The Rescue Remedy: This is a combination of five of the remedies Dr. Bach used as a first-aid remedy. In any emergency, great or small—a big sorrow, some sudden bad news, after a severe accident, or even a cut finger—the sufferer may experience one or more of these emotions: shock, fear, sometimes amounting to terror or panic, severe mental stress and tension, a feeling of desperation or a numbed, bemused state of mind.
The five remedies are:
- Star of Bethlehem: for shock
- Rock Rose: for terror and panic
- Impatiens: for mental stress and tension
- Cherry Plum: for desperation
- Clematis: for the bemused, far-away feeling often preceding a faint and loss of consciousness.
Dr. Bach used this first-aid remedy for the first time, and named it the Rescue Remedy, in the early 1930’s when a small ship carrying tiles was wrecked off the Cromer shore in a great gale. The two men on board roped themselves to the mast and there they stayed for many hours for the life-boat could not reach them owing to the big seas. Eventually both were rescued, the younger man unconscious, blue in the face, his clothes stiff with sea salt. Dr. Bach ran into the sea as he was carried ashore and moistened his lips with the Rescue Remedy to help him overcome the great shock and terror of his experience. The man recovered consciousness as they carried him up the beach to a near by hotel, then sat up and asked for a cigarette.