See Oatmeal and the Catechism:
Chapter 4, 'In Sickness and in Health'. This chapter is based on
tape-recorded interviews with Quebec Gaels whose families continued
to rely on traditional medicine long after the introduction of doctors.
Comparisons are drawn between medical knowledge recorded in Scotland
and that practised in Quebec (including newly adapted procedures).
Appalachian comparisons are cited in the footnotes, as are other
bibliographic references. The subjects covered include: Childbirth
and Midwifery; General cures, tonics, and preventatives; Supernatural
charms and the Gift of Healing.
e.g. Ivy MacDonald recalled a recipe for ointment, which had been
the old standby, for family and community, for more than a century:
That was from Kenny's mother-yes. ... It should have been lamb,
lamb tallow, but no-one had lambs around, so we used deer, and it's
very much the same, and rosin. And you melted rosin-you could buy
it in those days. People used it for violin bows, and so on-that
rosin, see. And we crushed it and melted it and mixed it into quite
a thick, oh, kind of a sticky paste.
Ivy would make "say, a couple of cupfuls of melted stuff;
never measured it. [but the proportion of tallow to rosin was] a
whole lot more fat than rosin, you know," and she would store
it in little jars saved for the purpose. "And it was just
wonderful for healing-just wonderful for healing.... I'd keep
a jar in the house-always, always, always-"
I remember one time, one of my brothers was working in the woods.
He was working on a saw-he had one of them-and he fell on his hand.
And it was in the woods when they were working there, and my father
tore his shirt, you know, so as to get him home-he was bleeding
to death. And of course the nearest doctor would be in Scotstown,
near on seventeen miles. And do you know what my mother did? I'll
never forget about it. You know in them days we used to get the
flour in barrels. And she just went with her hand and took the flour
out-white flour-until the doctor came. So he wouldn't bleed to death
she was putting flour on it to stop it, you know. Of course the
blood was oozing out.(BEK 8:A)
By the time the doctor arrived, the flour had formed a coagulated
mass, a mixture of flour and blood, over the cut and the bleeding
was minimal. Bessie then watched him dress her brother's wound.
He took some, though not all, of the flour mixture off the cut and
bandaged it up. In time, the arm healed perfectly and was as good
as it had always been.
See also:
"Folk cures from Betsy Whyte" in Tocher 45, 1993.
