Old
Time Remedies
for People & Animals
courtesy
of Sedona Historical Society
After
reading this story, you may wonder
why they were called the "Good Ole Days!"
Sedona pioneer
Roe Smith was the son of Link (Abraham Lincoln) Smith and
Addie Smith. Addie was sickly much of her life and young Roe
slept on a pallet near her so that he could prepare medicine
for her if she had an attack of illness in the middle of the
night.
Because of this
experience early in life, it seemed that Roe was thereafter
often called upon to advise neighbors on home remedies. The
following are some of his remedies from the early 1900s:
• Earache:
blow pipe smoke in the ear
• Draw out
infection: turpentine alone or turpentine, sugar, salt pork
and soap as a poultice
• Blood poisoning:
Potash of Mercury dissolved in water
• Insect sting:
apply chewing tobacco, mud, sliced onion and bluing
• Pneumonia:
apply a mustard plaster
• Croup: 1-2
drops of kerosene on a tsp. of sugar
• Deep cuts
(animals or people): pack flour into the cut (stops bleeding)
• Diaper rash:
burnt flour or cornstarch
• Coughs:
whiskey, lemon, and honey
• Sunburn:
wring out a cloth in strong tea, vinegar or canned milk; put
cloth on skin; or a paste of cornstarch & water
• Toothache:
hold vinegar on tooth
• Arthritis:
bind potato slices on both sides of affected joint; wear a
copper bracelet
• Chronic
nosebleed: wear necklace made of lead
• Gallstones:
fast for 24 hours; then eat a quart of tomatoes; four hours
later, eat a lemon; wait one hour and take a big dose of Epson’s
Salts
Another local family,
the Loys, used spider webs on cuts, and whiskey for toothaches.
From yet other
sources we found these "cures":
• Earaches:
warm urine poured into the ear
• Fevers:
could be broken by frequent sponging off with soda water or
a mix of baking powder and lard smeared on the body
• Measles:
cured by eating a well-roasted mouse; also a tea made of sheep
pellets was used to "break out" measles
• Snake bite:
apply whiskey on the bite and use warm horse manure to draw
out the poison
• Whooping
cough: drink mare’s milk with whiskey
How many of you
remember your mother having an Aloe Vera plant in the window?
Aloe liquid was used for cuts, wounds, insomnia, stomach disorders,
pain, constipation, hemorrhoids, itching, headache, mouth
and gum disorders, kidney ailments, sunburns, scalds, ulcers,
arthritis, asthma among others.
And
then there was the "stand-by," Castor Oil. Whiskey
and flavored liqueurs or ‘cordials’ were considered
‘medicinal’ and proper for babies, "ladies"
and rough-necks. In the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog of
1900, items listed as "Family Remedies" were sold
on the same pages as laundry or home cleaners ... some serving
double duty.
In 1973, an unknown
83-year-old author wrote an article on this subject for the
local newspaper. The recollections were of home veterinarian
remedies used on the family plantation in South Carolina,
pre-1900. Remember, these cures were for animals:
• Screwworms:
1/2 cup honey & 1/2 cup water poured into wound drives
worms out
• Colic: feed
thin cut plug of chewing tobacco with small amount of salt
• Intestinal
worms: for horses or mules, gather roots of small black walnut
tree; cut up and boil ‘substance’ out of roots;
pour in animal; worms soon leave
• Animal miscarriage:
never feed fresh pumpkin to a pregnant pig or cow
• Worms in
dogs: inner bark of Dogwood tree cut fine; fried in grease;
sometimes feeding with black gunpowder on a piece of meat
also worked
• Rattlesnake
bite for dogs: mix powdered Alum with fresh meat and force
down throat
• Cuts &
abrasions: pour turpentine in wound
