Steve Vuignier, the Visually Impaired Herbalist Following in the Path of Plants

A century-old midwifery notebook has brought Steve Vuignier closer to an ancestor whose work he is now continuing in a different form. The handwritten volume belonged to Marguerite Pralong, a resident of Evolène who died in 1925. Its first page is marked “Midwifery course, 1904-1905.”

Vuignier’s grandfather, Gérard, shows the notebook in his garden in La Sage, in Valais, at an altitude of 1,800 meters. The setting looks out toward the Pigne-d’Arolla, the Mont-de-l’Etoile and the Aiguilles-Rouges d’Arolla. Vuignier, Gérard’s son, is visibly moved as he turns the pages of his great-grandmother’s notes.

Pralong used numerous medicinal plants to treat her patients, not only women giving birth. At a time when doctors rarely traveled along the mountain paths, she also went to people suffering from injuries, sore throats, fever and tuberculosis.

One hundred and twenty years later, Vuignier, now an herbalist, is following her trail. After six years of growing plants on land beside his parents’ chalet, he has produced his first extract of Rhodiola rosea. The rare plant is described as an adaptogen, meaning a plant that helps the body cope with stressful conditions. “The European Medicines Agency has recognized this traditional use as an adaptogen,” Vuignier says.

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The European Medicines Agency has recognized this traditional use as an adaptogen.