| A Word Edgewise
by Mary Joe Clendenin |
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Complaining about a sore finger last week, I asked my niece, Melanie if she could see a splinter in it.
She couldn't, but advised, "Bandage it with a piece of fat meat next to the sore and tomorrow the sticker will come out."
She was repeating one of the old remedies she had heard described by the previous generation. Must be pork fat, uncooked, a piece of salt pork or bacon--and it worked. A grassburr, sticker or splinter, or even a piece of metal seemed drawn to the surface by such treatment.
Then there was the coal oil treatment for other things that might become infected. My sister described how she walked on her tiptoe with a nail in her heel, in dire pain, for quite a distance to get mother to pull it out. Mom took her to the coal oil barrel, ran some oil on the foot first, then more after holding the screaming child and pulling the nail out.
Then Mom said, "All right now. Go on and play. It's all right. Just go on and forget about it." She did and it was.
There were mustard plasters for the chest for croup or a cold. Other sore places sometimes received mustard plaster treatment, which often blistered the skin until it was red and tender. Plasters and concoctions were used--the smellier the better. When the "seven year itch" was the rage of the neighborhood, one odoriferous salve was made from sulphur and lard. It seemed to work. None of us spent seven years scratching--it just seemed we did.
Turpentine was an often used internal remedy, as well as external. Mixed with some sugar, it made a gagging dose for colds, sore throats, whatever. Applied externally, the smell added to the magic cure. Baking soda was for stomach problems. I remember my dad taking heaping teaspoons of soda--and giving me a few. Ugh! But that was the forerunner of antacid tablets.
Rattlesnake bites received instant and odd treatments. A pioneer woman of the Texas Plains wrote about a her sister being bitten. Immediately, the mother grabbed a baby chick, ripped it open and put the warm meat against the wound. As the meat cooled she used another chick handed her by the sister. She said the poison from the wound turned the chick flesh green. When there were no more chicks, she made a tub of mud and kept the leg in that. When the father got home, they gave the little girl some whiskey. She recovered from the bite in a few weeks and suffered no ill effects.
Mary Kay, of cosmetic fame, must have read a little book like mine called "Indian Doctor", or a similar one on old cures. Oatmeal is recommended for the complexion. Mary uses oatmeal in her night cream.
"Oats fried with salt and applied to the side takes away the pain. (Another poultice.) The meal of oats boiled in vinegar and applied takes away freckles and spots in the face, or other parts of the body."
When reading the old remedies, I couldn't help but wonder who had the nerve to do some of those things first. I guess the old saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention" holds true in doctoring, too. Another recipe for cure called for rye flour boiled in milk with two lilly onions to make a cataplasm to be applied to a sore throat. It was guaranteed to have wonderful effects.
Hearing a baby cry with pain for hours and hours, without even a neighbor to run to, would drive a mother to try anything she could think of. After reading some of these remedies, I'm glad mother didn't have this book.
Medicine has, indeed, made great strides in this country. A great landmark in 1937 was the discovery of sulfanilamide for bacterial infections which usually before that time, were fatal. Discovered by a German scientist, Gerhard Domack, it was effective for many blood infections. Meningitis, crysepelas, gas gangrene, bladder and kidney infections, many maladies, were cured with the new drug. Then came penicillin and related medicines. Soon after was a host of vaccines for everything from infantile paralysis--at its worst in 1937--to measles.
Yes, we've come such a long way in medicine that I think I'll pass on the poultice of bacon fat. Besides, my finger got well without treatment, as do many of the things we complain about.
Mom's advice is still pretty good, "just go on and forget about it."
Of course, a kiss where it hurts is a big help, too.