The raspberry plant belongs to the same genus as the blackberry and, although most of us are more familiar with its cultivated varieties, it is in fact a native. Both the fruit and the leaves of the raspberry have a long history of medicinal use.

Modern research has revealed all berry fruits to be potent sources of vitamins and antioxidant chemicals which offer us some protection, not just from infections, but from cancers, heart disease and the many effects of ageing. Previous generations would have known nothing of this. They combined the juice of the raspberry fruits with sugar and white-wine vinegar to make an acid syrup known as raspberry vinegar.

Mrs Grieve recommended this syrup to treat feverish conditions (‘where acid is not an objection’) and declared it to be ‘of singular efficacy in complaints of the chest’. One or two large spoonfuls were taken in water, warm or cold. The same preparation could also be taken as a cooling drink in summer, or used as a gargle for ‘relaxed sore throat’.

The leaves of the raspberry plant have astringent properties. They are used to make a tea (1oz dried leaves to 1 pint boiling water) for the treatment of sore mouth, stomach complaints and diarrhoea. However, the best known use for raspberry leaf tea is as a ‘parturient’, a means of easing the processes of labour and birth. One of the things that first aroused my interest in herbal medicine was listening on the radio to an obstetrician who had conducted a study in which he recommended raspberry leaf tea to every other pregnant patient that he saw. This was in the 1970s and would hardly stand up today as a randomised clinical trial. However, as far as I recall, his findings suggested that those women using the tea had a shorter second stage to their labour and a lower incidence of forceps delivery. The same two benefits are again suggested by the outcome of more scientific trials that have since been conducted in an Australian maternity hospital, but it has to be stressed that the trials were small and the results were not statistically significant. What the researchers were able to establish is that this remedy is very safe. Most authorities will only recommend it for use in the last two months of pregnancy, but traditional use extended to early pregnancy as a treatment for morning sickness and threatened abortion.

Caroline Wheeler

References

Grieve, M. (1931). A Modern Herbal. Revised edition 1992 Tiger Books International: London
Bradley, P. (2006). British Herbal Compendium Volume 2. British Herbal Medicine Association