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

Make the camphor oil by getting two blocks of camphor gum at the drugstore and chipping it up in a pint of moonshine whiskey. I think that the camphor is the medicine. Whiskey just keeps the camphor gum. You know, camphor gum will evaporate just by itself.

After the salve is mixed up, apply it directly to the wound and cover it with a bandage. If you put it on at night, let it stay all night. If it’s not done enough work by morning, put on another application and let it stay all day.

A
MANDA
T
URPIN

Mix two tablespoons soda with one and one-half tablespoons water, put that on a rag and wrap the rag around the burn.

S
AMANTHA
S
PEED

Use castor oil on burns.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

Put baking soda on the burn.

F
LORENCE
C
ARPENTER

The white of an egg and castor oil stirred up together is just as good a thing as you can put on a burn. Stops the pain and makes it heal up right quick.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

I can cure a burn in just a few minutes. Cut an Irish potato in two at the middle and lay the cut part of the potato against the burn. Bind that potato to the burned place with a handkerchief. In ten minutes, you can’t even tell you’ve been burned. That’s the truth. I’ve doctored myself. I know. The heat is gone. Let that potato stay there until it turns black. Then the place where the burn was will be as white as cotton. If you get that potato on there fast enough, it won’t even blister.

K
ENNY
R
UNION

Apple vinegar on minor burns will take out the fire. Or blow your nose and wipe the mucus on the burn.

A
NONYMOUS

Sulfur will heal a burn after the fire is drawn out.

G
LADYS
N
ICHOLS

I blow out fire using a Bible verse. You blow right direct on the burn and just talk the fire out of the burn. If you get it when it first happens it won’t blister, but if you have to wait it will make a water blister. Then I would put sewing machine oil on it. Just bind it up in sewing machine oil and that would take care of it.

It is the seventh child that can blow fire out, my daddy learned me. I haven’t told my seventh child. I’d better do that. I should write those verses off and leave ’em with somebody. [See
The Foxfire Book
, page 367.]

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Rub hands in a mixture of homemade soap and cornmeal. Bring the soap and meal to a good lather.

B
EULAH
F
ORESTER

My father made an ointment for that out of persimmon bark. Scrape persimmon bark down and cook it down to where it would be good and strong. Then put sweet milk or cream in it. Keep it rubbed on your hands and lips. I don’t make it like I used to. When my children were all at home and the Depression was on I made lots of it.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Use warm mutton tallow. When the sheep are killed, the fat is taken out and fried. The tallow is made from the grease.

A
NONYMOUS

Take a half a teaspoon of peanut butter and smear it together with the chewing gum until the gum dissolves. Then wash out.

H
ELEN
W
ALL

Just wet a cloth with kerosene and strip it down the hair (from the roots to the ends) and it’ll take every bit of that out. Kerosene won’t hurt the hair and it won’t hurt the scalp if it gets on it.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Drink a strong tea made from the leaves of pennyroyal.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

You would buy quinine from the drugstore. You would put just what would lay on the point of a knife blade in a teaspoon of water and stir it up. Take that and it would break the chills just like that.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Make an onion poultice and put on your chest to break up a cold. To make the poultice, fry chopped onions in grease until well done. Put on a cloth and lay on the chest while still warm.

M
RS
. C. E. P
INSON

When making tar, the flow of pine tar itself is preceded by some white smoke, then water. (See
Foxfire 4
, page 252.) A swallow of this water is good for a cold. The pine tar itself, rubbed on the chest, will loosen up a cold.

D
AN
H
AWKES

Chew the leaves and stems of peppermint.

L
AURA
P
ATTON

Mix mutton tallow and alum together. That’s good for colds. When you kill your sheep, cut the fat off and render it out. Put some alum in with it and mix it up. Then you put it in a jar and let it harden and make a grease cakelike patty out of it. Then when you get a cold or something you just rub it on your chest and neck. It will break a cold up.

N
UMEROUS
M
ARCUS

Put ginger and sugar in hot water. Drink this and go to bed.

G
LADYS
Q
UEEN

I
LLUSTRATION 32
Maude Houk.

For bad colds, make a tea of the leaves and stems of boneset, goldenrod, and wild rosemary. Boil these together until the water turns to a brownish tea color. If large bunches of the herbs are used in a small amount of water, the tea will turn very dark, like strong coffee. Strain and serve warm at bedtime. This should sweat the cold out of the patient. The goldenrod should be picked when it is in bloom, but do not use the blossoms.

In the fall before first frost, I would gather bunches of all three of these herbs. I’d tie each bunch up and hang it on the porch to dry. Then I had the herbs as I needed them.

M
AUDE
H
OUK

We would make a tea out of the roots of butterfly weed. If it’s just a runny nose and coughing we would make it weak. We would make it strong if we came down with a heavy cold.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Stew down some calamus root and mix a few drops with catnip tea. It’s good for colic in babies or in a grown person, either one.

N
UMEROUS
M
ARCUS

[Editor’s note: calamus is now a suspected carcinogen.]

Beat up a bulb of garlic. Make a poultice of bulb and juice and lay on the stomach.

S
AMANTHA
S
PEED

Mutton tallow salve is good for relieving chest cold congestion. Spread it on chest and back between the shoulder blades and cover with flannel.

M
RS
. E
D
N
ORTON

Mix some lard and turpentine together, put it on a cloth, and put that on your chest.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Make a tea from just the leaves of catnip. Pour boiling water over the leaves and sweeten it. To keep catnip through the winter, gather the leaves, dry them out, and keep them in a container where they can get a lot of air. They’ll keep a long time.

N
UMEROUS
M
ARCUS

Take mustard seeds and beat ’em up and mix a little flour with enough warm water to make a kind of paste. Smear it on a cloth and make a little poultice and place it right across the chest. It’d be warm and it would just turn the skin red.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Make a tea from senna leaves.

A
MY
T
RAMMELL

Take about two teaspoonfuls of turpentine.

G
LADYS
Q
UEEN

Buy croton oil at the drugstore. Put one drop of the croton oil in a glass of water and drink that.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Give kids two teaspoons of castor oil and give adults two teaspoons of Epsom salts.

S
AMANTHA
S
PEED

Shave head and wash with apple vinegar.

B
ILLY
J
OE
S
TILES

Make a tea from the stems and leaves of the larkspur. Wash your hair twice in that tea and you won’t have any more lice.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Tie five little flint rocks up in a rag. Throw them away at the forks of a road. When someone picks up the rag to see what’s in it, your corns will go away and they’ll get them.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

Take aspirin tablets worked in with a little bit of lard or Vaseline or anything to make a kind of salve. Bind the corn up with the salve and it’ll just come right out in a day or two.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

We would go up and down Sautee Creek and get the bark from red alder. We’d boil that and make tea. Add a lot of honey to it. That was our cough syrup.

F
LORA
Y
OUNGBLOOD

Drink ginger tea. Make it by mixing one tablespoon whiskey and one teaspoon honey and a dash of ginger mixed in one fourth cup hot water.

S
AMANTHA
S
PEED

Mix honey and soda together. Take a teaspoonful before you go to bed and a teaspoonful when you get up.

F
LORENCE
C
ARPENTER

Boil five lemons in a small amount of water. Slice them while hot into a clean enamel pan. Add one pound sugar. Return to fire. Add one tablespoon of oil of sweet almond, stirring constantly. Take one teaspoonful at the first onset of coughing.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

Gather holly bush limbs and boil them to make tea. Drink one cup.

B
EULAH
F
ORESTER

Wrap an onion in wet paper and bury it in hot ashes. Let it roast about thirty minutes and then squeeze out the juice. Add an equal amount of honey to the juice, mix well and take by the teaspoon as you would any cough syrup.

Or take the fat from a skinned ’possum, cook the grease out of it and keep it in a jar. As needed, take the grease and rub it on your chest to loosen cough.

B
OB
M
ASHBURN

Heat together two tablespoons kerosene oil, one tablespoon turpentine, one tablespoon camphor (if available) and one cup of pure lard. Rub the salve on temples and the upper lip for head colds and on the Adam’s apple and chest for coughs and chest colds. Cover salve on the chest with a flannel cloth.

S
TELLA
W
ALL

Use one part olive oil to one part whiskey and take two tablespoons every four hours until the cough is gone.

M
RS
. V
ERLAN
W
HITLEY

Mix one cup liquor to one half cup of honey and the juice of one lemon.

D
OROTHY
B
ECK

Add a pinch of soda to a spoonful of sorghum syrup (just enough to make it turn white) and stir and take.

E
THEL
O
WENS

Make tea by putting pine needles and boneset in boiling water. Sweeten with honey.

Or put some ground ginger from the store in a saucer and add a little sugar. Put a little of this mixture on the tongue just before bedtime. It burns the throat and will stop a cough most of the time.

A
NONYMOUS

To prevent croup in children, make a bib from a piece of chamois skin. Melt together some pine pitch and tallow and rub it into bib. Have the child wear it all the time.

D
IANE
F
ORBES

Make a little ball up of a half teaspoon of sugar, a drop of kerosene oil, and about a half teaspoon of Vicks salve. Swallow this.

A
NNIE
M
AE
H
ENRY

Mix groundhog grease, turpentine, and a little lamp oil together. Dip a rag into the mixture and saturate it. Then lay that on your chest.

W
ILMA
B
EASLEY

Dip the hot ashes right up from a fireplace. Put enough ashes in a half glass of cold water to raise the level of water to the top of the glass. Let it settle until every bit of the ashes settles to the bottom. It’ll be just as clear on top and you take a spoon and spoon off some of the water. That cold water will cool the ashes down by the time it’s ready, so it will be cool enough to drink. I still use that for the grandchildren when I can find the ashes. It’ll knock the croup out just like that.