Toad ointment, Dentist, Natural medicines, Medicine in 1600, Bartram
The Suwannee River and its environs
Let's jump right into the middle of Ms. Matschat's book on the Suwannee River. While she is describing the life and lore of the river in a fictionalized account, she has done her homework well. Lifted from a section where an old woman is describing remedies, love potions, charms and the like are the following:
Remedies:
Headaches/coughs --- Snakeroot (powdered)
Sores --- Persimmons sprouts, (ground), apply as a poultice
Toothache --- Boxwood (juice)
Nosebleed --- Puffball fungus
Burns/Bruises --- Plantain leaves (crushed)
Sties --- Corn meal and honey (poultice applied to affected eye)
Constipation --- Virginia creeper ( Tea made from stem and fruit)
Indigestion --- Ginger tea
Fainting spells --- Strawberries
Warts --- Frog (live, cut in half and applied to wart while still warm)
Giddiness or fever --- Seeds of parsley, dill, rue, cellandine and fever few (equal quantities of each taken orally)
Jaundice --- Wild orange and basil tea
To strengthen mind --- Rosemary (crushed) in scuppernong wine
Stuttering --- Snake eggs
Thrush (in babies) --- Tansy tea
Love Potions and Charms:
To win a man --- White moss from the skull of a murdered man, picked in the graveyard at the full of the moon. Wear this tied in a piece of blue cotton cloth around your neck. Guaranteed!
To bring back a beloved one --- Three drops of blood from a snake while it is still alive. Mix with a small pinch of ground dried spider. And, stir well into half cup of corn liquor (green, i.e., not aged)
For multiple births --- A gallstone from a deer, carried in your pocket or tied around your neck.
To keep a husband or wife faithful --- A stone from the crop of an eagle, worn around the neck.
To cause a straying husband or wife to return --- Burn seven sprouts of a young persimmon tree.
To attract one of the opposite sex --- Seven hairs from a black cat, seven scales from a rattlesnake, seven bits of feathers from an owl, a bit of hair from the head of the person you desire, plus a bit of nail paring. Cook for seven minutes over a hot fire in the first rain water caught in April. Sprinkle on the clothes of the person to be charmed.
Fertility --- Throw cow peas on a traveled road so that they will be ground into dust. (works for wives and cattle)
The above were "cures" of the 1700's, 1800's, practiced by the people who lived along the Suwannee river in Georgia and Florida. Prior to the development of our pharmaceutical industry, native plants were used to treat or ward off injuries and diseases. Knowledge of these naturalceutics came either from the Indians, trial and error on the part of the desperate families or from a practitioner of the arts. Was this a sham, humbug or deception? Of course not! One does what one has to do to try to solve a problem. Even now we are learning that some of these ancient remedies have a thread of truth in them. How else do you explain our ready acceptance of the use of extracts from yew to treat ovarian cancer.
It seems a natural extension to develop mind altering drugs from the lore of plant chemistry. Not too unlike our current day use of crutches to ease our each and every pain or perceived misery.
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In Suwannee River: Strange Green Land, a book by Cecile Hulse Matschat, the shaping of the peoples inhabiting the area by their environment is a detailed in a story concerning a trip from the Okefenokee swamp to Cedar Key, an island in the Gulf. Ms. Matschat's style of writing and detail and her thorough research is much like Michener's in, as example, "Chesapeake". Not bad, considering Ms. Matschat did this in 1938!. The book is one of a series by The Literary Guild which was to address the development of our country by telling stories of the inhabitants of the Great Rivers of North America. This commendable offering puts history in the perspective of an artist, rather than from an academic view. While the stated intent was to be a literary and not an historical series, produced by novelist and poets, it failed. History is nothing but a collection of events in the lives of common people, and the series relates this very well. Clearly modern day historians try to shape history to their own ideological whims. Theo White and others who fill the shelves with their own self-serving viewpoints do a disservice to us all. And how else do you explain our schools attempts to discredit or disassociate the teaching of history from the Eurocentric base.
ABOUT Joe Wortham.
Now to tie this writing with that of William Bartram, Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Jim Moore.
For other writings on medical practices, Charles II describes treatment of the King of England in 1685 which hastened his trip to the Great Beyond. William Bartram had intended to write a book on pharmacology and many of his notes were used by others and not attributed to him. A brief listing of treatments of various diseases as described by William Bartram and their treatment is in the latest book on Bartram.