Explore the French depurative cure—a traditional spring wellness practice using medicinal herbs like dandelion and rosemary. Discover its history, why it disappeared, and when to practice it today
I’d like to talk about a subject that is particularly close to my heart. It’s the first topic I dusted off in the 2000s when I started studying medicinal plants. And it’s a subject that completely captivated me and brought me back to my French roots in Provence—something that reminded me of the 1970s, of weekends spent at my great aunt’s place. She lived in a small village in Upper Provence.
At that time, there was a habit that a lot of countryside folks were doing. It was called the “depurative cure”, or the “spring cure”. It was part of spring, just as daffodils and other flowers in the fields marked the end of the winter and the arrival of the sunny days.
I found this subject captivating when I started my herbal practice. Whenever there’s a habit that was so much part of our lives, that was appreciated, and that disappeared because of modern society—because it no longer fits into the routines of busy women or busy men—I tell myself that we’re probably missing out on something.
That said, today’s world is no longer the postwar world, and it’s certainly no longer the 1970s at my great aunt’s place with the black-and-white TV, outdoor toilets (yep), and the communal washhouse.
So in this episode, I would like to take you through my dusting-off of the French depurative cure.
But first, a bit of history. We see an ancient split between the countryside herbal practice, mostly done by peasants, and the cityside practice, mostly driven by the doctors and apothecaries. Of course, this is a caricature, but bear with me.
In the city, doctors and apothecaries were big fans of complex herbal mixes for different reasons. Some mixes were justified by the practice. And some were pure marketing. Because a complex mix sells much better than a single herb. It looks and sounds fancy. And that’s a model we saw in the world of apothecaries in particular.
In the countryside, there was no complex herbal mix. People could not afford it. They used simple plants that they gathered around their house. They did not hike for hours to get what they needed. They had work to do.
And they used one plant at a time. Not a complex mix. And they used simple habits, simple cures. One of those cures is the depurative cure.
We don’t know exactly when the depurative cure becomes mainstream in the French countryside. We start to see it appear in writings of the 1800s. Before that, I am not sure.
And way before that, in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, we have drastic purges. Doctors prescribed plants that were so irritating that they provoked violent vomiting and diarrhea. I am not saying that purges do not have a role. I am well aware of the place of purges in certain traditional societies. They are just not very adapted to the modern practice; let’s agree on that.
Anyway, I am not sure when exactly the countryside practice evolves from drastic purges to the depurative cure, which uses much milder plants. So as you can see, I have many holes in my research.
What I do know is that the golden ages of the depurative cure seem to be in the 1800s and a big part of the 1900s, until the 1970s, I would say.
One important question is why did that cure exist? Why did countryside people felt the need to do this cure?
The answer is pretty simple, and this can be confirmed in the old writings. In the spring, summer, and fall, people were very active. They worked a lot. They ate what they picked and produced. They did not eat a lot in quantity (for most of the population anyway), but they ate fresh, unprocessed foods very high in nutrients. Not a lot of calories, not a lot of excess, but a good nutritional density.
Then came the winter. They started to slow down. Countryside people were never idle. They was always something to do. Tools to repair. Wood to cut. But they worked a lot less. And they ate preserved foods. Cereals, legumes, smoked or salted meat or fish. A few root vegetables. The nutritional density and diversity went down dramatically.
So you follow me so far? You move less, and you eat food that is not as fresh and as diverse. At the end of the winter, people felt bloated, engorged, with a lack of energy. And spring was coming; they needed to get ready for fieldwork. That feeling of being engorged and bloated with lack of energy, of needing to restart the machine, is precisely what the depurative cure fixed.
And that is what countryside folks confirmed in old writings, and in ethnobotanical studies we have from the south of France. They said the cure helped with blood cleansing. With moving the blood, just like the spring moves the sap in trees. Depurative plants move the blood, clean the blood and as a result, restore vitality.
The cure lasted from one to two weeks. No more. Cause then, people said, it starts to get too draining. It will tire you if you do too much of it. 10 days on average; that is a good number. Say you start on a Friday, then you keep going for a full week, and you stop on Sunday night.
They used one plant. That plant had two main properties. Choleretic and diuretic. In other words, the plant stimulated the liver and the kidneys, our two major elimination organs. They were draining in nature: they worked on excretion pathways. The thinking is logical here. There was a feeling of excess, of accumulated waste that needed to be evacuated, so you opened the waste faucet.
The selected plant was prepared as tea or a decoction, depending on the parts used. If barks or roots, a decoction. If leaves or flowers, a simple tea. Not a tincture. Not a powder or a syrup. A water-based preparation to force the person to drink a lot. Because drinking makes us urinate more, and that contributes to flushing out waste products.
Many different plants were used depending on the region. But here are some classical examples: dandelion root, burdock root, linden inner bark (which is a specific French remedy), horehound, chicory root, and more. And yes, dandelion root, as simple as it is, was much appreciated.
Two to three cups a day were prepared and drunk. That’s it. For about 10 days. And people felt better.
Old people did it. Middle-aged people did it. And in some writings, we see that kids had to do it too, especially if they were needed in the field. They drank less concentrated versions, but they had to do it.
So, as I said, we moved from something very popular to the total disappearance of a practice. That makes you wonder, right? In the 1970s, in a typical pharmacy in France, you could find many herbal mixes sold as depurative teas. Tens and tens of different boxes. And now, nothing. What happened?
I think it was a combination of different phenomena. This is a bit speculative on my part, but this is what makes sense to me.
And then, as I said, the world of the 1950s in the French countryside has nothing to do with the world today. The world has changed.
That being said, the cure can still bring a lot of benefits. But we have to determine when to do it. Not in the spring necessarily. We are not field workers anymore. What we need to do is focus on the key indication. A period when you have to slow down to a standstill, and you feel engorged and sluggish.
A combination of lack of movement and too much caloric food. A bit too much drinking maybe. Too much of the “good stuff”. Do you have examples in mind? Because I do have plenty. Could be summer vacations with a bit too much beer, barbecue, and beach. Could be business travel with a bit too much of airplane, hotels, meetings and restaurants.
Again, we need to feel the state that calls for a depurative cure. We have to get back in touch with what’s happening inside our bodies. Not enough movement, too much food, feeling engorged. It is a state of excess, not a state of deficiency, not a state of feeling drained and fatigued. It is a feeling of too much input overwhelming the system, and not enough output.
Whenever that happens, try the depurative cure.
OK, before I let you go, let me give you an example of a depurative mix. And yes, I will go with a mix and not a single herb, because I like to play with tastes and properties.
You will need to buy :
For a teacup, you will need one heaped teaspoon of dandelion roots, one teaspoon of orange peel, and one pinch of rosemary leaves. Adjust according to taste. It needs to be drinkable, but don’t make it too weak either.
Decoct the dandelion root and orange peel for 5 minutes covered. Remove the lid, throw in the pinch of rosemary leaves. Let infuse for 10 minutes. Filter, then drink hot or cold. 2 to 3 cups a day, between meals, for 10 days in a row.
You can prepare your two to three cups in advance for the day.
Oh yeah, before I forget, instead of the depurative tea, we can also do bitter salads at the beginning of the meal. But that will be for another episode.
And that’s it for now. Do you have the depurative cure in your tradition? Do you do it yourself? Please do let me know.
