A medication or treatment which gradually induces a change, and restores healthy functions without sensible evacuations.
Term not used in allopathic (or conventional) medicine that means a plant or procedure that stimulates physical changes in the body that will appropriately deal with chroriic or acute diseases. A substance that renews tissues and improves function slowly and efficiently, culminating in health. Many herbs show their alterative aspect only in the presence of disease symptoms. In a healthy person; nothing or something entirely different happens.
A treatment that causes a gradual positive change in the body.
An herb given by herbalists to mildly purge the system; often a blood purifier or a simple nutrient.
A term applied in naturopathic, eclectic, and Thomsonian medicine to those plants or procedures that stimulate changes of a defensive or healing nature in metabolism or tissue function when there is chronic or acute diseases. The whole concept of alteratives is based on the premise that in a normally healthy person, disease symptoms are the external signs of activated internal defenses and, as such, should be stimulated and not suppressed.
Wild Ginger, as an example, acts as an alterative when it is used to stimulate sweating in a fevered state. Without a fever or physical exertion, Wild Ginger tea will increase intestinal, lung, and kidney secretions. With fever or exercise, the buildup of heat from combustion, and the dilation of peripheral blood supply, Wild Ginger takes the defense response to the next stage-breaking a sweat. You might have sweated eventually anyway, but you may be one of those people who doesn’t perspire easily, and a diaphoretic such as Wild Ginger will act as an alterative fur you by stimulating the next stage of defenses sooner than you would have on your own.
The term alterative is sometimes inaccurately used as a synonym fur “blood purifier,” particularly by nature-cure neo-Thomsonians such as Jethro Kloss, Arnold Ehret, and John Christopher. “Blood purifier” is a term better applied to the liver, spleen, and kidneys, not to some dried plant.
A medicinal substance that gradually restores health.
Corrects disordered bodily function.
A herb that alters the chemical state of the blood; blood cleanser.
Helps to alter or correct minor functional disorders of the system. Also called a blood purifier.
Blood cleansing; that is, aids in elimination of wastes, supporting such filtration and elimination organs as kidneys, lymph, liver, digestive tract, and skin.
Gradually altering or changing a condition, also a blood purifier.
An agent that alters your condition by increasing blood flow to tissues, detoxifying restoring body functions, aiding assimilation, stimulating metabolism, and/or promoting waste and excretion.
Formerly known as a ‘blood cleanser’. Gradually restores the proper function of the body and increases health and vitality.
A medicine which gradually alters or changes a condition. A treatment that alters processes of nutrition.