It seems obvious: the older we get, the more medication we take. But experts are calling for a trend reversal. Because more is not always better. A modern witch shows how we can counteract this growing but invisible threat to our ageing population.
If fairy tales teach us anything, it's to politely, yet firmly turn down offers from witches. But the black extract that Monique Meyer serves me is too tempting: coffee. We meet her at her home in Dudelange and it is probably the most famous brew in the kitchen of the "Diddelenger Kraiderfra". She doesn't wear a witch's hat and there's no black cat sitting on her shoulder – but cauldrons are boiling in her kitchen. Labelled tinctures and extracts of lovage, mugwort, jiaogulan, hawthorn, plantain, … Boxes of bottles, empty and full, sieves, pipettes and corks are piled up around us.
It was her own medical history that prompted Meyer to take a closer look at medicinal plants. At 55, she had her first heart attack, followed shortly afterwards by her second, followed by a minor stroke. By this time, she had already had three stents fitted, small medical implants that keep her blood vessels open. The medical interventions saved her life, but also meant that she had to take quite a few drugs: "I had to take 15 different medications every day, which was just too much. But I knew a lot about plants because I spent a lot of time with my aunt in Germany. She lived in a different world for me – almost like witchcraft. That's how I got into herbalism."
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