Description
The herb has a special curative reputation with reference to cancerous growths and allied tumours, an ointment being made from the leaves and stems wherewith to dress the ulcerated parts, the expressed juice at the same time being used internally.
Clivers also acts as a diuretic, cleansing toxins out through the kidneys. It is used for skin complaints and cysts of all kinds, taken for some time.
It is a classic spring cleaning herb. Nicholas Culpeper, writing in 1650, recommends it to be taken in soup for those ‘that are apt to grow fat’ and to be taken in the spring to “cleanse the blood and strengthen the liver, thereby to keep the body in health’.
Used as a wash, Clivers has traditionally been used to alleviate sunburn and the intensity of freckles. As a tea, Clivers has been used for skin conditions such as psoriasis and for helping the person with insomnia get to sleep.
It was later used for colds, swellings, etc., the whole plant being rather astringent, and on account of this property being of service in some bleedings, as well as in diarrhoea. Clivers tea is still a rural remedy for colds in the head.
The crushed herb is applied in France as a poultice to sores and blisters.
I used Clivers tea in my Gall Bladder Flush regime and when I did it myself for the first time I could feel the little gravel stones draining out of my gall bladder in the first night.