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Appalachian Healing Traditions
Talk
for Cleveland Symposium - April 4, 2007
My herbal training began with the plant-lore
passed down through my Tennessee ancestors who settled Texas.
My great-great-grandfather is the one who said “Remember the
Alamo”. And his line comes down from Pocahontas, whose mother
was Cherokee. One of the words used for her people meant
“bark- eater”, because they were known for their healing
remedies. I believe that can be an inherited gene just like
musical talent or mathematical ability.
More than ½ my life as been spent living and
learning from Appalachian mountain people including the
traditional Cherokee. For more than 30 years I was privileged
to be the student of the first writer of Foxfire, Marie
Mellinger. A true Ethnobotanist before the term was even
coined. She recently passed away at age 92. Her former
husband was an Ojibwa from Wisconsin. I inherited all of her
botanical slides and papers and among them are 40 yr old
photographs of Ojibwa Chiefs in their native dress. It seems
most appropriate that these photographs should go home with
these honored guests from the Ojibwa nation.
The
Healing Traditions of Appalachia, or Folk Remedies, are
mingled with the herbal knowledge of the Iroquois and other
Woodland Indians. When the first European colonists came to
this unknown country, they brought familiar plants and seeds
for food and medicines, as well as the available herb books of
that age. Namely Gerard’s Herbal and Culpepper’s. This gave
them a working knowledge of about 300 formulas. They soon
found that their Indian neighbors, of whom the Cherokee were
the most numerous tribe, were trained in 600 formulas of the
native plants and barks. Eventually, about 250 medicinal
formulas were added to the official Pharmacopoeia.
Healing
then, crossed the cultural barriers, as whites adopted the use
of ginseng, sassafras, wild cherry bark, sumac, black walnut,
dogwood bark, yellowroot, club moss, etc. And since this is a
room full of medical people, you may be interested in what
doctors used for surgical gloves before rubber and plastics.
They coated their hands with lycopodium powder, the spores of
club moss, which is both water repellant and antiseptic.
The
native peoples adopted the plant immigrants such as mullein,
catnip mint (not for a pet cat, but to soothe colicky babies),
peaches, and plantain, and many others. Plantain, Plantago
major, was called “Englishman’s Foot”, because everywhere the
white man put his foot down, this plant grew! For its ability
to relieve pain and swelling, it became an important snakebite
poultice for the Tuscorara.
Sassafras was actually the first export from the New World to
the Old, before tobacco. The long sea voyages caused many new
arrivals to suffer from scurvy. The Natives who greeted them
recognized the illness, and treated them with Sassafras root
tea. Their rapid recovery caused great rejoicing and sparked
a profitable trade in the root. It was called “the Good News
out of the New World”. Though it does not cure as many
aliments as once claimed, it still is a popular beverage as
well as medicinal tonic in Appalachia. It is said “that in
the spring of the year when the blood is too thick, there is
nothing so fine as a Sassafras stick.” It was one of the
ingredients in the first iron and vitamin tonic marketed
commercially, which is still available today. SSS tonic was an
Indian formula patented by a South Carolina judge in 1857.
The 3 S’s originally stood for Sassafras, Spicebush, and Sweet
Birch
And
another spring tradition centered on a native plant eaten for
health, is taking place this month across the mountains, with
the annual Ramp Festivals. Ramps are a pungent member of the
allium family, actually our North American Leeks. For those
unfamiliar with this native vegetable, they could be
considered “industrial strength onions” they are so strong in
sulphide compounds. Since it was once believed the family
needed a good “spring cleaning” after a sedentary winter
eating dried vegetables and salted meat, either sulfur and
molasses was taken, or where available, you could eat a “mess
o’ ramps” for a tastier alternative. If you do eat them,
everybody knows you’ve eaten them, so it became a good
idea for the whole community to get together and eat them all
at the same time! And that started the fundraising Ramp
Festivals for the local Fire Departments.
Shrub
Yellowroot is another widely known native plant. It is a
common remedy mentioned throughout the Appalachian region.
Given for any ailment of the stomach, kidneys, liver, or
bladder. It has antibiotic properties like Goldenseal, but
safer to use. Its yellow color follows the way most indigenous
people figured out what to use for medicine – the “Doctrine of
Signatures”. How much of the folklore holds true? When
plants could be studied scientifically it was found that 75%
contained properties that made it appropriate to the belief,
and the other 25% though not what was thought, were found to
be useful for something else. Great percentages! Who of us
has not taken honey and lemon juice for a sore throat? We now
know as excellent for combating Streptococcus aureus. Honey
as well as garlic was used in wartime to heal wounds, an
effective treatment it turns out.
Because the Appalachian chain was never glaciated,
its flora is greater than anywhere else on the N. American
continent. With its incredible diversity, Appalachia has
always provided the plant material necessary for
pharmaceuticals. The Shakers were the first to publish a mail
order catalog sent to physicians in 1837. They gathered from
the local woods and fields and started the first herb farms to
provide enough to fill orders.
Appalachia provides to this day an income from “wildcrafting”.
25% of our prescription medicines in the U.S. still come from
native plants and barks. And other countries depend on our
wealth of plant diversity. Bloodroot, once an ingredient in
toothpaste and mouthwash, has now become essential for a
German animal feed company after Mad Cow Disease hit Europe.
They asked
Wildcrafters recently for 20 tons of material! Claiming it
prevents Scours in farm animals. Black Cohosh is in great
demand worldwide for its use in such products for Menopause as
“Remifemin”. It is interesting to note however, that the most
sought after root, and the most valuable, Ginseng, is almost
exclusively shipped to the Asian markets. Their supply and
demand determines the price paid here, which runs between $300
to $460 a dried pound. Our neighbor made his down payment for
his house with a harvest of Ginseng totaling $15,000, and
furnished it with another $15,000 he made selling log moss to
wholesale florists.
Rural
Appalachia, then, continues to hold on to remnants of its
knowledge of plant uses: For some as a source of income, for
others a way to keep medical costs down, and for the native
people, a way to pass traditional knowledge to another
generation. Doctors were not unknown to early settlements,
and could have been sent for when the situation was beyond
home treatment. Accidents with axes or knives were not
uncommon and required skilled suturing, and many women risked
death from burns if their clothing caught on fire at the
hearth. There were “Granny Women” in every community who were
trusted to birth the babies, give advice to new mothers, and
serve as the local “Herb Doctor”.
In the
past 50 years there were still those who were said to “take
the fire out of a burn” and “stop bleeding wounds” by saying
certain bible verses. This practice and other methods which
we would call placebo effect, superstition, or ignorance
today, were probably not condoned by physicians even then.
This accounts for one reason some chose not to call a doctor
in, and relied on home doctorin’. Another reason was lack of
cash money. The Physician’s fee must be paid, and sometimes
there might not even be anything to barter with.
One
common reason was distrust. Even when my parents were growing
up, there were physicians who had minimal training in
medicine. 40 years ago, my own father died because he
believed that when you had cancer, “it will spread if you let
them cut on you”. A self-fulfilling prophecy since people
frequently waited too long to see a doctor and the despairing
physician could do nothing but keep the patient comfortable
until the inevitable end. Yet I would not be here today had my
mother not distrusted the only doctor in the small Alabama
town because he was a habitual drunk, and moved us back to
Houston. Turned out I was a breach birth and an Rh factor
baby, so her instincts were right.
Our family doctor believed too many people rush to
the doctor’s office or emergency room too quickly. With some
knowledge of symptoms, and common sense “kitchen pharmacy”,
many could prevent unnecessary panic and overuse of drugs as
in antibiotics. As a result, I was raised with home remedies
where possible, and I did the same with my daughter. My
husband, Jerry, has benefited from alternative therapy when he
had pneumonia and we could not afford the cost of a doctor or
buy a prescription. I believe he pulled through with
goldenseal and honey, along with chest poultices and vapor
tent. Another remedy for chest congestion we rely on was
learned from our Cherokee neighbors: witch hazel and mullein
tea.
There have been times when he needed to get to his
doctor but we were snowed in so deep an ambulance couldn’t get
to us. And I resorted to “kitchen pharmacy”, a castor oil and
warm cabbage leaf poultice, to relieve his pain until we could
get out. 2 of his 5 doctors listen to what we use and write
it in the chart. They know many of their patients live in
remote places in the mountains, and the information may help
when a trip into town is impossible. Any doctor who practices
in a small town, gains the trust of the local people, if he
takes the time to listen to his patients, and to take
seriously their own trust in traditional home remedies.
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