When and if Stuff Hits the Fan (SHTF), having printed books on hand is absolutely vital for everyone’s well-being.
Digital reference books are great and all, but if you don’t have a means of recharging your e-reader, or if the screen gets shattered and is thus unreadable, you’ll be up the creek.
How will you remember how to identify the necessary plants? Or whip them up into a tincture? Which herbs work for caring for your teeth? You’ll need reference books to help you.
Here’s a list of essential herbal medicine books for the homestead, covering just about every health issue you may come across.
Basic Plant Medicine Making
Knowing which plants have different medicinal properties is important, and just as vital is knowing how to extract and use those properties. Some herbal constituents can only be extracted with alcohol or vinegar, while others need to be boiled for X amount of time.
As such, herbal medicine books that go into the details of extractions, preparations, and formulae are must-haves for your library.
- Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine New Edition: 560 Herbs and Remedies for Common Ailments, by Andrew Chevallier
- The Herbal Medicine Maker’s Handbook by James and Ajana Green
- The Alchemy of Herbs by Rosalee de la Forêt
- Rosemary Gladstar’s Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner’s Guide: 33 Healing Herbs to Know, Grow, and Use, by Rosemary Gladstar
- The Modern Herbal Dispensatory: A Medicine-Making Guide Paperback, by Thomas Easley and Steven Horne
- The Herbal Apothecary: 100 Medicinal Herbs and How to Use Them, by Dr. JJ Pursell
- Materia Medica: Profiles & Uses of Herbs, by Jesse Hardin (Author), Kiva Rose (Editor), and 27 herbalist contributors
- Chinese Herbal Medicine Materia Medica by Dan Bensky
- Between Heaven and Earth: A Guide to Chinese Medicine, by Harriet Beinfield and Efrem Korngold
- The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies: Based on the Timeless Wisdom of India’s 5,000-Year-Old Medical System, by Vasant Lad
Herbal First Aid
When an unexpected accident, illness, or injury occurs, it’s imperative to know which plants can staunch blood, ease burns, alleviate pain from fractures, and treat insect or animal bites.
- Herbal Medic: A Green Beret’s Guide to Emergency Medical Preparedness and Natural First Aid, by Sam Coffman
- Herbal Medicine First Aid Kit: The Complete Guide To First Aid Treatment Using Medicinal Plants and Natural Herbal Remedies, by Mary Thibodeau
- The Prepper’s Survival Natural Medicine: The Emergency Preparedness Manual You Need for When There is No Doctor, With Essential Knowledge in Critical First Aid, Life-Saving Herbs and Natural Remedies, by Raymond L. Hillman
- The Survival Medicine Handbook: A Guide for When Help is Not on the Way, by Joseph Alton, Amy Alton
General Health and Wellbeing
Knowing how to treat illnesses with herbs is incredibly important, but just as vital is knowing how to maintain general health and well-being. Herbalism isn’t just handy for dealing with injuries or infections: many plants can be used to maintain dental health.
- Adaptogens: Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief, by David Winston and Steven Maimes
- Dental Herbalism: Natural Therapies for the Mouth, by by Leslie M. Alexander Ph.D. RH(AHG) and Linda A. Straub-Bruce BS Ed RDH
- The Woman’s Herbal Apothecary: 200 Natural Remedies for Healing, Hormone Balance, Beauty and Longevity, and Creating Calm, by JJ Pursell
- Herbal Healing for Men: Remedies and Recipes for Circulation Support, Heart Health, Vitality, Prostate Health, Anxiety Relief, Longevity, Virility, Energy & Endurance, by Rosemary Gladstar
- Herbs for Children’s Health: How to Make and Use Gentle Herbal Remedies for Soothing Common Ailments, by Rosemary Gladstar
- Working the Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African American Healing, by Michele E. Lee
Learn more about the basics of homestead herbalism in our article.
Antibiotics and Antivirals
Natural antibiotics and antivirals can be extremely important when the SHTF. These books are a great place to start.
- Herbal Antibiotics, 2nd Edition: Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug-resistant Bacteria,
by Stephen Harrod Buhner - Herbal Antivirals, 2nd Edition: Natural Remedies for Emerging & Resistant Viral Infections, by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Herbal Healing for Animals
Most homesteaders live alongside various animal species, whether they’re domestic companions, livestock, sanctuary species, or wild friends.
As such, it’s important to know how to treat their illnesses or injuries if and when they occur, as well as keep them as healthy as possible for as long as they live.
Be sure to seek out herbal medicine books that encompass health and healing for all the species with whom you share your life.
- The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable by Juliette de Baracli Levy
- The Nature of Animal Healing : The Definitive Holistic Medicine Guide to Caring for Your Dog and Cat Paperback, by Dr. Martin Goldstein D.V.M.
- The Homesteader’s Natural Chicken Keeping Handbook: Raising a Healthy Flock from Start to Finish, by Amy K. Fewell (Author), Joel Salatin (Foreword)
- Equine Herbs & Healing by Maya Cointreau
- Veterinary Herbal Medicine by Dr. Susan G. Wynn DVM, and Barbara Fougere BVSc BVMS (Hons)
Regional Plant and Mushroom Guides
If you’re going to be healing with plants that are native to your area, then regional plant and mushroom guides are absolutely invaluable. In fact, the only tomes more important than herbal medicine books are those that allow you to identify various plants properly.
There are quite a number of lookalike species around, and a detailed, illustrated guide can help you safe as you explore plant medicines.
Young foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) shoots are often mistaken for comfrey (Symphytum spp.) with fatal effects, and you absolutely do not want to mistake water hemlock (Cicuta spp.) for yarrow (Achillea millefolium).
The volumes below are some of the key ones to look into. If you’re in a country where English isn’t commonly spoken, be sure to seek out identification guides in the language(s) that are most familiar to you.
Here are some excellent guides for North America:
- Weeds of North America by Richard Dickinson and France Royer
- Medicinal Wild Plants of the Prairie: An Ethnobotanical Guide, by Kelly Kindscher
- Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West by Michael Moore
- Christopher Hobbs’s Medicinal Mushrooms: The Essential Guide, by Christopher Hobbs L.Ac. AHG
- Medicinal Plants of the Desert and Canyon West: A Guide to Identifying, Preparing, and Using Traditional Medicinal Plants Found in the Deserts and Canyons of the West and Southwest, by Michael Moore
- The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North, by Beverley Gray
- Aboriginal Plant Use in Canada’s Northwest Boreal Forest by Robin Marles
- Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada: A Photographic Guidebook to Finding and Using Key Species, by David L. Spahr
- Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask: Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings, by Mary Siisip Geniusz
If you live in other parts of the globe, consider these books:
- Guide to Edible and Medicinal Plants of Britain and Northern Europe by Edmund Launert
- Icelandic Herbs and their Medicinal Uses by Anna Rosa Robertsdottir
- Myndskreytt Flóra Íslands og norður-evrópu by Marjorie Blamey, Christopher Grey-Wilson
- The Big Book of Backyard Medicine: The Ultimate Guide to Home-Grown Herbal Remedies, by Julie Bruton and Matthew Seal
- Medicinal Plants of West Africa by Edward S. Ayensu
- Ethnopharmacology of Medicinal Plants: Asia and the Pacific by Christophe Wiart
- Medicinal and Aromatic Plants of the Middle-East (Medicinal and Aromatic Plants of the World), by Zohara Yaniv and Nativ Dudai
In addition to these herbal medicine books and regional guides, another invaluable volume to have on hand is this one:
Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification, by Thomas J. Elpel
Being able to recognize characteristics such as leaf shape, margin, and venation, as well as petal and stamen numbers, can mean the difference between a healing tea and a trip to the E.R.
Herbal Medicine Books: Honorable Mention
Some of the most invaluable herbal knowledge I’ve come across has been from older texts worldwide. Although the herbal medicine books below aren’t absolutely vital for your home library, they’re wonderful resources and may offer insights and treatments that more contemporary volumes neglect to include.
- Culpeper’s Complete Herbal by Nicholas Culpeper and Steven Foster
- Medicine of the Prophet by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (Author), Penelope Johnstone (Translator)
- Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete English Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing, by Hildegard of Bingen (Author), and Priscilla Throop (Translator)
- Method of Medicine, Volume I: Books 1-4 (Loeb Classical Library), by Galen (Author), Ian Johnston (Translator), G. H. R. Horsley (Translator)
You may not be interested in all of these herbal medicine books, but now that you have a comprehensive list of titles you may be interested in, you can begin to build your home healing library.
Seek out the volumes that speak to you, as well as guidebooks on how to identify plants and make medicine, and go from there. As always, it’s better to have more books than you think you’ll need, than to need them one day and not have them available.