Our search tool – the little bookworm

Over time: “Do you have a stye? Flute, there is nothing about the small boils at the edge of the eyelide in my 12-volume encyclopedia. Don’t move I’m going to the library to see if I can find anything you can take while waiting for the doctor to visit.”

Nowadays, with the internet, there is no need to go to the local library to consult the few books on this condition, which, in any case, usually happens outside of business hours. But are we really better informed with the internet?

When I enter the following search for “orgelet plants” into my web browser, I get roughly 2,090,000 results, and all that in less than 0.38 seconds. If with all this I can’t find my happiness, it’s because I’m doing it on purpose. But that’s it, what to choose between the solutions listed below?

• “Stye: 6 natural remedies to take care of your eye”
• “4 plants to accelerate the healing of styes”
• “3 natural remedies to treat a stye”
• “Grandma’s remedies for styes”
• “Caring for a stye: the best treatments and remedies”
• …

I can go on like this for a long time, in fact another 2,089,995 times.

Not enough info, too much info, never happy!

Too much information is useless to say. Because now that I have my two million answers, I need to sort things out. You are going to tell me I have time, a stye does not endanger our life, but two million nevertheless is not an easy task.

So I click on the first link and scroll down until I find what I’m looking for. Here I am advised to take an eye bath with Roman chamomile, rose and cornflower petals. I am trying another site, which tells me to use hot, salted boiled water or boric acid. Yet another site recommends thyme or red vine, or a gold wedding ring rubbed vigorously against a tissue applied to the diseased eyelid for a few seconds, and so on.

What is the correct answer? All of them? How can we be sure? What we need is a synthesis!

A synthesis, based on the Larousse is an “intellectual operation by which various elements of knowledge concerning a particular field are brought together in a coherent, structured and homogeneous whole”. This definition sums up rather well the task we have set ourselves, namely to identify for a given plant the disorders that it can relieve in accordance with the words of physicians and health professionals.

This is where I turn into a bookworm, I devour everything that books, mine and those in libraries, have to offer me. The aim of our search tool is to offer you the appropriate plants for your research by giving you the source, i.e. where the solution was found. For example, blueberries are appropriate for relieving styes in three of my books that discuss this plant:

• Bernard, C. (2018). Great manual for making one’s natural remedies [e.g. 80, “orgelet”]. Jouvence Editions.

• Dubray, M. (2018). Guide des contre-indications des principales plantes médicinales [p. 75, “orgelet”]. Editions Lucien Souny.

• Valnet, J. (2001). La phytothérapie : se soigner par les plantes [p. 177, “orgelets”]. Editions Vigot.

The illustration for this post is a simplified digital model of our search tool showing the result of a search. A definition of the condition is offered to us, as well as books proposing blueberries for styes. The number of the page where the information is found is also given for greater clarity.

As you will have understood, when several plants are proposed for the same search, you can choose the plant or plants that suit you best or simply those that you have in stock at home. To help you in your choice, the plants will be ranked according to a confidence index that I will explain in a future newsletter.

See you very soon for the next phyto-info newsletter!

sylvie