Mountain Folk Remedies: The Foxfire Americana Library (9) (11 page)

Chew ginseng root or make a tea from the roots or drink a celery tea made by boiling a handful of celery stalks in a pint of water until the celery is limp.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

He did the same thing for that that he did for arthritis. Just make the barbell tea a little bit stronger.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Gather a pokeroot about an inch long. Put this along with some yellow ivy in a quart of whiskey. Drink a teaspoonful a day.

B
EULAH
F
ORESTER

Make a tea out of the bark of the witch-hazel tree, and drink it.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

Let snakeroot sit in white liquor for one month. Then take one tablespoonful every twelve hours for up to three months.

L
ESTER
J. W
ALL

You take turpentine and work it in pure hog’s lard. Put that on the ringworm and pop it right out.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Put the juice from a green walnut hull on the spot to stop the ringworm.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Bore a small hole in a raw onion, put sulfur in the hole, wrap the onion in wet rags and put it on the hot coals of a fire and roast it. When roasted, take it out and squeeze the juice out of it and give about a teaspoon to the baby.

M
ELBA
D
OTSON

I heard Daddy say a lot of times if you got snakebit take a knife and cut a cross place on the bit place. Then cut the hollow neck of a gourd where you could suck through that gourd. Cap it over the snakebite and draw that poison out that way.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

As soon as bitten, spread some ammonia over the bite and then swallow a few drops of the ammonia mixed with water.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

Salt has been used to draw the poison out of a rattlesnake bite. People used to use gunpowder, too.

P
RUDENCE
S
WANSON

Never take whiskey when snakebit. Pour a little turpentine on the bite. Or put the bark of the lino tree (some call it basswood) on it. It draws the poison.

Or cut the fang mark and put turpentine and sugar on it. Some use kerosene.

A
NONYMOUS

Mix together two thirds pint of vinegar and one third pint of camphor and apply. This will draw the swelling out.

G
LADYS
N
ICHOLS

Put the entrails of a freshly killed chicken on the affected area.

A
NONYMOUS

Take a meat tenderizer and make a paste with water. Put it on the bite. Occasionally replace it with new paste.

E
LIZABETH
E
NDLER

Salt and onions was good for snakebites. You’d beat the onions up and put in a lot of salt and apply that to the place and that would draw out the poison.

A
MANDA
T
URPIN

Boil the inner part of some red oak bark. Strain and gargle with it.

F
LORENCE
C
ARPENTER

We’d use the honey and copperas for any kind of sore throat. For a plain sore throat you would make it real weak and thin enough where you could gargle it and spit it out.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Boil onions in molasses and eat it to relieve pain of sore throat. Or make a comfrey root poultice (see directions in
Pain
remedy).

Take a silk stocking and saturate it with lard or cream. Place spirit of turpentine and Vicks salve in the stocking and tie around neck.

D
OROTHY
B
ECK

Boil cottonseeds until soft. Beat them up and make a poultice. Apply it to sore throat.

M
RS
. C. E. P
INSON

To swab throat, use a peach tree stick with a rag wrapped around it.

G
LADYS
Q
UEEN

Take three or four mullein leaves. Dip them in vinegar. Put them on the sprain and bind.

L
OTTIE
S
HILLINGBURG

Take mullein leaves. Pound them just a little. Put on sprain.

E
LIZABETH
E
NDLER

Take cornmeal and table salt and work it together. Mix it with warm water and make a poultice. It just draws out all the soreness. My kids, jumping rope, would sprain their ankles, legs and knees. I’d just make that salt poultice and wrap it around and it would be all right.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Make a good tea from sassafras roots or the limbs of a spicewood bush for a fine spring tonic.

M
RS
. C. E. P
INSON

Lay a cloth down and put about four tablespoons of wet salt on there. Then pull it tight around the sting and in ten minutes you can’t even tell you’ve been stung.

K
ENNY
R
UNION

Make a paste of one half teaspoon of baking soda and one half teaspoon of honey and apply to sting.

D
OROTHY
B
ECK

Put tobacco or snuff on a sting. Homemade tobacco is the best of all. Take a leaf of homemade tobacco and wrap it around anything to take the swelling out.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

Boil some yellowroot and strain it. Add honey to it and take two tablespoons before meals.

F
LORENCE
C
ARPENTER

Sick stomach: Cut a peach tree limb and scrape the bark off into a glass of water. Let this sit a little while. Then strain and drink this water often.

A tea made from black snakeroot is also good for the stomach.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Castor oil is good for stomachache. Just drink a dose. It heals as it goes down.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

Drink a tea from ginseng roots.

Or drink a tea made from the lining of a chicken gizzard.

Or eat some garlic.

A
NONYMOUS

Put a few drops of British oil in a tablespoon of milk. For a baby, use one drop of oil.

Make tea of four teaspoons of anise seed to one pint water. Add sugar to taste. Take three times daily.

A
NONYMOUS

Make a strong tea with sage leaves and rub on sunburn.

M
RS
. C. E. P
INSON

Prepare a poultice of stewed pumpkin. Renew every fifteen minutes.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

For a swollen breast, make a poultice of the roots of boneset grass by drying them, powdering them and adding a little water. Rub on breast.

A
NONYMOUS

Bind that swelling with a salt poultice.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Steep one teaspoon of chamomile flowers in a cup of boiling water for three or four minutes. Then strain. Sweeten slightly and give the baby two or three teaspoons of the warm liquid.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

Take a mole’s foot (his left front paw) and tie that around the baby’s neck and you won’t hear a sound out of it.

Or take a dime with a hole in it and hang it by a chain around his neck.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

Can be cured in the spring by drinking water from a creek bed just after it has rained.

A
NONYMOUS

Drink sage tea made from the leaves of a sage plant.

A
NONYMOUS

Thrash [thrush] is caused by a regurgitating stomach. The formula, if they are put on a bottle, and sometimes the mother’s milk don’t suit ’em [the babies], they’ll regurge it back. When they spit it up it irritates their mouth. The acid in it blisters their mouth. There’s a yellow and a white blister, but you doctor them just alike. It takes a little longer to cure the yellow than it does the white if they let it run on a long time.

Well now there is a verse you repeat and you repeat this verse in your mind three times as you blow your breath into their mouth. You have to see ’em every morning for three days in a row that first time. Then I would make a mouthwash and let them start washing their mouth. I’d take persimmon tree bark, scrape it and make a strong tea.
Then we’d put a small, little pinch of alum down in that and stir that up. Strap a white cloth around your finger and scrub all around in their mouth with it. Why we make that tea is to get that white out and not let ’em swallow it. The mouth will be just as white and it’ll start shedding off. Looks like they got a mouth full of cornmeal. Then the second morning, you give them something to work their stomach out, a laxative like castor oil or Castoria. They’ll swallow some of that down in their stomach and [what you give them for their stomach] keeps it [the thrush] from setting in their stomach. Then by the time they come back the third time it’s all gone, but you do it [say the verses] the third time.

I’ve cured so many—oh, you wouldn’t believe. The doctors send ’em to me, they don’t know what to do with ’em. I was in the hospital and they brought the babies in to me in there in my room. I’ve had three in one day, especially in the spring of the year. I don’t know how many little young babies [I’ve cured] just right here lately.

One brought their baby here and it [the thrush] had run on so long that I didn’t know if I could even bring it through or not. I did, but they had to bring it more times because it was so bad. Of course I didn’t blow in its mouth but the three times, but I had to help ’em wash its mouth out. I finally got on ahead and got it over it.

Some will bring ’em and after the second time they’re so much better they don’t even bring it back. But I tell ’em, “Now, if you ain’t gonna bring it three times they ain’t no need in trying.” ’Cause in maybe two or three days it’ll come right back up and get worse. It’s embedded in the locks of the jaws, where your jaws come together, and it’ll start spreading back out. I had to doctor some of ’em twice like that.

You boil everything that the baby has anything to do with in sody water [use one teaspoon of baking soda], its nipples, bottles, bibs, anything it has about its mouth. Be sure you don’t kiss ’em around the mouth or you can get it, it’s catching. Now one [time] a grown man come. He said, “I’ve caught that thrash sure as a world.” I’d doctored his grandbaby with it, I got it well. He said he’d been a-kissing his little grandbaby. I said, “Don’t be kissing on ’em around the mouth.” I said, “Kiss ’em on the back of the neck or somewhere.” I doctored him like I doctored babies.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Make a peach tree poultice from peach tree leaves boiled until soft, mixed with cornmeal and salt. Place on the outside of the jaw for abscessed tooth.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Put some burnt soda on the tooth.

F
LORENCE
C
ARPENTER

Smoke rabbit tobacco.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Pick around the ailing tooth with a pine toothpick until it bleeds.

L
OLA
C
ANNON

Pound some horseradish leaves fine. Put them in a cloth and hold it against your tooth.

A
NONYMOUS

Make a weak tea from yellowroot and drink it.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Beat the white of an egg and add a pinch of alum. Give it to a child to make him vomit.

M
RS
. C. E. P
INSON

Well, Daddy conjured the warts with a piece of fat hog meat. You cut off three little chips of fat meat. Take a little chip and rub the wart. Then you accidentally lose the little piece of fat meat. You don’t go put it in no certain place, you just kind of walk around with it and after while you look down and that little piece of fat meat is gone. Then you do it the next day and the next day, for three days, and the warts will go away.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Get nine unbroken green beans. Rub them on each wart nine times (with each bean). Bury the beans and the warts will go away.

M
RS
. B
UCK
C
ARVER

Sell the wart for a penny. Then throw the penny away.

L
OTTIE
S
HILLINGBURG

Put some cow manure on them.

A
NONYMOUS

When the sap is rising in trees, make a cross on the wart with a knife.

O
AKLEY
J
USTICE

You count the number of warts you want removed and write that number on a piece of paper. Give that to the person who is going to take them off. They’ll go away.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

Take a small Irish potato and rub it over all the warts. Don’t let nobody know much about your business. Go out of the house and buy that potato where the water runs off from the cave of the house. When the potato rots, the warts will be gone.

Take a stick about a foot long and rub it over all your warts. Cut a notch for every wart and go to where there is a swamp branch. Walk backwards and stick it in the ground and don’t look where you put it.