Many people wonder how we survived without all the drugs and across the counter remedies advertised today. I don't remember ever having a prescription filled. I never had a broken bone or any serious illness or wound. One thing in our favor was life with plenty of exercise and breathing air much cleaner than it is today. We also got plenty of exercise from daylight until dark. Even a trip to the toilet was walking to the outdoor privy a short distance from the house and often at night carrying a lantern. We couldn't sit and watch TV for hours because there wasn't any TV. We took no vitamins because we never heard of them and we apparently got the essentials in our food. Not one of us ever got fat and over-weight. We had no central heat or running water and we slept in a cold room with lots of fresh air and plenty of warm covers. We had a wonderful doctor when we needed him. I don't remember ever having to go to him. He and an efficient registered nurse brought us through the only epidemic we ever experienced, the deadly influenza of 1918-1919, which killed over 20,000,000 world wide. This doctor will always be remembered by me. He was a tall, slender handsome man. I probably remembered him also because he engaged in two activities that always appealed to me. He came frequently to the farm to hunt quail with my father. Once a week, he also fished for bass in the Potomac. I have seen him standing almost waist deep in the river with a minnow bucket tied to his waist and he caught fish. He also took care of my mother whenever we were born. No babies were ever born in a hospital but at home. Incidentally two of our three children born in the late thirties and early forties were born at home. *1 Our daughter is the only one born in a hospital.
What were the remedies my parents used when we were ill? I had the usual childhood diseases. I had measles, mumps, whooping cough. chicken pox, but no one of our family even had diphtheria and we were vaccinated for small-pox. We must have had something for fevers. Our doctor provided this and it was usually pink pill which probably was aspirin. We missed very little time at school because of sickness. For congestion my mother used mustard plasters and Vicks or Camphor. In the Appalachians west of us, I later learned of a remedy for chest congestion we didn't know about. We no doubt would not have used it even if we had known about it. It was the fat from a skunk. You took two spoonfuls by mouth and rubbed the rest of it on your chest. Another was hog fat, turpentine, and kerosene rubbed on the chest. We had all these ingredients on the farm, including skunks however my mother did know about them. There was one remedy that was considered a panacea by the Greeks and some modern authorities, also my mother didn't know about it. I learned about it much later. Its ingredients were an equal ounce of vinegar and honey. I have seen it frequently in folk lore. I found it also several times in other literature, it was used by Hippocrates in 400 B.C. I also saw a reference to several doctors about the same time as Hippocrates discussing their patients. They talked about rheumatism, ? , asthma, tetanus, anthrax, diphtheria, and hypochondriacs. The latter is what provides a ready market for all the medicine on the shelves of pharmacies today. I have used often the vinegar and honey remedy probably because it tastes good about like cider where it has a slight tang. I also remember the use of asafetida in a bag around the neck hanging down over the chest. It came from an Asian plant of the carrot family and has a very bad smell and is considered an anti-spasmodic remedy. My parents knew about bacteria. They didn't know about its age. I recently saw a picture of fossil bacteria found in chert, which is a silica sedimentary rock which could be organic and it was 2 billion years old and speaking about bacteria, I now know that bites was a common wound and we had bites of one kind or another. Dogs, snakes, horses, insects, chickens, cats, dogs. But we were never bitten by a human which is the worst bite of all because the mouth of a human contains the most deadly bacteria. Remedies I did remember are castoria and cascara. I'm not sure what they were for. Cascara was probably for constipation and the castoria was probably for diherrea. There was no alcohol problem in our home. My father never drank, and incidentally, he never used profanity, but there was alcohol in the medicine cabinet because my mother sometimes gave us a hot toddy which is whiskey with sugar and water. Many people still recommend hot chicken broth for colds and fever. We had plenty of these available, but there was another that my mother must have thought was special. It is the broth from a young pigeon called a squab. There were many pigeons in our barn and often I climbed up to a nest and took out the young that couldn't yet fly. The diseases of our childhood caused disasters by American Indian tribes. They didn't have the immunity that our ancestors had when they came from Europe. It was not so many years before my birth in 1914 that discoveries were made in medicine and biology. My parents knew about these discoveries such as discovery of vaccination for small-pox, the introducing of either, an anesthetic, Joseph Lister discovery that washing the hands and instruments before surgery saved lives, especially in childbirth. Many people in my early years knew about Pasteur's discovery of the germ theory of disease. It was not until just before World War I that vitamins were discovered. The British many years before learned about vitamin C which prevents scurvy the scourge of long sea voyages. They probably didn't know what they had discovered but knew that sauerkraut and citrus juices prevent it. There is one narcotic that mother knew about in my first years, paregoric for diarrhea and stomach ache and cutting teeth. A prescription is need to buy it today. However they didn't know yet about antibiotics. So there was not yet penicillin and sulpha. There was one event in my early years that frightened me. It brought both fear and homesickness. I was left with my aunts when my mother was sent to Baltimore for a mastoid operation. Surgery about the head was so mysterious and I have never heard of this ailment. It sounded so mysterious with dark portents of death and these aunts were no help. For years to come I never had the love for them I should have had. It was a joyous day when mother returned and was well. In these early years we had never heard of a virus, no abortions, or homosexuals, at least we had never heard of them. There were abortions I know but they were secret and performed by abortionist about whom it was whispered. I knew there were homosexuals. They had always been with us. But they too were very secretive. So you see life was good during those days and best of all were happy.
*1 Dale Walton MORROW, b. 30 Oct 1927, in the parlor of grandfather W. M. MYERS' farm house near Swan Pond, Berkeley Co., WV. William Ruthvan MORROW, b. 7 Dec 1938, in the Methodist Parsonage at Burlington, Mineral Co., WV. Dianne Virginia MORROW was b. 2 Feb 1948, at the Myers Clinic in Philipi, Barbour Co., WV. ( DWM)
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