Tweet
http://www.haroonsaadiq.com/quran/honey.htm
The Merits of Honey
" And your Lord revealed to the bee, Make hives in the mountains and in the trees and in what they build. Then eat of all the fruits and walk in the ways of your Lord submissively. There comes forth from their bellies a beverage of many colours, in which there is healing for mankind. Verily in this is a sign for those who give thought " [Al-Nahal:68,69]
We all know that bees produce honey. In addition to this information our God Almighty has informed us that there is a special ability in honey to heal and cure diseases. The following hadeeth is a good example to understand:
" Abu Sa'id Al-Khudri, may Allah be pleased with him, reported: A person came to Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) and told him that his brother's bowels were loose. Thereupon Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: Give him honey. So he gave him that and then came and said: I gave him honey but it has only made his bowels more loose. He said this three times; and then he came the fourth time, and he (the Holy Prophet) said: Give him honey. He said: I did give him, but it has only made his bowels more loose, whereupon Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: Allah has spoken the truth and your brother's bowels are in the wrong. So he made him drink (honey) and he was recovered " [Bukhari & Muslim] 1 2
One should drink honey even when he is healthy, as this is a Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). It is confirmed by the following hadeeth:
" Anas, may Allah be pleased with him, reported: I served drink to Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) in this cup of mine: Honey, Nabidh, Water and Milk " [Bukhari & Muslim]
As long as one is a Muslim, sayings of Allah in the Quran and Muhammad (p.b.u.h) in his ahaadeeth, are more than sufficient to constitute a belief about something as compared to any other source. Some people base their beliefs on scientific research and facts even if they contradict the Quran and hadeeth, not realizing that science is a system of knowledge or observation by human beings and human beings are prone to errors. Thus if science contradicts any views of the the Quran or Sunnah then it is science that is wrong, not the Quran or hadeeth. However scientific research that is in accordance with the Quran and hadeeth has helped us a lot to understand some issues in much greater depth.
Below is a scientific research on honey and its not because of this research that we are going to constitute the belief about healing ability of honey. We are just going to use it as a tool to praise and appreciate the sayings of Allah and His prophet about honey, to which we have already established our belief and faith regarding its (honey's) healing capabilities.
Honey as Medicine and Remedy
Honey has long been used in medicine not only as a valuable item in the diet but as a remedy and a means of healing. In the oldest medical papyri of Egypt, dating back to 1553-1550 BC, there are indications that honey was used to heal wounds, ‘in order to cause urination’, and ‘as a means of easing the belly’. In Mesopotamia and Assyria, too, honey was used for healing and is mentioned among remedies on the tablets found in the library of Ashur-bani-pal.
In Indian medicine it was considered that honey could be used both as a remedy and as an analeptic. The tonics prescribed ‘to give pleasure’ and ‘to preserve youth’ were mainly prepared from honey. And a diet in which honey and milk were the main items was thought to prolong life.
In ancient Greece honey was considered one of nature’s most precious gifts. The Greek philosopher Democritus, creator of atomic theory, said, when asked for advice on how to live and how to keep in good health, that one should anoint one’s interior with honey and one’s exterior with oil. Hippocrates, the Greek doctor, prescribed honey extensively and successfully for many diseases. Honey taken with other food, he said was nutritious and improved the complexion.
Galen, the great Roman physician, considered honey an all-purpose remedy, recommending it to treat many kinds of poisoning and intestinal ailments, in particular gangrenous stomatitis.
Later in the Arab East, honey was extensively used by doctors. The greatest medical authority of mediaeval times, Ibn-Sina (or Avicenna), gave dozens of recipes in his Canon that included honey and beeswax among the ingredients. Of the medical gruel that was eaten by scholars and philosophers he wrote: ‘It helps you when you have a runny nose, cheers you up, makes you feel fit, facilitates the digestion of food, gets rid of wind, and improves the appetite. It is almost a provision for retaining youth, making the memory better, sharpening the wits, and loosening the tongue. ’ He considered honey to have absorbing properties and recommended a wafer (tapitma) made of honey and wheat flour without water to treat wounds. The wafer was placed on the surface of the wound and changed every twelve hours until healthy tissue grew. Ibn-Sina also wrote that honey had a beneficial effect on deep, contaminated ulcers.
Honey is also considered an important remedy on folk medicine. ‘There is no need to be afraid of asking simple people what they think is a good cure,’ Hippocrates wrote, ‘for I believe that the art of medicine was on the whole discovered by so doing.’ Through observations and folk wisdom people made many valuable discoveries down the ages which furthered the development of medicine and the art of healing. Remedies like foxglove, adonis, quinine, opium, atrophine, cocaine and others were all borrowed from folk medicine.
Modern experiments and observations indicate that there is every reason to consider honey a remedy. To what does it owe its curative properties? Mainly to the glucose it contains, which has an invigorating effect on the cardiovascular system, but also to its many other substances that improve the resistance of the organism.
Honey and Children
A sensible diet is most important in a child’s development. As we have already mentioned it is better for children to take honey with their food than sugar. It is advisable to give them a teaspoon of honey two or three times a day, but the dose should not exceed 30 to 40 grams daily.
It has been noted in the literature that children prefer honey to sugar. We ourselves made the following experiment once at the Istra Rest Home for children. Each morning and evening the children were given an extra three lumps of sugar (30 to 35 grams). After a couple of days, however, we were forced to alter the test, as the children were giving the sugar to the dog, throwing it away, or leaving it. The effect was quite different when we gave 60 of them a spoonful of honey morning and evening. All were eager to get their ration of honey first and were always anxious to know whether there would be any the next day.
Dentists have no doubts about the harmful effect of sugar on the teeth. It has been established that the remains of sugar in the mouth break down, under the effect of bacteria, to form acids, particularly lactic acid, which leads to slow but considerable decalcification of the teeth and to caries. Honey, on the other hand, has active antibiotic properties and in the fact disinfects the mouth.
Back to List of Uses
Honey Inhalations
Good therapeutic effects have been obtained when honey is inhaled into the upper respiratory tract. The observations of Dr. Ya.A.Kiselstein, reported in 1938, are of special interest in this respect. He employed an ordinary inhalation apparatus adapted to atomize aqueous solutions, and used a 10 per cent solution of honey. Each session of treatment lasted five minutes. One of his cases, 32 years of age, had suffered for several years from a feeling of dryness in the pharynx and loss of voice. The nasal mucosa and the back of the pharynx were more or less normal, but the laryngeal mucosa and the upper sections of the trachea were covered with suppurative scabs. After seven inhalations the patient felt better and the scabs and hoarseness disappeared.
Of 20 patients treated by honey inhalation, only two felt no improvement at all. Before beginning honey inhalations all the patients concerned had been under observation and had been treated with ordinary conservative remedies, from which they derived no noticeable improvement.
When inhaled honey not only has an effect on the mucous membrane of the nose and throat, but also on the alveoli of the lungs (through which it enters the blood). Thus it not only acts as a local bactericide, but also helps to build up the organism generally. Dr.Kiselstein incorrectly attributed the therapeutic effect obtained from inhalation to the vitamin content of the honey, though its vitamin content, in fact, is low. We therefore decided to test 10 per cent and 7 per cent solutions of honey enriched with vitamins C, B2 and A. The results far exceed our expectations. The patients treated were soon free of their complaints. In 1967 the Bulgarian doctor Stoimir Mladenov reported having used honey inhalation extensively and successfully to treat patients with diseases of the upper respiratory tracts. Inhalation with honey can easily be carried out at home, but only under the supervision of a doctor.
Since olden day honey has been reputed an all-purpose remedy for colds, not simply on its own, but mixed with other foods and medicines. People with colds are recommended to take honey with warm milk (one tablespoon of honey to glass of milk) or with lemon (the juice of one lemon to a hundreds grams of honey). A good remedy is a 1:1 syrup of horseradish juice and honey.
When honey is taken for a cold the patient should stay in bed, or at least at home, for honey causes one to sweat a great deal. Linden honey is a particularly good diaphoretic.
Honey has also been used since time immemorial for diseases of the lungs. Hippocrates wrote that ‘honey gets rid of sputum and soothes a cough’. Avicenna recommended a mixture of honey and rose petals in the early stages of tuberculosis, considering it more effective when taken before noon. He also believed that hazel nuts and honey helped in cases of chronic coughing and facilitated expectoration.
‘Honey is juice with heavenly dew’, we read in a seventeenth century Russian manual on medicine, ‘which the bees collect in fine weather from fragrant flowers and which possesses many curative properties in the treatment of various illnesses.’
‘Honey rids a wound of its stench, prevents people from going blind when smeared on the eyeball, heals sores in the mouth, causes urination, eases the bowels, soothes a cough, heals poisoned bites and the bites of mad dogs. It has a good effect on deep wounds and is a remedy for the lungs and the inner joints.’
These old manuals describe honey as a remedy exerting a beneficial effect on people of all ages. ‘We need not be afraid to give wild honey to children and old people and even to pregnant wives, for eating wild, honey is without harm to what is conceived in the womb.’
In Russian folk medicine, honey was used for certain skin complaints.
Despite numerous examples that honey is an excellent remedy for pulmonary tuberculosis, no specific curative properties can be attributed to it in this disease. It can merely be noted that honey is generally a restorative and thus helps the organism to fight the tuberculous infection. This is our own observation from a comparison of various methods of treatment of abscess of the lung, and our own observations of patients in Prof. F.A.Udintsev’s clinic at the Kiev Medical Institute. Three patients were given 1000 to 150 grams of honey a day. As a result considerable improvement was noted. They began to feel better, their appetites improved, and they began to put on weight. Their hemoglobin increased, while the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (E.S.R.) decreased. The patients coughed less and the amount of sputum decreased; they began to urinate more during the day than at night (the opposite being the case before honey was given); and a beneficial effect was noted on the gastrointestinal tract.
Back to List of Uses
Honey and The Heart
The muscle of the heart is working continuously and needs glucose in order to make up the energy expended. When a very small quantity of glucose (0.1 per cent) is added to the physiological saline in which an isolated heart is immersed, the heart will continue working outside the body for four days.
Honey has a beneficial effect on the heart because it contains much easily assimilated glucose. It has been noted (Theobald) that it has an invaluable effect on the weakened muscle of the heart in various types of cardiac disease. Even diabetics can take honey, since cardiac activity is improved by the injection into the organism of fructose or honey. In all cases were a cure depends on the activity of the heart, honey should not be forgotten, so that the heart will not only be stimulated, when given digitalis, but also receive nutrition. Honey causes the veins to expand and improves circulation through the coronary arteries. With prolonged prescription of honey (50 to 140 -- on an average 70 -- grams of honey daily for one to two months) patients with heart trouble feel better in themselves, the composition of their blood returns to normal, their haemoglobin level increases, and cardiovascular tonus improved.
Back to List of Uses
Honey and The Eyes
Honey has long been considered a most effective remedy for many eye diseases. An ancient Egyptian papyrus gives the recipe for a honey ointment and instructions how to us it. Ibn-e-Sina recommended honey mixed with onion juice, clover, or wheatgrass for the eyes. In the last century honey was held by some writers to be a good remedy for burns, especially those affecting the eyes, and an excellent cure for inflammation of the eye. It has not lost its importance today, even when medicine has been enriched with a host of new preparations (sulphonamides, antibiotics, etc.), and is, in fact, highly effective for certain diseases of the eyes.
A.Kh.Mikhailov reported having used eucalyptus honey and cornea, sores on the corneal membrane, and other complaints. The honey was made by bees from a mixture of honey with an infusion of eucalyptus leaves (since it is the leaves and not the flowers of this tree that possess curative properties).
A honey ointment has been widely used in the eye department of the Odessa Regional Hospital to treat various lesions of the corneal membrane. At first honey was merely added to a 3 per cent sulphapyridine ointment (replacing vaseline). This ointment was highly effective on very slow-healing sores and speeded up the rate of cicatrization. A 30 per cent solution of sodium sulphanil acetamide given in drops, or sulphapyridine ointment containing vaseline, brought no relief to patients with inflammation of the cornea, their condition only improving when the honey and sulphapyridine ointments were administered. Quite a few patients with keratitis or sores on the corneal membrane were cured with honey on its own.
Honey has also been used extensively in the eye clinic of the Omsk Medical Institute (Maximenko) to treat herpetic and uncerous keratitis, and as a means of resorption in cases of opacity of the cornea or vitreous body, immature or initial cataract, and burns affecting the eye.
Only sterile honey from honeycomb should be used in the eyes, and then only under the supervision of a doctor or ophthalmologist.
Back to List of Uses
Treatment of Wounds
In folk medicine, and in antiquity, honey was used to heal wounds. Pliny wrote that fish fat mixed with honey had a beneficial effect on infected wounds and on sores in the mouth. And in mediaeval times, as we said above, Avicenna used wafers containing honey to treat wounds. In mediaeval Russia a honey ointment containing pine tar was used to heal wounds; old Russian manuscripts on cures often said: ‘Honey takes away the stench from wounds’. Later honey and fish oil were used to treat extensive wounds, the treated wound healing after ten to twelve days, leaving a large scar.
In 1938 the Soviet surgeon Ya.M.Krinitsky obtained good results from suing an ointment of honey and fat to treat 48 patients with infected, necrotic wounds. After five days the dead tissues began to come away in 90 per cent of the patients and a new epithelium to replace them. Krinitsky concluded from his observations that the honey helped the wounds to heal more quickly by bringing about a marked increase in glutathione in the wound. (Glutathione plays a most important part in oxidation-reduction processes in the organism and stimulates cell growth and division.)
In 1946 Prof. S.A.Simirnov (Tomsk Medical Institute) used honey to treat gunshot wounds in 75 patients, and concluded that it stimulated growth of tissue in slow-healing wounds.
Many other examples could be cited from the experience of doctors and surgeons. The Ukrainain doctor, A.S. Buddai, treated slow-healing wounds and ulcers in his rural practice with an ointment containing 80 g honey, 20 g fish oil, and 3 g xeroform. The honey and xeroform were pounded together in a mortar, the fish oil added, and the mixture stirred until uniform. More recently I have tested a similar ointment containing honey and sea-buckthorn oil, which proved more effective. Many people become allergic to fish oil and xeroform.
In 1946 A.E.Helfman reported having treated patients with torpid wounds at an evacuation hospital by means of honey electrophoresis. His observations of 35 patients with fractures due to gunshot wounds, complicated by osteomyelitis (inflammation of the bone marrow), indicated that honey electrophoresis induced active development of granulation. After treatment the wounds, which had been covered with flaccid anaemic granules full of pus, became cleaner, blood flowed freely in them, and they began to heal.
Back to List of Uses
The Merits of Honey
" And your Lord revealed to the bee, Make hives in the mountains and in the trees and in what they build. Then eat of all the fruits and walk in the ways of your Lord submissively. There comes forth from their bellies a beverage of many colours, in which there is healing for mankind. Verily in this is a sign for those who give thought " [Al-Nahal:68,69]
We all know that bees produce honey. In addition to this information our God Almighty has informed us that there is a special ability in honey to heal and cure diseases. The following hadeeth is a good example to understand:
" Abu Sa'id Al-Khudri, may Allah be pleased with him, reported: A person came to Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) and told him that his brother's bowels were loose. Thereupon Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: Give him honey. So he gave him that and then came and said: I gave him honey but it has only made his bowels more loose. He said this three times; and then he came the fourth time, and he (the Holy Prophet) said: Give him honey. He said: I did give him, but it has only made his bowels more loose, whereupon Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: Allah has spoken the truth and your brother's bowels are in the wrong. So he made him drink (honey) and he was recovered " [Bukhari & Muslim] 1 2
One should drink honey even when he is healthy, as this is a Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). It is confirmed by the following hadeeth:
" Anas, may Allah be pleased with him, reported: I served drink to Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) in this cup of mine: Honey, Nabidh, Water and Milk " [Bukhari & Muslim]
As long as one is a Muslim, sayings of Allah in the Quran and Muhammad (p.b.u.h) in his ahaadeeth, are more than sufficient to constitute a belief about something as compared to any other source. Some people base their beliefs on scientific research and facts even if they contradict the Quran and hadeeth, not realizing that science is a system of knowledge or observation by human beings and human beings are prone to errors. Thus if science contradicts any views of the the Quran or Sunnah then it is science that is wrong, not the Quran or hadeeth. However scientific research that is in accordance with the Quran and hadeeth has helped us a lot to understand some issues in much greater depth.
Below is a scientific research on honey and its not because of this research that we are going to constitute the belief about healing ability of honey. We are just going to use it as a tool to praise and appreciate the sayings of Allah and His prophet about honey, to which we have already established our belief and faith regarding its (honey's) healing capabilities.
Honey as Medicine and Remedy
Honey has long been used in medicine not only as a valuable item in the diet but as a remedy and a means of healing. In the oldest medical papyri of Egypt, dating back to 1553-1550 BC, there are indications that honey was used to heal wounds, ‘in order to cause urination’, and ‘as a means of easing the belly’. In Mesopotamia and Assyria, too, honey was used for healing and is mentioned among remedies on the tablets found in the library of Ashur-bani-pal.
In Indian medicine it was considered that honey could be used both as a remedy and as an analeptic. The tonics prescribed ‘to give pleasure’ and ‘to preserve youth’ were mainly prepared from honey. And a diet in which honey and milk were the main items was thought to prolong life.
In ancient Greece honey was considered one of nature’s most precious gifts. The Greek philosopher Democritus, creator of atomic theory, said, when asked for advice on how to live and how to keep in good health, that one should anoint one’s interior with honey and one’s exterior with oil. Hippocrates, the Greek doctor, prescribed honey extensively and successfully for many diseases. Honey taken with other food, he said was nutritious and improved the complexion.
Galen, the great Roman physician, considered honey an all-purpose remedy, recommending it to treat many kinds of poisoning and intestinal ailments, in particular gangrenous stomatitis.
Later in the Arab East, honey was extensively used by doctors. The greatest medical authority of mediaeval times, Ibn-Sina (or Avicenna), gave dozens of recipes in his Canon that included honey and beeswax among the ingredients. Of the medical gruel that was eaten by scholars and philosophers he wrote: ‘It helps you when you have a runny nose, cheers you up, makes you feel fit, facilitates the digestion of food, gets rid of wind, and improves the appetite. It is almost a provision for retaining youth, making the memory better, sharpening the wits, and loosening the tongue. ’ He considered honey to have absorbing properties and recommended a wafer (tapitma) made of honey and wheat flour without water to treat wounds. The wafer was placed on the surface of the wound and changed every twelve hours until healthy tissue grew. Ibn-Sina also wrote that honey had a beneficial effect on deep, contaminated ulcers.
Honey is also considered an important remedy on folk medicine. ‘There is no need to be afraid of asking simple people what they think is a good cure,’ Hippocrates wrote, ‘for I believe that the art of medicine was on the whole discovered by so doing.’ Through observations and folk wisdom people made many valuable discoveries down the ages which furthered the development of medicine and the art of healing. Remedies like foxglove, adonis, quinine, opium, atrophine, cocaine and others were all borrowed from folk medicine.
Modern experiments and observations indicate that there is every reason to consider honey a remedy. To what does it owe its curative properties? Mainly to the glucose it contains, which has an invigorating effect on the cardiovascular system, but also to its many other substances that improve the resistance of the organism.
Honey and Children
A sensible diet is most important in a child’s development. As we have already mentioned it is better for children to take honey with their food than sugar. It is advisable to give them a teaspoon of honey two or three times a day, but the dose should not exceed 30 to 40 grams daily.
It has been noted in the literature that children prefer honey to sugar. We ourselves made the following experiment once at the Istra Rest Home for children. Each morning and evening the children were given an extra three lumps of sugar (30 to 35 grams). After a couple of days, however, we were forced to alter the test, as the children were giving the sugar to the dog, throwing it away, or leaving it. The effect was quite different when we gave 60 of them a spoonful of honey morning and evening. All were eager to get their ration of honey first and were always anxious to know whether there would be any the next day.
Dentists have no doubts about the harmful effect of sugar on the teeth. It has been established that the remains of sugar in the mouth break down, under the effect of bacteria, to form acids, particularly lactic acid, which leads to slow but considerable decalcification of the teeth and to caries. Honey, on the other hand, has active antibiotic properties and in the fact disinfects the mouth.
Back to List of Uses
Honey Inhalations
Good therapeutic effects have been obtained when honey is inhaled into the upper respiratory tract. The observations of Dr. Ya.A.Kiselstein, reported in 1938, are of special interest in this respect. He employed an ordinary inhalation apparatus adapted to atomize aqueous solutions, and used a 10 per cent solution of honey. Each session of treatment lasted five minutes. One of his cases, 32 years of age, had suffered for several years from a feeling of dryness in the pharynx and loss of voice. The nasal mucosa and the back of the pharynx were more or less normal, but the laryngeal mucosa and the upper sections of the trachea were covered with suppurative scabs. After seven inhalations the patient felt better and the scabs and hoarseness disappeared.
Of 20 patients treated by honey inhalation, only two felt no improvement at all. Before beginning honey inhalations all the patients concerned had been under observation and had been treated with ordinary conservative remedies, from which they derived no noticeable improvement.
When inhaled honey not only has an effect on the mucous membrane of the nose and throat, but also on the alveoli of the lungs (through which it enters the blood). Thus it not only acts as a local bactericide, but also helps to build up the organism generally. Dr.Kiselstein incorrectly attributed the therapeutic effect obtained from inhalation to the vitamin content of the honey, though its vitamin content, in fact, is low. We therefore decided to test 10 per cent and 7 per cent solutions of honey enriched with vitamins C, B2 and A. The results far exceed our expectations. The patients treated were soon free of their complaints. In 1967 the Bulgarian doctor Stoimir Mladenov reported having used honey inhalation extensively and successfully to treat patients with diseases of the upper respiratory tracts. Inhalation with honey can easily be carried out at home, but only under the supervision of a doctor.
Since olden day honey has been reputed an all-purpose remedy for colds, not simply on its own, but mixed with other foods and medicines. People with colds are recommended to take honey with warm milk (one tablespoon of honey to glass of milk) or with lemon (the juice of one lemon to a hundreds grams of honey). A good remedy is a 1:1 syrup of horseradish juice and honey.
When honey is taken for a cold the patient should stay in bed, or at least at home, for honey causes one to sweat a great deal. Linden honey is a particularly good diaphoretic.
Honey has also been used since time immemorial for diseases of the lungs. Hippocrates wrote that ‘honey gets rid of sputum and soothes a cough’. Avicenna recommended a mixture of honey and rose petals in the early stages of tuberculosis, considering it more effective when taken before noon. He also believed that hazel nuts and honey helped in cases of chronic coughing and facilitated expectoration.
‘Honey is juice with heavenly dew’, we read in a seventeenth century Russian manual on medicine, ‘which the bees collect in fine weather from fragrant flowers and which possesses many curative properties in the treatment of various illnesses.’
‘Honey rids a wound of its stench, prevents people from going blind when smeared on the eyeball, heals sores in the mouth, causes urination, eases the bowels, soothes a cough, heals poisoned bites and the bites of mad dogs. It has a good effect on deep wounds and is a remedy for the lungs and the inner joints.’
These old manuals describe honey as a remedy exerting a beneficial effect on people of all ages. ‘We need not be afraid to give wild honey to children and old people and even to pregnant wives, for eating wild, honey is without harm to what is conceived in the womb.’
In Russian folk medicine, honey was used for certain skin complaints.
Despite numerous examples that honey is an excellent remedy for pulmonary tuberculosis, no specific curative properties can be attributed to it in this disease. It can merely be noted that honey is generally a restorative and thus helps the organism to fight the tuberculous infection. This is our own observation from a comparison of various methods of treatment of abscess of the lung, and our own observations of patients in Prof. F.A.Udintsev’s clinic at the Kiev Medical Institute. Three patients were given 1000 to 150 grams of honey a day. As a result considerable improvement was noted. They began to feel better, their appetites improved, and they began to put on weight. Their hemoglobin increased, while the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (E.S.R.) decreased. The patients coughed less and the amount of sputum decreased; they began to urinate more during the day than at night (the opposite being the case before honey was given); and a beneficial effect was noted on the gastrointestinal tract.
Back to List of Uses
Honey and The Heart
The muscle of the heart is working continuously and needs glucose in order to make up the energy expended. When a very small quantity of glucose (0.1 per cent) is added to the physiological saline in which an isolated heart is immersed, the heart will continue working outside the body for four days.
Honey has a beneficial effect on the heart because it contains much easily assimilated glucose. It has been noted (Theobald) that it has an invaluable effect on the weakened muscle of the heart in various types of cardiac disease. Even diabetics can take honey, since cardiac activity is improved by the injection into the organism of fructose or honey. In all cases were a cure depends on the activity of the heart, honey should not be forgotten, so that the heart will not only be stimulated, when given digitalis, but also receive nutrition. Honey causes the veins to expand and improves circulation through the coronary arteries. With prolonged prescription of honey (50 to 140 -- on an average 70 -- grams of honey daily for one to two months) patients with heart trouble feel better in themselves, the composition of their blood returns to normal, their haemoglobin level increases, and cardiovascular tonus improved.
Back to List of Uses
Honey and The Eyes
Honey has long been considered a most effective remedy for many eye diseases. An ancient Egyptian papyrus gives the recipe for a honey ointment and instructions how to us it. Ibn-e-Sina recommended honey mixed with onion juice, clover, or wheatgrass for the eyes. In the last century honey was held by some writers to be a good remedy for burns, especially those affecting the eyes, and an excellent cure for inflammation of the eye. It has not lost its importance today, even when medicine has been enriched with a host of new preparations (sulphonamides, antibiotics, etc.), and is, in fact, highly effective for certain diseases of the eyes.
A.Kh.Mikhailov reported having used eucalyptus honey and cornea, sores on the corneal membrane, and other complaints. The honey was made by bees from a mixture of honey with an infusion of eucalyptus leaves (since it is the leaves and not the flowers of this tree that possess curative properties).
A honey ointment has been widely used in the eye department of the Odessa Regional Hospital to treat various lesions of the corneal membrane. At first honey was merely added to a 3 per cent sulphapyridine ointment (replacing vaseline). This ointment was highly effective on very slow-healing sores and speeded up the rate of cicatrization. A 30 per cent solution of sodium sulphanil acetamide given in drops, or sulphapyridine ointment containing vaseline, brought no relief to patients with inflammation of the cornea, their condition only improving when the honey and sulphapyridine ointments were administered. Quite a few patients with keratitis or sores on the corneal membrane were cured with honey on its own.
Honey has also been used extensively in the eye clinic of the Omsk Medical Institute (Maximenko) to treat herpetic and uncerous keratitis, and as a means of resorption in cases of opacity of the cornea or vitreous body, immature or initial cataract, and burns affecting the eye.
Only sterile honey from honeycomb should be used in the eyes, and then only under the supervision of a doctor or ophthalmologist.
Back to List of Uses
Treatment of Wounds
In folk medicine, and in antiquity, honey was used to heal wounds. Pliny wrote that fish fat mixed with honey had a beneficial effect on infected wounds and on sores in the mouth. And in mediaeval times, as we said above, Avicenna used wafers containing honey to treat wounds. In mediaeval Russia a honey ointment containing pine tar was used to heal wounds; old Russian manuscripts on cures often said: ‘Honey takes away the stench from wounds’. Later honey and fish oil were used to treat extensive wounds, the treated wound healing after ten to twelve days, leaving a large scar.
In 1938 the Soviet surgeon Ya.M.Krinitsky obtained good results from suing an ointment of honey and fat to treat 48 patients with infected, necrotic wounds. After five days the dead tissues began to come away in 90 per cent of the patients and a new epithelium to replace them. Krinitsky concluded from his observations that the honey helped the wounds to heal more quickly by bringing about a marked increase in glutathione in the wound. (Glutathione plays a most important part in oxidation-reduction processes in the organism and stimulates cell growth and division.)
In 1946 Prof. S.A.Simirnov (Tomsk Medical Institute) used honey to treat gunshot wounds in 75 patients, and concluded that it stimulated growth of tissue in slow-healing wounds.
Many other examples could be cited from the experience of doctors and surgeons. The Ukrainain doctor, A.S. Buddai, treated slow-healing wounds and ulcers in his rural practice with an ointment containing 80 g honey, 20 g fish oil, and 3 g xeroform. The honey and xeroform were pounded together in a mortar, the fish oil added, and the mixture stirred until uniform. More recently I have tested a similar ointment containing honey and sea-buckthorn oil, which proved more effective. Many people become allergic to fish oil and xeroform.
In 1946 A.E.Helfman reported having treated patients with torpid wounds at an evacuation hospital by means of honey electrophoresis. His observations of 35 patients with fractures due to gunshot wounds, complicated by osteomyelitis (inflammation of the bone marrow), indicated that honey electrophoresis induced active development of granulation. After treatment the wounds, which had been covered with flaccid anaemic granules full of pus, became cleaner, blood flowed freely in them, and they began to heal.
Back to List of Uses
Comment