Vermilionville

Healing Traditions of Acadiana -- From Prayers to Plants: how plant remedies are used in traitement
2025-06-14 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Chicago) | Vermilionville – Performance Center
Dr. Dana David Gravot highlights a local understanding of traitement, or treatment as it is called in English, a healing tradition specific to Francophone Louisiana. After the Acadian resettlement in Louisiana—a Spanish colony at the time—the Cajuns developed a unique, blended culture in response to both a physical environment (which included swamps, bayous, marshes, and prairies) and a social environment that mixed continental and Caribbean French peoples, Germans, Spaniards, Indigenous peoples, and African and Anglo-Americans. Sharing the need for medical attention, the practice of traitement—and the importance of traiteurs—was born. The presentation will highlight uses of local plants to address illnesses.

Healing Traditions of Acadiana -- Herbalism & the Civil War
2024-01-13 11:00 - 12:30
Lanier Cordell, a native of Louisiana, began studying alternative medicine and the use of medicinal herbs while still in high school and has continued this study for 55 years.. She grew up in Metairie and has lived in a wide variety of growing zones including Nashville, Tennessee, Bennington, Vermont, Troy, New York, Westchester County, New York, and south Louisiana.
Her paternal grandmother introduced her to the wonders of the elder plant and began her several decades journey in the study of medicinal herbs. Lanier is a former Louisiana master gardener, a past member of The Herb Society of America and a past chair of the Baton Rouge Unit.
Lanier is an accredited public relations professional and has worked in marketing, public relations and advertising for more than 30 years. She is also a writer and has had feature articles in numerous national publications and is a published author. Her book, Equinomics: The Secret to Making Money with Your Horse Business was a top seller on Amazon.com for several years.
She is an internationally certified yoga therapist and teaches yoga at Miles Perret Cancer Services and The Center for Loss and Transition at Hospice of Acadiana.
She lives on a 32-acre horse farm outside of Opelousas, Louisiana and grows many culinary and medicinal herbs. She is an avid cook and makes almost all of the medicines her family uses.
Herbalism and the US Civil War –
Explore the fascinating facts of civil war and the impact of herbal medicine, politics, social customs and traditions on the lives of soldiers as well as the eventual outcome of the conflict.
Hollywood presents the period as being rife with brutal approaches consisting primarily of amputations, but the reality is so much more complex and interesting than that. Which side had the medical care advantage at the start of the war? How was medical care during the war influenced by wars that came before? Where did the drugs come from? Who knew how to use them? What kind of training did battlefield physicians have?
This presentation will expand and alter the way you view Civil War medical practices and the use of medicinal herbs from 1861-1865, their impact on the war’s outcome, and the surprising impact it continues to have on present day health care.
