A lot of people know that aspirin was developed from Willlow aka Salix spp. If you use the inner bark as a tea, it can take six hours for the body to convert it to salicylic acid to give pain relief. However, the Native Americans figured out that if you burned the branches and leaves and made a tea from the ashes, the combination of the thermal breakdown and alkaline ash, sped up the conversion of salicin to salicylic acid. They would also inhale the smoke because inhalation is a faster delivery system than digestion.
