The following is an email sent in by one of our course participants;
I just wanted to share my mother’s korero with you about her use of Tupakihi for my brother.
I wondered if you have heard of the use of Tupakihi as described to me by my mother .
This method was used by my father to heal my brother’s foot. My brother was
about 9-10 years old when he jumped over a fence and landed in long grass on a
broken bottle which cut the back of his foot across his Achilles Tendon.
He was taken to the family doctor who treated it with powder and bandaged the
foot. My mother tells me that it was not healing and it eventually became infected. She says that
she and my father ended up taking him to the Ngawha Springs outside of Kaikohe
to try and heal it, but when my mother’s elderly uncle saw my brother’s foot, he told them to get some Tupakihi and prepare it in the following way and put it on his foot.
My father removed the leaves from the young branchlets of the Tupakihi and cut
the branchlets in half. Then the soft insides were scraped out and put on a
clean bandage. After my mother bathed his foot in boiled Tupakihi, the bandage
with the soft Tupakihi pith ( I guess that is what she is referring to) was put directly on the wound.
She tells me that within a week his foot had improved and he was moving around on his foot, and within the next couple of weeks it healed over.
As far as I know my brother did not have any problems with his foot during his lifetime,. He was athletic and played rugby without any problems..
My mother says that they took my brother back to the doctor when he was walking and after the doctor checked the area, he wanted to know what they had done because he didnt expect the wound to look so good. She says they told the doctor that they used Tupakihi. Apparently, he had heard of it from other older Maori
My mother says that they took my brother back to the doctor when he was walking and after the doctor checked the area, he wanted to know what they had done because he didnt expect the wound to look so good. She says they told the doctor that they used Tupakihi. Apparently, he had heard of it from other older Maori
Thank you for sharing this with us.