Mountain Folk Remedies: The Foxfire Americana Library (9) (10 page)

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Pound a dock root until it’s soft and juice comes out of it. Put enough sweet cream on it to cover it. Rub the mixture on a cut or sore.

L
OTTIE
S
HILLINGBURG

Bathe the sores off real good in warm salty water. Then you get Vaseline or something where the cloth wouldn’t stick and wrap it.

But if a sore got infected then they’d use the walnut poultice (ground walnut leaves and table salt).

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Boil a lady-slipper plant in water. Strain the water and drink.

G
LADYS
Q
UEEN

Get some soot off the back of the chimney. Put a teaspoon of that soot in a glass of water. Let the soot settle out and drink the clear water.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Pull up some blackberry roots and clean them and boil them. Strain and drink the water.

F
LORENCE
C
ARPENTER

Make a little mop to mop the throat by getting three long chicken feathers and stripping most of the little feathers off the quills. Leave a few up on the end. Tie the quills together with thread with those three little bunches of feathers up on one end.

Then take some copperas and put it in a little metal lid (like a snuff can top) and set it on the hot stove. Let that copperas burn till it makes ashes. Pour honey into the copperas and work that up together. Dip that feather mop into that mixture and mop out the throat; three moppings and the diphtheria was gone. I had diphtheria and they used it on me. I have used it on my kids for real bad tonsillitis or any kind of tonsil trouble.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Put a lump of asafetida in a small muslin bag. Put a string on the bag and tie it around your neck so that the bag rests against chest.

E
LIZABETH
E
NDLER

Boil plantain leaves (
not
the roots) and drink the tea often. This will cure dysentery.

Also, a tea made from dried strawberry or blackberry leaves will stop dysentery.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Drink strong, sweetened tea; then eat five ounces of any good solid cheese with bread. Everyone knows that cheese is binding.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

Daddy used soot off the back of the chimney for dysentery (just as for diarrhea). Put it in a glass of water and stir it up good. Then let it set until the soot settles, and then just drink the water.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Blow smoke from rabbit tobacco in the ear.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Take the good meat out of a walnut. Put it into a rag and beat it up. Then dip this into warm water. Afterwards, squeeze the excess water and walnut oil into the ear.

W
ILMA
B
EASLEY

Boil pennyroyal. Pour the tea into a pitcher and put a cloth over the pitcher. Put your ear on the cloth.

V
ON
W
ATTS

Put one block of camphor gum into a half pint to a pint of whiskey. Let it dissolve and add more camphor gum and let the mixture set idle. Rub it into the ear thoroughly. Use a lot. It will draw the poison out.

C
LELAND
O
WENS

Use warm Vicks salve. Put it on a cotton ball and place that in the ear.

G
ENELIA
S
INGLETON

Put a drop or two of warm castor oil in the ear.

A
NONYMOUS

Take a medicine dropper and drop warm salty water right in the corner of the eye. Hold your eye wide open and just let that salty water drain down through it. It burned a little bit. That’s good for something in your eye, or the sore eye or a scratched place on the eye.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Teas made from boneset, or from the roots of butterfly weed, or from wild horsemint, or from feverweed are all good for colds, flu, and fevers.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Boil half a cup of wall ink vine leaves to a quart of water. Give two teaspoons three times a day.

L
AURA
P
ATTON

A tea made of rabbit tobacco will break a fever.

A
MANDA
T
URPIN

Pull up poor john (feverweed), making sure to get roots. Put roots, leaves and all in pan with water and boil. Strain. Add sugar to taste and drink.

D
OROTHY
B
ECK

Take several bulbs of garlic and wrap them in a cloth. Take a hammer and just beat them up. Tie the cloth around both wrists right where the pulse is. The fever will come down in maybe thirty-five or forty minutes. Back when the kids was all little I did things like that.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Dampen a wool rag with turpentine. Heat the rag and tie around the puncture.

A
NONYMOUS

If we got our fingernail smashed or cracked, or you know, torn in any way, we would take a little elm tree bark. We’d peel off the inside of the bark and bind it to the fingernail.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Put wet chewing tobacco on it.

A
NONYMOUS

For a baby that’s squalling, take some ’sang root [ginseng] and put it in a saucer. Pour a little hot water on it and give the baby two teaspoons of that. In a few minutes it is all over.

H
ARV
R
EID

Take a level teaspoonful of sugar and a drop of turpentine according to the age. If it is a little bitty baby, use about one drop of turpentine. Make that up in a little bit of water and give to him. It’ll just quieten down. I’ve done that many, many, many of a time.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Just go to the spring and get that water—it takes spring water, not well water. Just warm it and soak the affected area in it and it’ll draw every bit of that frostbite out.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Men would pour whiskey in their boots as a protection against frostbite. It was said to keep their feet warm for a long long time and didn’t even wet their boots or shoes.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Find some lady-slipper with a yellow bloom on it. Dig the roots and make some tea and drink that about once a week and it’ll cure a sick headache.

M
RS
. E. H. B
ROWN

Soak strips of brown paper in warm vinegar. Bind them onto the forehead with a white cloth, or bind warm fried potatoes to the forehead with a rag.

E
LIZABETH
E
NDLER

A headache is an inner fever in the stomach. You’ve got a fever in your stomach and it don’t show up anywhere else but up here in your head. You take something for the stomach, like a wee dose of Epsom salt. You take a teaspoonful to a half a glass of water. Stir it up real good and drink it down. That cures the headache.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Dandelion tea is a heart stimulant.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Putting vinegar on sugar in a spoon and taking that is said to stop them.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Wet a leaf of tobacco and put it on your stomach.

V
ON
W
ATTS

Take nine sups of water and you will quit hiccupping.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

If you could remember the last place you seen a frog that had been run over by a car on the road, it would cure the hiccups.

K
ENNY
R
UNION

Swallow three swallows of cold water without getting your breath, no more or no less. They’ll just go away. It still works. I’ve done it.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Boil a bunch of catnip in water. Strain and drink.

G
LADYS
Q
UEEN

Get ground ivy and make a tea of the leaves and stems. Give some of this to a baby and it’ll just break them hives out. When they laugh in their sleep and wall their eyes, it’s because they’re not broke out. After they break out in a kind of a rash, they’ll rest from there on out.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Boil a beet leaf and put it on the inflamed spot and tie a cloth around it.

F
LORENCE
C
ARPENTER

Make ointment out of one teaspoon of sulfur and four teaspoons of lard.

E
LIZABETH
E
NDLER

Make a tea from boiling mullein roots.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Gather a large amount of peach tree leaves, boil in water to make tea, and drink.

B
EULAH
F
ORESTER

Get the dead silks off an ear of corn. Boil in water, strain and drink.

G
LADYS
Q
UEEN

Make tea either from the whole spearmint plant, or put three or four leaves into a cup and pour boiling water over them and cover until cool. Then drink.

L
AURA
P
ATTON

Drink diluted sheep manure to ensure that the measles will “pop out.” Sheep manure has a high temperature quotient.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

Drink a cup of hot lemonade, then a cup of cold lemonade.

A
NONYMOUS

To keep mumps from going down into breasts and privates, tie a silk ribbon around a girl’s neck (snug, but not too tight), or a silk tie around a boy’s neck.

L
OTTIE
S
HILLINGBURG

Use the root of a yellow lady-slipper. Boil the root a long time, until the water turns a brownish tea color. Strain and drink.

M
AUDE
H
OUK

Make a tea of elder flowers by steeping them in boiling water only a few minutes, then strain off. Tea may be sweetened or taken plain.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

Take a small piece of a brown paper sack and fold it into a square and put it under lip and press.

L
ESTER
J. W
ALL

Pull the hair on top of your head straight up until bleeding stops.

B
EULAH
F
ORESTER

Let your nose bleed on a knife blade and stick the knife in the ground. Your nose will stop bleeding.

Or take a pair of scissors and run them down the back of your neck.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

Use two teaspoons of salt to one pint of water. Pour three or four drops in each nostril every three to four hours.

H
ELEN
W
ALL

Inhale the steam from boiling salt water.

A
GNES
B
RADLEY

Apply a poultice of comfrey roots to ease pain. To make the poultice, boil the comfrey roots in a small amount of water. Take roots out and add about a cupful of cornmeal to about a pint of the water. Cook the meal until it thickens and then put it on a cloth. Cover with another cloth and place on painful area. This is also good for a sore throat, for which you apply the poultice to the neck.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Put about a half teaspoon of alum in about a tablespoon of water and make it real strong. Keep the pimple rubbed and it’ll go away.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Try rubbing your face with a wet baby diaper. Works every time if you can stand the smell.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

Take a bath in table salt water, then grease in Vaseline. That salt will kill out every bit of that poison and the Vaseline will keep it from itching and you won’t scratch it.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Boil milkweed leaves in water. Rub this water on the poisoned skin.

F
LORENCE
C
ARPENTER

Use gunpowder and buttermilk mixed together to put on poison ivy.

N
ELLIE
T
URPIN

Rub some leaves from a touch-me-not plant on the place where you’ve got it. It’ll cure it.

K
ENNY
R
UNION

Make a mixture of vinegar and salt and put that on it. Or wet skin with water and then put baking soda on it. Diluted bleach will work, too.

D
EBORAH
W
ILBURN

Heat apple vinegar and wet a cloth in it. Apply the cloth, as hot as you can stand it, to ease the pain.

Or apply a poultice of mullein roots to ease the pain in the legs caused by rheumatic fever. Follow my recipe for comfrey poultice [under
Pain
] but use mullein roots instead.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL