White willow

Reduces fever, relieves pain and inflammation, wards off heart attack and stroke, combats certain cancers, prevents migraine headaches

Mention "willow," and most people say "weeping." But the graceful tree should actually be seen as a source of joy. White willow is Nature's aspirin. In fact, pharmaceutical aspirin was originally created from a chemical very similar to one found in white willow bark.

Today there are more reasons than ever to use this herb. Medical research shows that this chemical in white willow (called salicin) not only reduces fever and relieves pain and inflammation but also may help prevent heart attack, stroke, digestive tract cancers and migraine headaches.

Chinese physicians have used willow to relieve pain since ancient times, but it took 2,000 years for this use to catch on in the West — an event that occurred almost by accident. During the mid-1700s, British minister/physician Edmund Stone was trying to find a cheap substitute for cinchona bark, the rare, costly South American herb used to treat malaria (and later shown to contain the antimalarial drug, quinine). Cinchona was a bitter-tasting bark, and near Stone's Oxfordshire home, he found another bark that