When I was 15 I developed a nasty case of Pleurisy. For weeks I was in a nightmarish dream-world between sleeping, coughing up pints of thick, cleggy, green and foul smelling mucousā¦ The fevers were intense and made me swoonā¦ I had no appetite and my body working so hard I lost well over a stone in a few weeks. I was given antibiotics and this is how we discovered my allergy to cyclosporinsā¦ ffsā¦ Anyway, different meds were then used and eventually the infection abatedā¦ Soā¦ sadly, that was not to be the end of the issue. For the following 6-7 years I suffered badly from frequent bouts of acute bronchitis that would go on for 3-4 weeks at a time. Drs meds stopped working, it kept returning. Years later I discovered the likely reason for this is that the pleural cavity is basically a fluid filled sack that protects your lungs from bouncing off of your ribsā¦
Encasing the lungs, these cavities have almost no bloody supply and little support from lymphatic/immune supplyā¦ I basically had an opportunistic and aggressive infection which would just retreat back to the pleura and regroup before recurrent outbreaks etcā¦ So what to do? I tried everything I couldā¦ I was taking heroic doses of raw Garlic Sage, Thyme, Elecampagne, Echinacea, Lappa, Astragalus, Coltsfoot, Mullein etc etcā¦ you name itā¦ I mean tea tree inhalations and diffusers. Fruit fasts, even urine therapy! It was desperate. I decided at this point to go study as a Medical Herbalist and applied and enrolled at a Uni in Londonā¦
Before moving to London, I was living in Brighton and got given seriously bad false advise in the bank from the student advisor, that basically fucked up all my plans and my life for a whileā¦ The rules has changedā¦ Suffice to sayā¦ I was left without money to get a place in London but had already given in my notice in Brighton and someone else was gonna take my room in the shared house thereā¦ It was too late! Irreversible and the bank had fucked meā¦ I later lived on floors and sofas of stranger as a wandering homeless hobo on London while my situation sorted itself out, with grants etcā¦
Anyway to get to the pointā¦ It was coming to the crunch pointā¦ I had a week left before I was gonna be this homeless guy in London on a mission, when the dreaded infection returnedā¦ No way I was gonna be roughing it with a serious fever and who would even take me as an infectious phlegm monster?
So, I had been reading (and loving) this book called A Dictionary of Sussex Folk Medicine and it had this intriguing infoā¦ In fact that whole book is fantasticā¦ Soooā¦ It had this bit about snails and their medicinal propertiesā¦ something about the power of the enzymes in their slime, called (Magnans collectively or something similar)ā¦ I was surprised to find out about modern medical research and its findings with these enzymes. These were found to be singularly potent against not only TB but also Pneumococcus! I mean, that is some potent shit!! So I never had to have a BCG at school apparently I already had immunity to TB so must have been exposed and/or it came through neonatal blood connection with my mother etc etcā¦ I digress again, sorry. So, I had to do something and decided to try itā¦
Off I went went to the local cemetery, with its unkempt long dewy grass, armed with a jar. I returned with a load of fat garden snails and proceeded to string them up like cross between a French medieval sheesh kebab and a macabre necklace, that you might expect to find a hag wearing in a Grimmās fairy taleā¦ Using linen thread and darning needle, I had a good 30 to 40 all strung up hanging over a saucer of Rosehip syrup overnight.
You know Snails breath through their skins, so the slime they use for protection and locomotion has to be ābreathableā. Not only that but look where they liveā¦ I mean, snails are not known for their high standards of living or hygiene right? They are surrounded by bacteria, viruses, parasites, you name it. Their slime is their defense against all this and is not to be underestimated as a lung medicine for this very reasonā¦ They are basically tiny lungs that squiggle around happily in filthy placesā¦
I was something of an aspiring occultist/new ager/ weirdo who had experienced too much with Quija boardsā¦ and as a result was interested in shamanism, trance, Chaos Magick etcā¦ So the next day I made another very strong decoction of roots and all sorts. It simmered on the stove while I sat next door in meditation, visualising my recovery, my lungs filling with light, darkness being sucked from my body and extracted via my visualised portals into the depths of the far voids of the cosmos or whateverā¦ Haha there was some chanting etcā¦ You get the picture. Then I dropped an acid tab (just a blotter), and took the decoction off of the heatā¦ Once below 60 degrees (normal cuppa drinking temps), so as not to de-nature the enzymes I wanted, I washed all the snails in the dark thick brew, getting every bit of their slime into the mixā¦ In went the Rosehip Syrup and enzymes/slime mix. I took the brew next door and continued with my visualisations etc and sipped awayā¦ As I came up on the acid, I could feel just how silky and amazingly soothing the potion was as it went downā¦
An hour later I was out with my my mates rotty cross dog āTripā, running around the park, playing and having a fine old time of it! My lungs felt fantastic. I met a āGoblinā who told me that even everyday garden creature we see as boring and irrelevant may each be housing medicine. That mankind was ignorantly arrogant and had no idea etcā¦ hahaā¦ deffo tripping pretty hardā¦
The next day I felt great, my lungs hardly hurt anymore and almost no phlegm, by the following day it was all gone! Since then, it was 20+ yrs until I had another lung infection and that was pretty mild! With a single, dedicated dose of snail enzymes I was cured. Not ātreatedā, cured!
HEREā¦ Surprise sur-bloody-priseā¦ Yepā¦ PneumoSnailiusHealioniiā¦ Stuffā¦
