The Artichoke Leaf: What the Old Gardens of the Mediterranean Have Long Known About Digestive Comfort

There is a particular quietness one finds in the kitchen gardens of southern Switzerland, where the autumn light falls low across the terraced plots and the last artichoke heads bow their heavy violet crowns toward the earth. I have spent many years among such gardens, and among the people who tend them, and I must confess that it was not in any university hall nor in any modern laboratory that I first came to understand the remarkable nature of the artichoke leaf.