The Medicinal and Culinary use of Flax in Poland

​The Polish word for the month of October is Październik. The word comes from the word paździerz, the inner fiber of the all-important flax plant (Linium usitatissium).  

     Through a process called retting, this inner fiber of the flax plant was eventually spun into thread and then woven into cloth to make clothes and also to make useful household items such as bed sheets and tablecloths.  Among the people of Poland, the flax plant was described as more precious than gold because it also produced seeds on the top of the plant when it matured which were used as medicine to maintain and promote health. 

​     In folk medicine the seeds were chewed to treat constipation. In its other major use, the flax seeds were taken to an oil mill where it was squeezed for its oil which we commonly know as linseed oil The substances contained in the flax oil helped to soothe skin inflammation, reduce redness, and itching and used to treat skin conditions such as psoriasis, eczema, and acne. Simon Syreński, the 16th century Polish botanist also known as Syreniusz, recommended it for healing blotches and blemishes, herpes, scabs and even rough fingernails.  In the 1800’s, botanist Krzystof Kluk recommended making a salve made from it to treat scalded skin. In an herbal printed in 1923, Sebastian Kneipp in his Zielnik atlas roslin leczniczych (Herbal atlas of healing Plants) endorsed the benefits of flax compresses and bandages as having a cooling, dissolving and stretching effect in ulcers and swellings.

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Flax seed oil (olej lnjany) is still being produced in current day Poland. Author photo. September  2024

     Another really important use of the flax oil was for cooking during the numerous fast days that came throughout the calendar year especially the days of Advent and Lent. During these fast days animal meat and animal oils for cooking were strictly forbidden and the people of Poland had to resort to vegetable oils such as rapeseed, sunflower and flax seed oil.
In some parts of Poland, linseed oil is often called Christmas Eve oil, because its consumption increased so much during Advent and played a critical role in frying the fish that was consumed on Wigilia, the Christmas Eve supper, which is always eaten without any meat or animal fat.

     All vegetable oils have made a major comeback in the diets of the 21st century and deemed healthier for us than animal fats. Our ancestors were ahead of their time!
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       I’m attaching a brief 5 minute you tube video. It is in Polish but you don’t need to understand Polish to visually see the labor-intensive method used long ago to produce linseed oil, once so important to the people of Poland.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhBiECxlIz8

​     Read more about how the people of Poland treated their health needs in: Polish Herbs, Flowers and Folk Medicine, Hippocrene Books, Inc. 2020