Hog Scald soon became an active community center. It was the meeting place of settlers for such activities as butchering hogs, canning wild fruits, and making sorghum molasses. The idea originated during the Civil War when the entire valley was a Confederate camp. The inviting springs and cozy shelters made it an ideal campsite. The shut-ins at the elbow of the falls offered opportunity to hem in herds of wild hogs and kill them in a cove convenient to the butchering grounds.
The creek secured its name from the practice of the soldiers in scalding the wild hogs in the kettle-like holes of the rocky creek bed. The water was diverted from its regular course into these holes which are four or five feet deep and average six feet in width. The method of heating the water to the scalding point was to drop hot stones into the pits. The hogs were then immersed in the hot water until their hides were soaked sufficiently for the removal of the hair with knives.
When the war ended, the hillsmen of the community continued this practice and enlarged upon it. Families would drive many miles through the hills to camp at Hog Scald, butchering and canning, and enjoying a few days of social contact. On Sunday they held religious services. The young folks might play party games on the rocks Saturday night, but the fun ceased at midnight. Sunday was for the good things of the soul.
Every student of human behavior knows the truth of the adage—“the mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.” The customs of the folks of this particular community have borne fruit in a sober, righteous, contented people. I have been told that almost every home in the community has its altar of prayer.
CHAPTER XI
Primitive Panaceas
The “Yarb” Doctor
Mart Hull’s professional life was spiked with paradox. This Woodville citizen was not only the best coffin maker in the neighborhood, but a yarb doctor of great repute. He was sincere with his panaceas and made every possible effort to relieve suffering and save life, but he recognized the inevitable and prepared for it. He was equally skilled in making bitters from the herbs of the field and in building coffins from the pine or walnut of the forest. Live or die, it was profit for Mart Hull. All the community paid tribute.
Doc Hull had an indiscriminate clientele within a radius of five miles of his backwoods home. It was a widely recognized fact that he possessed an unusual knowledge of herbs and knew the secret alchemy for compounding them into healing remedies. I spent much time with him while at Woodville, observing him at work both in field and laboratory, and making calls with him to witness the effects of his herbal compounds on sick folks. These observations increased both my knowledge and appreciation of Ozarkian plant lore. He showed me how to season meat with the seed of the wild peppergrass, and explained the use of this herb as an ingredient of the medicines he recommended for stomach complaints and blood disorders.
One day the old doctor showed me the wizardry of a persimmon seed. Taking a seed from the fruit, he cut the end of it off squarely and split it carefully. In the heart of the seed was the perfect image of a spoon. This formation in the persimmon seed, according to Hull, is a sign that the following crop year will be a good one. When the image of a knife and fork appear in the seed, a crop failure is ahead.
The persimmon is not only a fattening food for the opossum but a delicacy for humans, if it is permitted to dry on the tree. I discovered that the flavor improves with freezing.
The folklore of the Ozarks has been greatly enriched by the herb specialists who, before the dawning of modern science, did the best they could to relieve physical suffering through the use of plant products found in nature’s great laboratory. A knowledge of many of these early panaceas has been lost in the shuffle of readjustment in recent years. We may class the yarb doctor as a survival of primitive society or a relic of our own racial childhood, but his work is not to be discredited even in the light of scientific contrast.
As a rule, hillsmen are reliable authorities on plant lore. They know the habits of plants and how to identify them. They are schooled in their medicinal properties and know the legendary connections that have been handed down for generations. To the superstitious individual, herbs possess the power to ward off evil as well as heal disease. Naturally it is assumed that the practice of using certain plants to guard against demoniac influences originated in the folk-mind at a time when magic and science were badly mixed. It is the “old science,” as one hillsman told me.
The old-time doctors did not rely entirely upon roots and herbs for their remedies. Most of them had attended medical school and knew how to use quinine, turpentine, calomel, and castor oil. A few just “took up doctoring” because they had talent in that direction and possessed a fair knowledge of herbs and their healing properties. These men and women did not practice medicine as it is practiced today by legalized physicians, and surgery was practically unknown. Bleeding was about the only surgical operation performed by the old-timer in the backhills.
Doc Hull was an institution at Woodville and his practice reached beyond the boundaries of his neighborhood. He did not magically remove warts as the witch doctors do by spitting on a stone and throwing it over the left shoulder, or by placing the blood of the wart in a white bean and burying it. He did not use buzzard oil as an application for cancer. But he did make certain recommendations when folks visited him, and he had a few herbal compounds ready for emergencies. He had discovered that a tea made from parsley roots was excellent for dropsy and that the seeds could be used to kill head lice. He knew that wintergreen tea was a heart stimulant if taken in small doses but that larger doses had the opposite effect and caused vomiting. Wild plum bark was used to relieve the distress of asthma and bull nettle root for skin diseases. Slippery elm was found valuable in stomach complaints and was used externally as a poultice for inflammations and boils. Tonsillitis was relieved by gargling a tea brewed from white oak bark, and common colds were treated with hoarhound. Hull’s favorite liver remedies were mayapple and dandelion root. He believed horsemint good for rheumatism and neuralgia. Various other mints were used in compounding his extracts. In some cases he recommended the rubbing of the inflamed or sore parts of the body with crushed mint leaves. In others he advised that a tea be made and taken internally. The mint was also a popular ingredient in his “smelling” medicines.
Mart liked to tell of his experiences in relieving the physical ills of mankind. One of his favorite stories was that of the Till Berry family who lived at the forks of Big and Little Clabber Creeks. Till’s family consisted of himself, his wife, and two children. At the time of the incident that made the story, one of the children was a boy four years old, the other a nursing baby girl of three or four months. The baby was ill and Doc Hull was consulted. He gave the mother some of his pills to take as indirect treatment for the babe. The cure was rapid and it made a deep impression on the parents. A few months later the four-year-old boy became ill. The supply of pills had not been exhausted, and it was decided to try them again. On this occasion, however, the father took the pills for the boy. Strange as it may seem, a prompt cure was effected.
Household remedies are still quite common in the Ozarks. A boy’s stone bruise is treated with a generous slab of fat meat, applied to the bruised portion. Boils or “risin’s” are thought to be caused by bad blood and such foods as raisins and onions are recommended. Itch is a backhill scourge which is no respecter of persons. The remedy is sulphur and molasses taken internally with external applications of a salve made from sulphur and hog lard. Devil’s shoestring may be used to restore women to health after childbirth. This plant is rare in the Ozarks and is not often used.
Doc Hull believed in his herbs but he discounted magic and the traditional beliefs that health is influenced by changes of the moon and signs of the zodiac. Neither did he advise such practices as the wearing of a bag of asafetida on a string around the neck to keep germs away, or the use of stump water for skin diseases. So far as possible, he relied upon herbs and tried to find a scientific basis for his r
emedies. He had just one discrepancy in his behavior. Regardless of his wisdom and experience, he carried a buckeye in his pocket to prevent rheumatism.
Home Remedies
A Golden Fleece! A Holy Grail! Utopia! A Pot of Gold at the Foot of a Rainbow! These dreams are the lure of mankind and the quest is eternal. Men endure desert heat, Arctic cold, cloistered privations, and sometimes they turn worlds upside down to titillate their egos or satisfy their desires. Likewise, the search for health is conducted by rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. The path may be broad or narrow but all are on the go and the direction is the same. Even a devil needs steady nerves and a good liver to get satisfaction from his deviltry.
The road of good health, traveled by pioneer peoples, was a long, dark lane with many pitfalls. Nature was the great laboratory but there was no scientific key to unlock her abundant stores. Because of this, folkways are sometimes dark ways, and the school of experience is a dear school in which to learn the secrets of successful living. Curious panaceas, many of them with supernatural attributes, were accepted by the people as necessary to their welfare. If tradition said squirt sow’s milk in the eyes to see the wind, they did so even though common sense told them better. In matters of health they proved that expediency sometimes outweighs prudence.
Advocates of the old remedies still exist in the Ozarks, but most of them have folded their tents and stacked their guns and accepted the new order which science has imposed upon them. But enough of the old is left to trouble the waters of the new. A neighboring woman has a large goiter which causes her much discomfort, but she wears a small sack of salt tied by a string around her neck in preference to having an operation. Another woman relates that she once had that strange disease called shingles and that all remedies failed to give her relief until she used the warm blood of a black hen. She explained the treatment in this way:
They laid me on a bunch of newspapers spread out to catch the surplus blood. Then they chopped off the hen’s head and let the blood run on the eruption. It was from the small of my back and down one leg to a little below the knee—very painful, swollen, and a solid eruption all around my leg. They spread the warm blood to cover it all.
That was one night at bedtime. I slept restfully and awoke the next morning to find the soreness, swelling, and inflammation all gone. My leg peeled off and came clean. There were faint spots for a while, but I never suffered any after the hot blood was applied.
Modern science has outflanked the old folk cures to such an extent that the younger people know little about them. But the older folks cling to them with leech-like tenacity. Profuse bleeding is stopped by charm, warts are removed by forms of magic, thrash is cured by a person who was a posthumous child breathing into the mouth of the afflicted child.1 There are men expert in “taking out fire” from burns and scalds and women who know how to make “skillet bark tea” for “blue babies.” But many of the cruder remedies have disappeared along with the belief in witchcraft and the practice of the midwife.
In grandmother’s day a mouse’s head tied around the baby’s neck prevented certain ills. A mole’s skin was placed against a woman’s breast to prevent swelling. A remedy for sore mouth was to drink water out of a shoe. A sure cure for frostbite was to kill a young rabbit, cut it open, and while it was still warm thrust the frostbitten member into the body of the rabbit, letting it become thoroughly bathed in the warm blood. A bad cut was doctored with soot from a chimney mixed with a little sugar.
One of the strangest Ozark remedies I have found is a treatment for asthma. I first learned of it through May Kennedy McCord’s “Hillbilly Heartbeats.” Here it is:
“Kill a steer and set the patient’s feet in the hot guts, and let them remain there until the entrails cool. Be sure to remove the pouch or maw as the acid from it will pull out the toenails.”
Another curious panacea is the “silk cure” for the chills in children. First, find out the age of the child and the number of chills it has had. Go away by yourself and tie a knot in the string for every chill. Tie them one inch apart. Then bury the string under the eaves of the barn or stable. This works only on children over one year and the person handling the string must not be a relative of the child. A somewhat similar remedy is the “yarn cure.” Knots are tied in a yarn string, a knot for each chill. This cure is used for people of all ages.
One of the most interesting faith cures I have observed is that of stopping blood. There are a few people in almost every community who claim to have this power. It is not necessary to see the person who is losing the blood, but the full name and the place of wound must be known. With this information, the individual who possesses the power to stop the bleeding calls the person’s name and the name of the wound and then repeats a certain verse from the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel. He walks toward the east while repeating the lines. Thousands of people in the hill country have faith in this charm and it is used repeatedly for both man and animal. A man who has the power may tell the secret to three women; a woman may tell three men. Some think they will lose the power if they tell the secret to the third person.
The charm formula is used in taking out fire from a burn. Hazel Dagley Heavin of Rolla, Missouri, tells me of her experience with this charm.
My father possessed the power to take out fire. When I was a child, I always ran to him with my burned fingers and he made the pain leave. He told me the mystic words just before he died and said an old lady had taught them to him. She told him that it could be passed to but one person and that one must be of the opposite sex.
The other day I was dyeing some material and in removing it from the kettle, some of the boiling dye splashed into my hair, burning the scalp. I repeated the words my father had taught me and the burning stopped. Whether I was too busy even to feel the burn, I don’t know; anyway the pain stopped immediately when I spoke the words. But I had a sore spot on my head for several days as a result of the accident.
There is an age-old belief that toads cause warts. Science has discovered that the toad secretes a substance through its skin that irritates the mucous linings of the human body but does not affect the outer skin. If this secretion causes warts, the fact remains unknown to science. Probably the fact that the toad has a warty appearance gave rise to the belief that to touch it would cause warts on the hands. It is true that the appearance and disappearance of warts on the human body remain a mystery even to science. Some authorities believe that this tendency is hereditary, others hold to the theory that warts are caused by irritation and that the growth is nature’s attempt to heal the wound.
The removal of warts by charms is even more mysterious than their sudden appearance. I have collected more than a score of methods used in the Ozarks to remove these growths. Here are a few of the outstanding ones:
Spit on a stone, stir the saliva with the finger and repeat these words: “What I see decreases.” The stone is tossed aside and the wart disappears.
Split an Irish potato and rub the wart with it. Bury the potato at the time of the moon’s decrease and when the potato rots the wart will go.
Pick the warts with a needle until they bleed, then rub a thin piece of wood over them, wiping them free of the blood. Close the eyes and throw the wood away. To watch it fall spoils the effect of the charm.
Pierce each wart enough to make it bleed. Rub a grain of corn in the blood and feed it to a goose. The growth will disappear.
Go to a home where there is an orchard and borrow or steal a knife of any kind from the house. Go to a fruit tree and cut as many notches as you have warts. Go away and forget the incident and the warts will soon leave.
Take three grains of corn and go to a place where the road forks into three branches. Put a grain of corn in each road and cover with rocks. The warts will leave you and go to the persons knocking the rocks off the grains.
Other charm methods of wart removal included such stunts as pricking the wart with a thorn and then throwing the thorn over the left shoulder; catching a ka
tydid and letting it start eating on the growth; stealing a dishrag, wiping the warts with it, and hiding the rag under the doorstep; cutting as many notches in a green stick as you have warts, and burying the stick; rubbing the warts with a piece of dry bone and putting the bone back where you found it without telling anyone; or, should any of these methods fail, you may sell the warts to a neighbor at a penny each.
The Ozarkian book of experience provides cures for almost every ailment that flesh is heir to. These remedies are not concoctions of the imagination, but gleaned from old-timers who actually tried them. They are a valuable part of our folklore.
A primitive remedy for nosebleed is to drop as many drops of blood into a bottle as you are years old. Cork the bottle tightly and hang in the chimney. It was believed that the nose would not bleed so long as the bottle remained there. A more modern treatment is that of putting a plug of salt pork in the nose.
A crude treatment for toothache, reported by a ninety-year-old woman who once tried it in her youth, is to go to the woods or fields and find the jawbone of a horse. Get down on your knees and pick up the bone with your teeth, then walk backward, keeping your hands behind you. The number of steps you take before dropping the bone indicates the number of years that will elapse before the tooth aches again.
Another toothache remedy is to go to a tree which has been struck by lightning, get a splinter from it, and pick the offending tooth until you draw blood. Get a drop of this blood on the splinter and stick it in the ground under the eaves of the house and let it remain there. “That will kill the nerve in a tooth any time.”
Ozark Country Page 21