The book is superbly presented with excellent illustrations. Written in Croatian, it is not (yet) translated into English. However, non-Croatian-speakers might consider it a worthwhile gift for any of their Croatian friends who have an interest in the environment.
Author Davor Martić is a well-known hunter, journalist and editor as well as being a Knight of the Austrian Order of Saint Hubert. His latest monograph, written with several collaborators, is intriguingly titled 'Our Ancestors' Healing Handbook'. The book is intended as a manual for hunters and is the result of intensive research involving a large team of collaborators from the Public Educational Institute for Hunters (POU Capreolus). The Institute is the book's publisher together with the hunting corporation Dobra kob d.o.o. ('Good Fortune' Ltd). As traditional types of medicine have always remained popular in Croatia, the book has attracted great interest among the wider reading public.
Martić is well aware of the interest and value of the book, explaining that, despite being considered part of their intangible cultural heritage by Croats, many traditional medical handbooks are totally unexplored to this day, with some still undiscovered and waiting to be made known to the public. Martić considers this a real pity, as those sources of information are in fact the links between folk medicines created out of fragments of wild game and from plants, of which some are very rare, but all the more effective for curing or mitigating certain types of illness.
The tradition of healthy food as treatment has been known and practised from ancient times to the present day. As Hippocrates, the Ancient Greek doctor (460 -377 BCE), stated: "Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine your food". From more recent times it is worth citing the words of naturalist Umberto Girometto (Split, 1883 - 1939): "Pity the person to whom animals, plants and minerals do not speak, who does not listen to their language or study it." In our Beautiful Homeland of Croatia, people have long made use of medicines created according to centuries-old knowledge, especially Franciscan monks, also islanders and many others.
Centred on healing with healthy food, the primary focus of the book is wild game, describing many folk recipes prepared from wild game. Equally, healing with herbs (herbalism or phytotherapy) is recognised as the oldest form of medicine. For example, in Croatia alone, around 500 species of medicinal herbs are used, of which about 160 to 170 are indigenous plants obviously directly associated with bees and therefore with the bee products which are both delicious to eat and effective medicaments.
Mirko Crnčević is a well-respected journalist who has written extensively about subjects relating to nature and the environment among a host of other wideranging important issues. When he was asked to contribute to Davor Markić's project for this book he accepted readily, especially as he had previously written dozens of significant articles on the very topic of bees and their contribution to health. Here Mirko describes some of the important themes which are to be found in the book highlighting the benefits which bees bring us and how honey is the most widely used ingredient of animal origin used for human health:
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Throughout history household products such as milk, honey, vinegar, flour, barley, salt and so on, or alternatively substances from the immediate environment have long been used as the basic materials for preparing medicinal concoctions;
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The most common medicaments of animal origin are: honey, fats (notably from edible dormice, hedgehogs, ducks, geese, rabbits, pork, etc.), cream cheese, animals in whole or part or animal urine.
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For use in health products various medicinal and aromatic plants such as aniseed, fennel, lemon balm, peppermint, rosemary, sage and lavender were planted in village kitchen gardens and in the fields.
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The Franciscan monk Emerik Pavić was the author of the first published medical handbook in the Croatian language 'Cvit likarije' (1768), in which he described a wide variety of medicinal plants, minerals and animal tissues, including their use in the treatment of different health problems and diseases.
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A natural remedy using bees for treating rheumatism was prescribed by physician Father Jakov Bartulović, writing at the end of the 19th century: "release some bees on to the affected part and let them enter it and sting. Do this for six days. It is good."
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In the same handbook is this suggestion for keeping teeth healthy: "remove the brain from a rabbit's head, mix it with a little honey and butter and rub the mixture into your jaws frequently."
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Marigold with honey for cancer wounds: "the outer leaves of the marigold are picked, smeared with honey, spread it and make a compress over the cancer where it is visible; the inner leaves are boiled up with oil and honey and drunk in a tot of spirit or a small cup of black coffee. This is how it is done in the Knin area.
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The second volume of Pedanius Dioscorides' work 'De materia medica' (1555) cites animal products such as honey, milk and fats alongside cereals, vegetables, herbs and spices.
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Dioscorides describes a popular medical speciality of snake roasted with salt, honey, figs and pomegranate prepared as a soup.
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A prescription for removing warts was described by Father Dobroslav Božić in 1878 as follows: "Take some pellets of sheep's faeces, crush them, boil them with honey and rub over the wart." For sore eyes the recommendation was: "Crush some wormwood and squeeze out the juice, mix it with honey and egg yolk and apply it over the eyes".
As Mirko says, there is of course a lot more to be said on the subject. Suffice to quote the words attributed to Albert Einstein about the importance of bees: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the Earth, mankind would only survive for four more years." Whether or not Einstein did actually say this, the fact remains that bees are crucial to the survival of the natural food chain. Therefore, as Mirko says, our society must seriously engage in the advancement of beekeeping, because Croatia is in truth an 'open-air factory' of medicinal and aromatic plants, and the various resulting products, honeys, propolis, royal jelly, beeswax and bee venom are certain to be of continuing value to us for their various nutritional and medicinal properties.
The book 'Ljekaruše naših starih' can be ordered from POU CAPREOLUS (The Hunters' Educational Institute), email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it." telephone: 021 780 357.