Southern Folk Medicine

by Phyllis D. Light

  And, what could these people do once they were here? How could they survive? They could do what anyone in such a horrible situation would—the best they could with what they had. This included learning information from Native Americans about local plants, and learning information about herbs from other indentured servants and slaves who were carrying forth the information in oral form. It also meant taking aspects of other cultural groups (Native American, Scottish, Irish, Spanish, French, German, and English) and making something unique.

  In those days, people passed on the practice of folk medicine as an oral tradition, often dropping out tidbits and gems of information in normal conversation. There were some common health remedies that everyone was expected to know as part of the normal cultural experience. A person had to know and be able to use a certain amount of health and herbal information in order to survive. Times were hard and lean, and everyone depended upon the land and its resources for life and livelihood. This commonality helped create movement of healthcare information across economic and social lines.

  As Sharla M. Fett writes in Working Cures, fluidity of healthcare information had been in practice since the beginning of the country. Even in the antebellum South, people sought “effective medicines and skilled practitioners across lines of social division. Therapies circulated with surprising fluidity as health seekers turned to Thomsonianism, homeopathy, water cure, Indian remedies, and Hoodoo.” The willingness to move across social lines for healthcare information is still the norm today. Southerners from all economic stations of life are quite comfortable consulting herbalists, seers, scripture, energy healers, almanacs, and the information passed around in family, church groups, and neighborhoods.

  From the very beginning of their experiences in North America, African slaves faced daunting health issues. Often their masters seemed to be virtually indifferent as to whether they survived or perished. Logically to modern sensibilities, it would seem that slave owners, for economic and humanitarian reasons, would have maintained their human property in healthy, working order, but that wasn’t always the case, especially in the Caribbean. The horrendous conditions on slave ships, where astoundingly large numbers of Africans died before ever reaching North America, showed that slave traders often didn’t value the slaves despite their monetary value.

  According to Iain Gately, author of Tobacco, the “received wisdom” at many sugar plantations in the early British colonies was that it was beneficial to simply work slaves to death. Consequently, as he points out, the number of slaves in Barbados barely increased by 25,000 during the first fifty years of the eighteenth century, despite the fact that during that time over 150,000 slaves had been shipped to the island. Later, on the mainland of North America, conditions for slaves marginally improved as owners saw the economic advantages of letting them survive long enough to have children. As Gately notes, for many farmers, the value of their slaves represented their largest single investment; in contrast, the land they cultivated was relatively inexpensive.

  During the antebellum South, an early conceptual conflict arose around the different definitions of health between the owner and the slaves. The idea of health and happiness for slaves was severely limited by their servitude and life experiences. Slaves were also restricted, bound in their healing experiences and practices, by how much latitude their owners permitted in the use of herbs and other healing techniques. Some owners permitted slaves to choose their own remedies, which fostered a sense of independence for the slaves and the appearance of some control over their lives. Other owners refused to allow their slaves to learn about herbs, fearing that the knowledge of plants and poisons might be turned against them. And some owners called in white doctors to treat their slaves.

  Medical knowledge, science, herb use, religion, and conjuring often clashed on the plantation because of different views held by slaves and owners over both the causes of illness and treatment of the sick. African-American slaves believed that physical illness could be caused by curses, conjuring, or spiritual degradation, and often viewed medical help offered by white doctors as worthless. White conventional doctors did not believe that illness could be caused by emotions or spirits.

  In addition to the influence on Southern Folk Medicine, the coming together of Celtic culture and Africa in the South produced other amazing contributions to American culture: in music, the creation or influence on jazz, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, hip-hop, country music, ragtime, boogie woogie, rap, soul, and pop songs; in dance, the creation or influence on tap, jazz dance, buck dance, stick dances, swing, jitterbug, juke joint dancing, break dance, and hip-hop. Oh, and let’s not forget the banjo. What would bluegrass be without the banjo?

  The Irish and British Isles

  The Irish arrived much earlier in the New World than is taught in most public schools. According to Donald Harman Akenson, author of If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630–1730, “The first significant number of Irishmen to serve the European powers in the Western Hemisphere seem to have been part of the Spanish garrison in Florida in the mid-1560s.” Irish priests also came with Spanish explorers, and an Irish priest served the city of St. Augustine from 1598 to 1606. The Irish count, Arthur O’Neil, was the Spanish governor of West Florida beginning in 1781. Historical sources also believe that Irish soldiers served with Spanish explorers in the late 1500s. Whether these soldiers interacted with local natives is unknown.

  Britain was late to settle the New World. By the time the British sought to stake a claim here, the Swedish and Dutch had already joined the Spanish and French in claiming land. Britain was slow to move due to internal religious strife and turmoil, and the extreme poverty of the nation. In addition, early attempts at colonization had proved disastrous, including the lost colony of Roanoke in 1585, and sparked little interest in the potential for further monetary loss.

  British colonies, unlike the Spanish and French, which were funded almost exclusively by the monarchies, were funded in a variety of ways. There were the joint-stock companies, which sold stock in the colonies to investors; these charter companies were a forerunner of the modern corporation. There were crown or royal colonies, which were under the direct rule of a governor appointed by the monarchy. And there were also proprietary colonies given as rewards to friends and allies of the British monarchy.

  Expeditions to the New World were often led by minor sons of well-to-do families, wealthy merchants, and, in the northeast, by the Puritans. British venturers searched futilely for gold and precious gems. It was, for the British, an herb that finally created the wealth they sought. Growing tobacco, which required a large labor force, was the first profitable investment by the British in the New World. Indentured servants, both British and Irish, were brought to grow tobacco in the South and the British Caribbean Islands.

  Initially, indentured servants brought by the British were generally young, single, indentured Irish men, and British landless and convicts. There was a great need for strong labor to clear and tend vast amounts of acreage. Indentured servants worked a limited number of years, usually seven, and were then given their freedom. Although indentured servitude was harsh, it was not slavery, and many people willingly indentured themselves for the opportunity for a more prosperous life in the New World. Ultimately, the number of indentured servants, who came willingly or unwillingly to the New World, could not keep up with the demand for labor. In addition, freed indentured servants often became competition for their previous masters. For these reasons, by the late 1600s, black slaves were beginning to fill the gaps in the labor force.

  Britain used the New World as a penal colony for convicts and criminals to work off their sentences. It’s estimated that at least half-a-million indentured servants went to British holdings in the Caribbean. The New World was also a pressure valve to relieve the overpopulated British Isles, which boasted a huge poor and landless population. Whole families immigrated to the Northeast seeking a better life. Britain was also at war with Spain, and settl
ing the New World was seen as a way to extend their rivalry on other shores.

  By 1620, the Virginia Company of London was exporting only one crop—tobacco. According to Thomas Hariot in A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588): “Its leaves are dried, made into powder, and then smoked by being sucked through clay pipes into the stomach and head. The fumes purge superfluous phlegm and gross humors from the body by opening all the pores and passages. Thus its use not only preserves the body, but if there are any obstructions it breaks them up. By this means the natives are kept in excellent health, without many of the grievous diseases which often afflict us in England.” By 1630, over one million pounds of tobacco were being exported from Virginia annually.

  The New World also helped provide a solution for the British to the Irish problem. The Irish were removed from the British Isles in even greater number than British landless and convicts. Beginning in 1490, and continuing in four waves through 1603, England undertook an ethnic cleansing of the Irish, especially of Irish Catholics, in order to vacate lands for Protestant landowners and English and Scottish tenant farmers. The Irish were forced off the land, often emigrating to France or Spain and the British Caribbean islands. Ultimately, English landowners had trouble finding English or Scottish tenants to work the land and eventually returned to using Irish tenants. This was known as the Plantation period, and it was this Plantation model that the English later brought to the Southern United States to grow cotton and tobacco.

  Initially, hundreds of Irish either voluntarily left Ireland or were banished. Whole clans left to avoid death or servitude. Irish families followed their chieftains into exile, bringing with them their healers, to settle in the New World or Europe. It is this fact, that the Irish who left voluntarily brought their healers, that is unique in its influence on Southern and Caribbean Folk Medicine. The exodus of healers and seers from Ireland left the remaining Irish people with reduced medical care and a reduced traditional Irish folk medicine.

  The practice of Irish indentured servitude in the British New World continued through the reigns of James I and II and through Charles I, but it was Oliver Cromwell who devastated the Irish population. Farm workers, Irish beggars, criminals, and orphans were also indentured to the New World. Although the exact numbers of Irish men, women, and children who were indentured to North America and the Caribbean as forced labor is greatly debated, there is no doubt that this grievous situation existed. Through either death, forced removal, or famine, the population of Ireland fell from 1,500,000 to about 600,000.

  The majority of the Irish who came to the British New World as indentured servants or felons went to the Caribbean. According to Grady McWhiney, in Cracker Culture, “By the time of the Restoration, Irish constituted a large majority of the perhaps 80,000 white inhabitants of the English islands in the Caribbean. Barbados had, at that time, about 30,000 black slaves and about 20,000 indentured white felons and rebels, these being overwhelmingly Irish; St. Christopher was said to contain 20,000 Irish.” Today, about 30 percent of the population of Montserrat have Irish surnames. Beginning in 1669, the Irish labor force in the Caribbean was being replaced by black slaves from Africa.

  As Irish indentured servants in the Caribbean were freed, many made their way into the Gulf of Mexico or along the southern Atlantic coast, and from there contributed to the large number of Irish in the South, exploring and settling from the southern shore upward.

  According to McWhiney, by 1640, more than 5,000 Irish had settled in Virginia, either by emigration, as indentured servants, felons, or rebels, or had been kidnapped and sent to the New World. Between 1720 and 1760, around 30,000 Irish arrived in Maryland and Virginia as convicts. By 1790, it is estimated that the Irish comprised 25 percent of the population of South Carolina and 27 percent of the population of Georgia. As Irish servants worked off their freedom in Virginia, they moved further south into the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. This trend continued through the migration of the Scotch-Irish in the 1750s and happened again in the 1840s.

  The Scotch-Irish didn’t arrive in the South until the late 1700s, and the largest wave arrived in the decades prior to the Civil War, around 1839. Along with their energy and independence, they also brought their own view of health and a unique system of healthcare based on hundreds of years of living in a cold, damp land. Later waves of free Scotch-Irish came in droves to ports in the northeast and filtered down into the Appalachian mountains, seeking the independence promised in a new land.

  During this later Irish emigration, whole families left Ireland in hopes of acquiring land, a situation that was patently impossible back home. They brought much of their folk medicine and cultural constructs with them, in a much more traceable manner than Africans were able to do.

  Being of a clannish nature, early Celts to the South intermarried regularly with Native Americans. Marriages with natives helped facilitate the acceptance of white settlers in the area, gave them authority in local European government, and helped them receive large land grants. Many important Southern families began their land empires by marrying into local tribes—Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws. These intermarriages produced such prominent Native chiefs as William Mcintosh and Alexander McGillivray of the Creek and William Hicks and John Looney of the Cherokee.

  Other ways in which Irish folk medicine influenced Southern Folk Medicine are both practical and superstitious. Lard, or pig grease, was the most common medium for salve making in Ireland and became so in the South. In the early days, almost every community in the South had a bonesetter, and so did the communities in Ireland. In Ireland, the position of healer or herbalist was generally an inherited one, and information and knowledge stayed within families. The same is true in parts of the South. Both Tommie Bass’s parents were knowledgeable herbalists, and their salve recipe had been brought by the family from the British Isles. My initial teachings came from my grandmother and father, who carried down information through the generations.

  Irish folk medicine practices often contained a ritual with a Christian element. In Southern Folk Medicine, this is also true. Talking off warts, blowing fire, or stopping blood usually consists of an action, an herb, and a prayer or Bible verse. And let’s not forget prayer and faith healing. The bowl of Irish oat mush and milk became, in the South, crumbled cornbread and milk or grits and milk. Scotch whiskey from barley became bourbon made from corn.

  The Irish and Scotch-Irish had already integrated Christianity into their healing system when they arrived in the New World—Christianity and superstition often went hand in hand for these immigrants. The duality of Irish and Scotch-Irish folk practices can be seen in the use of moon signs, astrology, and the view that spiritual actions could cause illness, a view also held by Africans. These concepts greatly impacted Southern Folk Medicine.

  The Irish folk system, much like the Native American one, also viewed illnesses as either “natural” or “unnatural.” Here is a passage from the Rosa Anglica, which was probably written in 1314. I quote the English translation from the fourth printed edition, Augsburg, 1595, discussing both natural and unnatural fevers: “Fever is the same as natural heat turning to fieriness, according to Hippocrates and Galen.…This is tertian fever, unnatural heat generated from increase of choler which afflicts every action.…” As you can see, the humoral or Greek system of medicine was quite entrenched in Ireland before the 1300s.

  From the Rosa Anglica, a sure cure for warts: “Item take burnt willow bark and mix it with vinegar; this will cure warts on being applied to them.” I would like to point out that willow bark contains salicylic acid, the same compound that is found in many over-the-counter wart remedies today. Also, vinegar is still an excellent home remedy for removing warts. In the Rosa Anglica, both remedies are combined, which should give excellent results. The text also mentions using cobwebs or spider webs to stop the flow of blood, which is another traditional Appalachian remedy.

  Economic ways also emigrated from
Ireland to the South. By the Civil War, more than half the men in the South did not own any land, which was concentrated in the hands of the few, much like in Ireland during the times of immigration. This is a pattern that continued in the South. Fischer writes in Albion’s Seed, “In 1983, the top 1 percent of owners possessed half of the land in Appalachia. The top 5 percent owned nearly two-thirds. This pattern of wealth distribution…in the twentieth century was much like that which had existed two hundred years earlier.”

  Regional Isolation, War, and Depression

  The massive plantation culture brought to the New World by the English served to isolate and separate the peoples of the South from the rest of the country in very significant ways. The isolation of the poor whites, slaves, and Native Americans from conventional society nurtured the Southern Folk Medicine and allowed it to evolve unhindered from outside influences for generations.

  By the first part of the nineteenth century, slavery in the South was largely confined to rural areas where every inch of fertile, flat land was planted with cotton. The isolation of the plantations made supervision of the slaves easy. National laws against the slave trade slowed the flow of Africans into the South but did not abolish slavery. After 1810, most slaves were born in North America, a truly American culture, often the descendants of families that had been in this country longer than their owners.

  A look at the class makeup in the pre–Civil War era and immediately following the war allows a glimpse of understanding into the continued development of Southern Folk Medicine. During this time, the South was divided into various classes of white Christians; at one extreme were the landowners (planters) and at the other extreme were the poor whites (non–land owners, non-merchants), who, in the lowly vernacular, were called “white trash” or “crackers.” Unless they were indentured servants, poor whites were excluded from working on plantations alongside the slaves because of the color of their skin. Poor whites were uneducated, and this prevented them from any economic opportunity. The people in these poor white communities were as isolated from society as those on the plantations, but in a different way. Those closest to the poor whites in social status were the slaves. These two groups interacted and shared information, but were also antagonistic toward each other, a situation encouraged by the wealthy. The isolation of the poor whites from the rest of white society helped nurture local folk medicine, a healing system not bound to the communities of poor whites or blacks, but one which flourished in each and traveled across racial and economic lines.