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45 responses total.

Raspberry leaf contains cliotin, a natural sedative.

  Either I'm really confused, or It's Christmas morning.

Re #1: would you identify "cliotin" more fully, please? It is not in
the Merck Index (9th ed) under that name. Valerie, I know that Alice
is getting a book for Xmas on medicinal plants, but we haven't had
the presents orgy yet. I'll let you know what it says (if someone
hasn't already).

 . . . . no comment, I might want to get a hold of some fer my World Cultures
teacher though.

This is now linked to Synthesis as item 20.

oh.
./

Re #3: The book is Magic and Medicine of Plants, a Reader's Digest
publication (originally published in 1986). It contains an enormous
amount of anecdotal and folklore material about plant uses. Re
raspberry:

"American Indians used the shrub as an astringent, making an infusion,
or tea, of the root bark, which they applied to sore eyes. Europeans
in the 17th century regarded the raspberry as an antispmodic, and they
made a syrup of the juice, which they used to prevent vomiting......
In the 18th century physicians and herbalists deemed the berries useful
as a remedy for heart disease."

"Modern herbals prescribe the plant chiefly for the medical problems of
women. The shrub contains a substance that is both a relaxant and a
stimulant of the uterine muscle. Herbalists value an infusion of the
leaves for parturition........."

"Uses: scientific studies support the traditional use of the raspberry
as an astsringent in the treatment of diarrhea. On the basis of
animal experiments, pharmacologists have validated the use of the leaves
as an antispasmodic for dysmenorrhea...and have found some evidence to
validate its uses an an aid of childbirth."

So, Valerie, if you believe, you will receive simultaneous relief from
PMS, diarrhea, vomiting, heart disease, and parturition.

(The books gives no citations to scientific studies on any of these
effects.)

        yes rane, do you really haev enough time in your life to spend four
        paragraphs of text talking about how rasberry leaves help PMS.  If yu
        do you're lucky.  Franky I would use my time in some different manner.

To each her/her own. It is not customary here to criticize how others
spend their time. I might mention I touch type at 60 wpm, so didn't
really think about the time it would take to respond to a fellow grexer.

(I wonder if ziggy has ever met Marcus?)

hee hee hee.

huh huh huh huh huh.

Well, sorry . . . for me it would take a while I only do 50 wpm.  No hard
feelings?  Who's Marcus?
/

Marcus is one of the Grex founders, but he doesn't call much anymore.
He also wrote PicoSpan.  He's one of the major figures in Ann Arbor
computer conferencing history.  The reason I mention him here is
that Marcus is famed for entering very long, very detailed
(and very correct) responses on many different topics.  They frequently
exceed 100 lines.

WOAH!  I have to much homework to even do half that!

No hard feelings. I just wanted to establish the principle that we are
all entitled to use, or waste, our time in whatever fashion we wish. I'm
surprised that this wasn't the 11th amendment. 

My interest goes beyond PMS (from which I do not suffer, except sometimes
indirectly), as I'm a chemist, and plant chemicals are fascinating. Of
course, plants have been used in medicine from prehistoric times, and many
modern medicines originally came from plants. A lot of medical nonsense
also comes from plants, but history has shown that one should not knock
the folklore until it has been well investigated.

While "Magic and Medicine of Plants" contains almost no technical -chemical-
information, it must have derived in part from sources that did. I have
since found that the genus Rubus - brambles, including blackberries,
raspberries, dewberries, and loganberries - are rich in tannin, gallic
acid and saponins ("villosin" is mentioned for R. nigrobaccus). Tannin
and gallic acid are common (and useful) plant products, and find medical
use as astringents. Saponins are interesting characters: the Merck Index
mentions that they are "poisonous toward the lower forms of life and used
for killing fish by the aborigines of South America", and "Although 
practically non-toxic to man upon oral ingestion, they act as powerful
hemolytics when injected into the blood stream, dissolving the red
corpuscles even at extreme dilution." 

So be sure to take your raspberry leaf teas orally, and not intravaneously.

How dangerous would they be if you had a cut in your mouth, then?

Damnit Steve, I'm a DM not a Doctor!

re#16, true, true.  That was truely a Marcus sized response!

My efforts pale into insignificance before the ostensible epic productions
of The Marcus.

Re #17: I doubt there is any hazard. The saponins are very dilute, and
the tannins are astringents, which close the capillaries. Just don't
main-line raspberry leaf tea.

Are you a doctor?

Not of medicine, but I have copies of the Merck Manual, the Merck Index,
and Gray's Anatomy, and am always happy to diagnose, as long as those
I diagnose sign a liability release. 

Okay, so you do know much about the medical field as is apparent in your
responces.

Thank you for pointing out the obvious.

Re 20: (2nd para) That makes a lot of sense. It just sounded very hazardous
to the corpuscles the way you worded it earlier.

yes.

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Raspberries probably don't affect hormone levels (or they would have
other practical uses, by now). If they help, it would because of
amelioration of the consequences of hormone (im)balances, and also by
just making one happier. 

Raspberries as narcotics!  A New Deal for the Drug World.

Hey, man, come over here in this alley.  I got the rasberries, you got the
cash?

<No, vidar and ziggy are not drug addict and drug dealer in real life.  I just
thought I'd clear that up for you.>  Getting back on the orignal topic, How
muchmoney would raspberries brig in as narcotics.  I know that most Illegal
drug prices are outlandish.  (Except fo those of us who go around sniffing
zippo fluid.)

re 27:
My monitor is not very big at all, and I am notorious for writing long things
(maybe not so much here, but definately in The Communicator).  I don't think
there's any correlation between monitor size and response length, except that
those who write long things might buy monitors that can fit their responses.

Perhaps he meant window size (implying that the number of columns was beyond
80 because he had a big window, so it didn't wrap for him).
Perhaps his windows were wide because his monitor was big.

Sort of like if I set my E-mail program to word wrap it can only do so
after the 80th charcter at the least.

I'm new here, so this may be a dead item, but still...

re #24 (27? I've lsot track) on raspberry leaves tea and hormone balances -
After I adopted David, I drank gallons and gallons of rsapberry leaf tea,, and 
was able to successfully breastfeed him - dunno how much he actually *got* out
of me, but it definitiely was some, and I went through let-down, and felt
really heavy on those (rare) times when he let me go more than a few hours
between  feedings.

Why did it work? dunno, except that I was powerfully motivated, and 
I do believe that the raspberry leaf tea hellped in 
milk production.
for what it's worth.

I believe I may have seen that somewhere.  Something else, too; licorice
perhaps?  Hm, don't think that's it.  Whatever, I ought to look it up.  Not
a problem for me- I have never had any shortage of milk...(mooooo)

what is everyone talking about? i don;t pay attention much:)

about a year ago, we were talking about herbs for female needs- went from
pms/cramps to lactation.  You don't have these problems, do you?

Woah...old item...btw, what does raspberry leaf tea *taste* like?

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