Mountain Folk Remedies: The Foxfire Americana Library (9) (8 page)

You can make a tea from the leaves as a remedy for headache, and Gertrude Mull told us to use the root for “nerve trouble,” but we ask readers not to gather this plant due to its rarity.

I
LLUSTRATION 28
Yellowroot

Yellowroot
(Xanthorhiza simplicissima)
grows well in wooded areas in the mountains. It is usually between one foot and two feet tall with a short basal stem topped with a cluster of slender leaves approximately six inches in length. These leaves have five sharp, unevenly toothed leaflets. In spring, purple to brown flowers grow either individually or in small clusters. The roots, which are fairly long, and the bark are bright yellow and are bitter to the taste. This plant is gathered for its roots.

Marie Mellinger wrote, ”True yellowroot, or shrub yellowroot, was also a jaundice medicine and a sang-sign plant. This is a small shrubby plant growing in colonies along streams-usually in valleys or coves. It was grown for medicine. It has finely divided leaves, and lacy racemes of yellow or pinkish-purple flowers in early spring. (For a photo of yellowroot, see
The Fofire Book
, page 233.) The long, stringy yellow roots are very bitter tasting. These roots are used in a
strong tea for sore throats or stomach disorders, or to lower high blood pressure. It is a favorite mouthwash said to cure sores or cankers of the mouth.”

Ada Crone recalled, “For kidney ailments we’d go out and get rattleroot or yellowroot. Sometimes they’d be mixed up together or sometimes they’d make just a yellowroot tea. They’d make you drink that instead of water. Whenever you drank anything, it had to be that tea.”

Gertrude Mull told us, “Yellowroot is good for infection too. That’s the best thing in the world for ulcerated stomach. A lot of people used to come to Grandpa, wanted him to fix them up a tea [of yellowroot].”

Clarence Lusk said, “I can go down here on the creek and hunt me up some yellowroot. I use it when I get a little ol’ ulcer on my tongue or on my lips sometimes. I generally just chew it. It’s bitter! It’s got the right name—it’s yellow.”

Charles Thurmond added, “The yellowroot here has roots that are really good for dyeing things. It is also good for any kind of sores.”

I
LLUSTRATION 29
Maude Houk gathering herbs for a remedy.

Bathe feet before bedtime in a strong solution made from white oak bark.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

Make a real hot tea out of burdock. Soak feet in the tea just before going to bed. To make the tea, use the whole plant, including roots.
Pull it up, wash it, chop it up and put in a pot of water, and boil and steam. Burdock may also be dried and the tea made during the winter.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Make a tea by boiling the roots of ginseng. That gets the strength out of them. Drink the tea or rub it on the joints, and either will have the same effect.

N
UMEROUS
M
ARCUS

You can mix the roots of ginseng and goldenseal together in liquor.

N
UMEROUS
M
ARCUS

Eat lots of raw vegetables and fruits.

D
OROTHY
B
ECK

Take a buckeye and put it in your pocket and carry it around with you.

E
LIZABETH
E
NDLER

My daddy used barbell. It has a yellow bloom. The little flowers are shaped like little bells and hang on the underside of the leaves. Cut the barbell plant down to the ground. Use the stems. Chop them up and put in a pot and boil them about twenty-five minutes. Strain the tea and drink it. It’ll limber you up just right now.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Use the inner bark of wild yellow plum trees. Knock the old bark off and scrape down next to the wood and use these scrapings along with mullein leaves. Boil these together with sage leaves for about twenty minutes. Add alum to the tea after it is strained—one level teaspoon of alum to a quart of tea. Drink about two big tablespoonfuls of the tea every morning and every night, about twelve hours apart on the doses. It’ll cure asthma.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

We’d tote our bed frames and the slats outside and scald them every month or two in boiling water and lye soap. The bedbugs laid their eggs in that wood. Then we would change the straw in the ticks every fall. Whenever they would start threshing the wheat, we’d take them empty bed ticks and boil them real good. Then when they got dry, we’d stuff them with that fresh wheat straw.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Apply kerosene liberally to all parts of the beds.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

Bandage the cut real tight. Tie a cord below and above the cut and repeat Ezekiel 16:6. The blood will stop immediately. Take the cords off and cleanse the wound with warm salty water. Use just enough salt to purify the water. Then bandage.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Put kerosene oil on the cut.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

To stop bleeding, take soot from the back of a fireplace in an old chimney and press against cut. Wash the soot out when blood clots or it will leave a scar.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Sarsaparilla, or “sasparilla tea,” is good to correct blood pressure.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

When you hit your hand or cut your arm or anything, and it gets infected instead of healing up, you need a blood purifier. Mix just a tiny bit of alum and saltpeter together in water and drink it. That purifies the blood.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Make a tea of either burdock roots, or spice wood in the spring.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Buy a box of sulfur at the store and mix a small amount (about the size of a pinto bean) in a teaspoonful of honey. Take that teaspoonful and then drink a glass of water. We would do that every spring. Mama would fix it up and we’d all get purified up for summertime. That’s a tonic to purify your blood.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Buy a box of sulfur at the store and mix a small amount (about the size of a pinto bean) in a teaspoonful of molasses. Take that teaspoonful and then drink a glass of water.

A
MANDA
T
URPIN

Make a tea of bloodroot.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Soak rusty nails in water and drink the water.

A
MANDA
T
URPIN

For boils, grind up green walnut leaves or the hull of walnuts (the big green outside hull) with table salt, using one teaspoon of salt to a half cup of ground-up leaves or walnut hulls. Make a poultice. It will draw the boils out.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Make a poultice of the houseleek plant and apply to boil.

M
RS
. C. E. P
INSON

Mash up a rotten apple, place on the rising and tie a cloth around it.

F
LORENCE
C
ARPENTER

This recipe for “Green Salve” is good for boils or any kind of sore.

Simmer first four ingredients together; add verdegrease and resin, well powdered; then add oil of spike.

M
RS
. A
LBERT
E
CKSTEIN

Make a mixture of kerosene, turpentine, Vaseline and old-time soap.

C
ONNIE
M
ITCHELL

Make a salve made of heart leaves gotten out of the ground in the woods. Boil the leaves. Add lard and turpentine. Continue to boil until the mixture gets thick. Put the salve on sores as needed.

F
LORENCE
C
ARPENTER

Peel down outer bark of slippery elm sapling. Scrape off the inner bark and put those scrapings on a cloth and bind that on the risin’; or put piece of fat pork on it; or put a poultice on it made from bread and milk.

H
AZEL
L
UZIER

To pull the core out of a risin’, fill a bottle with very hot water. Let it sit a minute, then empty. Put the mouth of the hot bottle over risin’ and hold it there.

E
LIZABETH
E
NDLER

Buy some flaxseed meal. Make a poultice and put on risin’.

E
LIZABETH
E
NDLER

This salve is good for anything that you want to draw, or any kind of sore. If you stick a nail in your foot or cut yourself or stump your toe, it’s to draw out the infection.

The main ingredient in the salve is beef tallow. Make this by taking the fat off the beef just as you would a hog. Then put a little water in a pan or pot to keep the fat from sticking as it cooks, add the fat and cook it, stirring it so it doesn’t burn. After all the fat has melted out, strain out all the cracklings and set the tallow aside to harden. The tallow will keep for years in a jar.

When ready to make salve, take out a palmful of the tallow and add
a level teaspoon of brown sugar, a level teaspoon of salt, and a few drops of turpentine. Mix all ingredients thoroughly together and then add a few drops of camphor oil.

I
LLUSTRATION 30
After Amanda Turpin had gathered the ingredients she needed to make her salve for us …

I
LLUSTRATION 31
 … she mixed them in the palm of her hand.