The Green Fuse

Retracing our roots: Hilary Miflin debuts with a book that returns plants to the forefront of healing.

While modern teachings simplify approaches to health, seeking to understand our relationship to plants can help us find our power, Hilary Miflin contends in her debut book, The Green Fuse.

Left unconvinced of the enduring success of her cancer treatment by conventional medicine, the gift of a little book along with an opportunity of ‘six months off to find her happiness’ had unexpected consequences. While doing the 40-day herbal cancer cure Hilary experienced feelings of supreme wellbeing. She decided to investigate why this should be.

Using her training as a biologist and professional science communicator, she embarked on a study of herbalism and traditional knowledge including the work of great botanical, philosophical and spiritual thinkers, both ancient and modern and from many different cultures. In The Green Fuse we are alerted to the loss of our deep sense of the inter-relationship between humanity, the earth and cosmos. The radical deletions of plant formulations from the Pharmacopoeias and their replacement by modern pharmaceuticals, together with the erosion of the concept of holistic treatment of body, mind and spirit, all play significant roles. Alongside her research Hilary developed a beautiful garden to grow plants based on her findings and from these plants she created and marketed high quality products with exceptional healing properties.

Hilary says: “I wrote this book primarily to put the ideas that have inspired me over the last 25 years in some sort of coherent order. As I did this I was truly surprised where it led me. I realised there was a story to be told here – and one that could resonate with a lot of other people caught in this trap where their felt understanding of Nature and health does not lie comfortably with the scientific world view that surrounds them.”

Weaving together intensely subjective experience and objective knowledge, The Green Fuse sets out to unravel the mystery of the age-old force and healing nature of plants.