Do you believe in Doctrine of Signatures?

Dr Abe V Rotor
Lesson 

• Living with Nature - School on Blog
• Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM, 8 to 9 evening class Monday to Friday

Mango has the shape of a heart.  Eat mango to have a healthy heart. 

By examining the physical characteristics of plants we can read how nature intended them to be used.

This is a belief called Doctrine of Signatures, which was popular during the Middle Ages. 

1. Liverworts (Riccia and Marchantia) which resemble the shape of liver are effective cure to liver diseases.

2. The value of Ginseng increases the closer its bulb resembles the shape of the legs of a sexy woman. In fact, the aphrodisiac property of this Oriental herb is attributed more to its appearance rather than its chemical composition.

3. The shapes of eggplant and avocado suggest fertility and virility in men. 

4. Apple and mango resemble the heart and are therefore good when it comes to matters of love.

5. Kidney bean is supposed to cure kidney ailments, but it is also the cause of arthritis due to its high uric acid.

6. Kumkumpitis, a legume, is named in Latin, Clitorea purpurea, after the shape of its flower resembling that part of a female's sex organ - and purple at that. 

7. Sword bean is so called because its shape is that of a sword, a good food for soldiers going to battle. Which includes red pepper (siling labuyo or sili ti sairo - literally devil's pepper) .

8. People who like to eat granada (Punica granatum) have a nature like this fruit - they "explode" easily. 

9. "Don't forget to buy bananas, and get the biggest ones," a middle aged reminded his errand.  Men love bananas - specially the Cavendish variety. A mother who is fond of eating twin bananas is likely to give birth to twins.   

10. Pumpkin (squash) is made into a Halloween lantern to ward off evil spirits. Now who would like to eat pumpkins? But people do. 

11. Why do you love to eat durian in spite of its unpleasant smell. And people do, saying, "it tastes like heaven..." 

12. Balimbing (Averrhoa carambola) has many sides and anyone who is fond of eating this fruit casts doubt on his loyalty. 

13. Beware of eating too much pineapple. I asked for what reason. Joking someone said that all eyes would be on you. I felt I was being spied on. Then I retorted inaudibly, "I'd like to eat a lot of pineapple."

14. Then comes the belief of pinaglihian or maternal impression. A child walks like a crab because his mother was fond of eating crabs while she was conceiving him. Children whose skin is distinctly fairer than the parents are thought to have been conceived during the cotton season, or the mother ate a lot of young coconut (buko). Or dark skinned because the mother was fond of duhat.

15. The garlic plant has a hollow stem so that it would be of benefit in afflictions of the windpipe, hence used in all types of respiratory disorders such as cough, colds, catarrh, asthma and bronchial problems.  

Physical appearance has nothing to do with the curative powers of plants, or animals for that matter. It is true that garlic is an effective respiratory cure, but it is its active ingredients that are responsible for it, among them allicin which is named after its generic name Allium. Since there are other species of Allium - A cepa (onion) and A. tuberosum (kutsay), then these too, have similar medicinal values.   Mangoes and apples have high nutritional value, avocado is rich in oil and protein - all contributing to good health.

If we believe in the Doctrine of Signatures, there will be effects of any kind of food we eat, and these effects would either be complementing or conflicting without our awareness and understanding.

Nature gave us a more rational basis in appreciating her gifts through scientific research and rich experience, age-old tradition notwithstanding.  ~