Mountain Folk Remedies: The Foxfire Americana Library (9) (2 page)

Alumroot has several uses as medicine. A tea brewed from the leaves is used for dysentery. A mixture made from the root is used for sore throats. Powdered root is also used on wounds to stop bleeding.

Clarence Lusk shared his experience with this root. “The alumroot is
a very spindly little ol’ stem that runs up out of the ground. It comes up very early in the spring, pretty much the first thing that comes up. That’s when I generally gather it. All it takes is two or three little ol’ roots as long as your finger to cure you usually. I’ve got up in the morning, especially when I was working in the woods in the forestry business, and I’d be sick with dysentery. I’d just say, ‘Well, I just ain’t gonna get to work today. That’s all there is to it!’ While my wife was getting breakfast, I’d go out and dig up some of them herbs and make a cupful of tea and drink it. Then I’d eat a pretty good breakfast and go right on to work, and that was the end of my sickness.

“Now, my granddaughter up here calls alumroot pig medicine because we used to use it for the pigs. Pigs is bad to take dysentery. If you feed ’em too much, they’ll get sick. And calves too! Even the old cattle. In the spring of the year when grass shoots come up, gets so pretty and green, and then comes a freeze and that grass freezes, if you turn your cattle out right then and let them eat a bit of that frozen grass, it’ll just nearly kill ’em. I come in one evening from work, and one of the cows was just the awfullest mess of sick you ever seen from eating that ol’ frozen grass. At that time, I had a big bunch of alumroot from working in the woods and finding it, just digging along as I passed by it. I made about a quart of tea and put it in a five-gallon bucket. Then I put the cow in the barn. She didn’t like it, but since that was all the water she got, she’d come to it and drink it. The next day, she was well.”

Balm-of-Gilead
(Populus candicans)
can be found on roadsides and small waterways. The trunk of this tree can reach six and a half feet in diameter and a height of one hundred feet. Young branches are resinous and hairy with pleasantly scented buds. Leaves can be up to six inches long, are hairy when young, and are dark green on the top side and lighter green on the underside. This tree is sought for its buds.

As a remedy for erysipelas, a feverish infectious disease characterized by deep red, spreading inflammation of the skin, make a salve of “bamagilion” buds fried in mutton tallow. Add petroleum jelly if you wish.

As an all-purpose salve, boil the buds of the “bamagilion” in water
and skim the wax from the buds off the top. Mix this wax with pine resin and good mutton tallow. Keep in a container for use whenever needed. Some people like to make a large amount of the salve each year and store it in small tins to have on hand.

“I used to go to the mountains and dig up herbs,” Numerous Marcus explained. “We would get roots and plants and make herb medicines out of them. There are a lot of herbs in the woods if a feller knowed what they was. We used to get heart leaves [wild ginger] and Balm-of-Gilead buds and some hog lard and put all this together. We’d melt it down and make a salve out of it. It’s good for sores. Rub it on them and it would clear them right up. It was good for cuts too.”

Black-Eyed Susan
(Rudbeckia hirta)
is well known to everyone. With yellow flower heads and a black center, it is a biennial that grows to a height of one to three feet and blooms in summer. It was used to treat skin infections and does contain antibodies. Native Americans used its root for tea for worms and colds.

I
LLUSTRATION 2
Black-eyed Susan

Black Walnut
(Juglans nigra)
is often a signature tree of the Southern Appalachian homeplace; a black walnut cake is a regional favorite. Charles Thurmond thought that “the black walnut is good to eat, and the bark is good for dye and rubbing on the skin for any kind of skin ailment
or disease. The juice from the husk of the black walnut was very good for ringworm.” (See
Foxfire 3
, page 345.)

I
LLUSTRATION 3
Black walnut tree (right), Black walnut hull and bark off the tree (left)

I
LLUSTRATION 4
Bloodroot

Bloodroot
(Sangunaria)
can be found in rich soil. It has a white flower that shows itself in early spring. One leaf with five to nine lobes and one flower are produced for each root. The leaves grow from approximately four inches to as much as twelve inches wide after the flowering period. The roots of this plant are collected in the fall and dried before using.

Marie Mellinger wrote, “Bloodroot is possibly the most common of the sang-sign plants, [plants that grow in the same area as ginseng], still found growing in many areas where ginseng, golden seal, and ladyslippers have been eradicated. This pretty springling has white, star-like blossoms before the scalloped leaves appear. The stems and roots contain an orange juice. This is the ‘red-coonroot’ of the mountains, and juice on a lump of sugar was a cough drop. Known as ‘tetterwort’ of ‘sweet slumber’ or
‘she-roots,’ the dried rootstocks were ground and used in an infusion to relieve pains of burns, or for coughs and colds and chest ailments. As ‘she-roots,’ bloodroot was a remedy for female complaints.”

Charles Thurmond offered this wisdom: “Bloodroot is a neat little plant that grows in the woods. When you first break the roots, they look like they are bleeding blood-red. It is very, very bitter. If you know someone who’s got asthma, you might want to give them bloodroot. If you break those roots and touch that juice to your tongue, it opens your sinus areas. It can be fixed in teas or other fluids. It can be used on the skin sometimes. Bloodroot can also be used for bronchial problems and stimulating your circulation and appetite. [It causes] you to sweat.”

I
LLUSTRATION 5
Blue Cohosh

Blue Cohosh
(Caulophyllum)
grows to be one to three feet tall and is generally found in rich, loamy soil in the shade of the woods. Marie Mellinger told us, “Blue cohosh is often found growing with ginseng and goldenseal. This plant stands stiffly erect, with many small scalloped leaves. The leaves and stems have a frosted appearance, and the yellow flowers are followed by dark blue berries. The stocky roots are collected in autumn and have some market value. The plant is sometimes collected as ‘blueberry root’ or ‘blue ginseng’ or ‘yellow ginseng.’ In home medicine, the mountain healers used the roots as medicine for lung troubles, or to stop the flow of blood. The roots contain an alkaloid, methylcytisine.”

Boneset
(Eupatorium perfoliatum)
is usually found in wet ground near swamps or streams. The unusual leaf configuration makes this plant an easy one to spot. The leaves grow on a rough, hairy stem of one to five feet in height. They are joined at the base and sit opposite one another along the stem. Small white summer flowers are produced at the heads of each stem. Boneset is gathered in the summer for the flowers and leaves, which are stripped from the stalk. The flowers turn grayish white in late summer. This plant is closely related to the joe-pye weed and grows to about four feet tall. It was used to poultice broken bones.

As a remedy for colds, make a tea from the leaves of boneset. Boil three or four leaves in a cup of water, strain, and sweeten. Drink the
tea when it has cooled because it will make you sick if taken hot. Leaves of this plant may also be cured and saved for use in teas during the winter months.

Varina Ritchie recalled, “Mother doctored with boneset tea and castor oil and turpentine. You’d drink a glass of boneset tea if you had a cold before you went to bed. It would help you to sleep. We raised it in our garden. It would grow to about two and one-half or three feet. Mother always had a patch of it in her garden. It was kinda like a weed that growed. You could take it, and even when it dried it would make good tea.”

Mrs. Laura Patton remembered that boneset was a popular plant for making remedies. She’d put pieces of the plant in a cup and pour boiling water over them and let them steep. Then she’d strain the tea into another cup, let it cool, and then use it. She said it was especially good for flu and colds. In fact, in the winter of 1976 when the drugstore medicine wasn’t helping one of her grown sons who had the flu, he used boneset instead and claims that it helped. He went to bed right after he took it, and it made him rest all night. In the morning, he was well.

One of Charles Thurmond’s memories of his grandmother involved boneset. “My grandma had numerous cures for everything, usually two or three. One of her favorites was boneset. Boneset plants grow around waterways, swamps, creeks, lakes, and whatever. It is good for fevers. It cures about twenty-five different illnesses, but it’s a natural quinine. Quinine is a medicine made from a tree in South America that kills fevers from malaria. During the Civil War, the South didn’t have quinine because of the Northern blockade, so they used boneset. It works quite well. Boneset will kill a fever in ten to twenty minutes. This year I had a cold and a fever. I took some boneset, which killed the fever immediately. I had quite a bit of it left over, and I didn’t want to waste it, so I drank it. Well, in half an hour my feet were cold and wouldn’t get warm!”

Butterfly Weed
(Asclepias tuberosa)
is a variety of milkweed that grows well in dry, sandy, or rocky soil. It is found in the open, in open forest, or near the banks of streams. It has hairy stems and rough leaves with a large, white, meaty root and blooms in the summer. Butterfly weed is gathered in the fall for the roots. This plant is a perennial that grows to a height of one to two feet. Its bright orange flowers make it easy to identify. Early settlers thought the root cured pleurisy and called it pleurisy root. The plant attracts several types of butterfiles. It can be toxic in large quantities. Monarch butterflies get their protective poison from this plant.

Of butterfly weed, Charles Thurmond said, “Some people call it chiggerweed. It has little orange blooms on the top of it, and butterflies go berserk over them. It has a root called the pleurisy root, which is good for anything to do with your chest or aching muscles. You must chip this root up to make it into a tea.”