her backpack and said to me, “Take just a little from each.”

Then, she snapped off several stems and whispered to the plant, “Thank you.” She brushed the leaflets against my nose. I inhaled a cilantro-like fragrance. “Petrushki!” she hollered happily and hurried off to the next shrub with the speed of a child collecting candy that scattered from a piñata.

As we harvested, Blumenstein taught me about some of the other plants growing in the area. She pointed out the ones to avoid. She kept saying to me, “I just love you so much,” filling the emptiness that my mother’s death had left within.

Ethan says "thank you" to a petrushki leaf.
Photo credit: Leslie Hsu Oh

When my kids tired of digging in the sand, they each drifted towards me on their own time. I repeated what Blumenstein taught me. To respect the plants. Talk to them. Say thank you. Leave some for other animals and people.

Kyra approached each shrub with all her masculine energy. I warned her not to step on the plants, to be gentle. Blumenstein watched in the distance as I instructed Kyra not to grab fistfuls of petrushki but just a stem at a time.

“Like this Mommee?” she asked, waving three stems bristling with leaflets in my face. Her cheeks flushed pink from the past hour on the beach.

“That’s better. Now, what do you do?” I asked.

Kyra grabbed the plastic bag out of my hands and stuffed some leaflets roughly in. Then, she punctuated two pats on each shrub with “Thank You.”

“Ethan, your turn,” she grabbed her brother’s arm. Both Blumenstein and I watched proudly as she repeated my instructions.

Before we left the beach, I asked both kids to give Blumenstein what they harvested. Blumenstein told us that she couldn’t think of a better Mother’s Day gift.

Now living in the Washington, D.C. area, I worry that my children are being deprived of the myriad of ways that traditional medicine can heal spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally. For those of you who live in big cities, I’d love to hear how you access traditional medicine?

A Taste of Traditional Chinese Medicine

A TCM pharmacy.
Photo by Sam Steiner.

By Beth Green

Many times when you visit the doctor or pharmacy in China, you’re given a choice: traditional treatments made from herbs and mysterious ingredients, or Western-patented pharmaceuticals.

The first city I lived in in China, in Southern China, had a specific hospital for Traditional Chinese Medicine (often just called TCM). At the bus stop outside it, passengers boarded wearing white bandages stained with brown poultices. Pharmacies usually featured both the comforting little rectangular boxes of pills that spelled out the ingredients in both Chinese and English and large dispensaries full of odd natural items that often looked like hedge-clippings or leftovers from a taxidermist’s shop. The air near the hospital and in the pharmacies had a distinctive smell—bitter and earthy.

I was always curious about experiencing TCM, but luckily I didn’t really need a doctor’s opinion in China until the second year I lived there. We’d just moved to a rural city in Southwestern China, with different weather and different food. My skin was not reacting well to the changes—and, distressingly, I’d picked up impetigo from some of the children I was teaching. After an Internet self-diagnosis of skin cancer (my self-diagnoses always include the worst possible interpretation of symptoms), I asked a co-worker to take me to the hospital across the road and see what a real doctor said.

At this hospital, and others I’ve been to since, when you come in to register you pick whether you want to see a nurse for a few yuan, a nurse with more experience for one yuan more, or a specialist doctor for a whopping seven yuan (about a dollar at that time). Not one to skimp, I chose to visit the specialist dermatologist.

The dermatologist had no waiting room; all of her patients grouped together in her small office on stools and listened avidly to her diagnosis and recommendation for the other patients while waiting for their names to be called.

When it was my turn ( I was extremely conscious of the ten pairs of ears and eyes in the room) the doctor didn’t ask me any questions other than if my skin itched. I had my co-worker explain my difficulties but she simply nodded, had me stick out my tongue, and made a note.

“Will you take TCM?” she asked me in Chinese.

“It’s not cancer?” I replied.

She laughed, and so did the other patients behind me.

A TCM store in Hong Kong.
Photo by Brian Jeffery Beggerly.

Relieved of that, at least, I said, “sure, why not?” and so began a six-week course of TCM. The doctor explained that I would see results less quickly than I would if we used Western medicine, but that hopefully I’d experience better skin and more energy after using the TCM.

The treatment was in part restrictive: I had to limit my intake of spicy and oily food, milk products, sugar, and caffeine. I had to eat more green vegetables. So far so good.

It included a topical treatment, which involved combining a paste with the clear contents of a glass vial, stirring it, and then applying it daily to affected areas with a delicate wooden stick. The glass vial was the most frustrating, because it didn’t have a lid: you had to break the tiny top off of it without shattering the rest of the vial and dropping glass shards in the paste; without dropping it on the floor, smashing it and getting glass splinters all over the bathroom; without cracking it and cutting your fingers. It took a few times—and return visits to ask for more medicine—to get this right.

I was also told to up my vitamin intake, which I could thankfully do with nice, comforting, Western-looking tablets.

And I had to drink four servings of a special brewed medicine every day.

The prescription for all this medicine was several pages long, because the doctor listed twenty-some ingredients.

I knew that the prescription was lengthy, but I didn’t realize what exactly was in store for me until my co-worker and I went to the pharmacy counter to pick up the medicines: three plastic shopping bags full of powders, leaves, and twigs.

“Um, what do I do with this?” I asked my friend.

“You cook it,” she said.

Um, yeah.

Medicines before they are cooked.
Photo by Bernhard Scheid.

Luckily, the town had one pharmacy that catered to people who were as incompetent as me in the medicine-preparation department and with a little negotiating, the proprietors agreed to cook up and bag my medicine, even though I hadn’t purchased the initial ingredients from them. It took them a day to prepare, but soon I had about four gallons of a root beer colored drink, hermetically sealed in several dozen small plastic baggies.

I was told to keep this refrigerated and drink it hot every day under certain conditions that I forget now. To warm it up, it worked best if I put a baggie in a bath of hot water for a few minutes, then snipped a corner off the plastic and slurped it out in one foul-tasting go.

Or, sometimes I put it in a coffee cup and pretended I was drinking really bad filtered coffee.

It was a fussy, bewildering way to find a cure, but the impetigo cleared right up, and soon my skin was behaving itself too. I went back to the doctor several more times, for more medicine, until finally she gave me the all-clear.

I have always wondered what was in the medicine she prescribed, but at the end of the day, I’m just happy it worked.

What experiences have you had at foreign hospitals?