Let me tell you

Stories are powerful. I think one of the reasons our election campaign is so tedious is that no-one has a story to tell. No-one is offering a compelling narrative about our recent past, or using that as a foundation for an inspiring vision about our future. They are frightened of both, so reduced to a soul-sapping exchange of slurs and animus, inspiring anger in some and apathy in most

For the similar reasons, most people are more impressed by personal anecdote than by the tabulated results of controlled, double-blind experiments demonstrating a 95% confidence level. It may be good science, but it's not a good story. Practitioners on the wilder shores of alternative medicine have long known this - demonstrating their credibility by telling more or less believable stories about satisfied customers

The little apiary in the village, with its one remaining hive, is on a patch of waste ground, most of which is a dump for redundant bits of farm fencing and broken tools. Most of it is overgrown with vigorous stinging nettles, but there is an impressive swathe of this plant that makes it surprisingly picturesque. It is one of the hedgerow plants beloved of herbalists. It is commonly agreed that its bruised leaves have an unpleasant, musky smell, but that is regarded as evidence of its efficacy. It is 'hedge woundwort', Stachys sylvatica, a cousin of garden mint

I have lifted the following from someone else's blog, but they in turn are simply quoting John Gerard, the famous 17th century herbalist, telling a first-class story about his visit to Kent:

('Peason' is the plural of 'pea'.  I don't know, and can't discover, what the verb 'sadder' means - something like 'solder'?) 

‘it chanced that a poore man in mowing of Peason did cut his leg with a sithe, wherein hee made a wound to the bones, and withall very large and wide, and also with great effusion of bloud; the poore man crept unto this herbe, which he bruised with his hands, and tied a great quantitie of it unto the wound with a piece of his shirt, which presently stanched the bleeding, and ceased the paine, insomuch that the poore man presently went to his daies worke againe, and so did from day to day, without resting one day untill he was perfectly whole; which was accomplished in a few daies, by this herbe stamped with a little hogs grease, and so laid upon it in manner of a pultesse, which did as it were glew or sadder the lips of the wound together, and heale it according to the first intention, as wee terme it, that is, without drawing or bringing the wound to suppuration or matter; which was fully performed in seven daies, that would have required forty daies with balsam it selfe. I saw the wound and offered to heale the same for charity; which he refused, saying that I could not heale it so well as himselfe: a clownish answer I confesse, without any thankes for my goodwill: whereupon I have named it Clownes Wound-wort, as aforesaid'