You say you have bruised nerves, my friend. Is that what’s troubling you?
Well, “Take some deer marrow and melt it with French brandy, then rub the painful parts with it.”
That little health tip comes courtesy of the “Indian Doctor Book” in the Waukegan Historical Society, and if it doesn’t cure your bruised nerves, maybe you are worrying too much about your health or Hillary’s health plan or wondering if HMO is the acronym for Help Me Overcome whatever ails me.
Health has always been so terribly personal, and yet since the first aches and pains of homo sapiens, practicing outsiders have been doing their best to horn in-read that help keep body and soul together. From the earliest shamans, wizards and medicine men on down to physicians and therapists, there have been ubiquitous health specialists with a great variety of claims and cures.
Simultaneously with development of this treatment-for-fee structure, there evolved an even larger resource for those seeking health help. Much of it originated with people who had closer ties to nature than is true of current society, and many of its precepts were handed down from grandma to grandma. It is, of course, folk medicine, that wondrous panorama of the worthless and worthwhile-and sometimes harmful-advice for self treatment. It includes everything from cow manure poultices to garlic necklaces to chicken soup, and, obviously, deer marrow and French brandy.
Like many areas of health tinkering, folk medicine depends on the eternal verity that at least two-thirds of human illness is self limiting: If you seek treatment you will recover in a week; if you do not seek treatment you will get better in seven days.
Prior to the time that we were conditioned to expect quick and magic cures from the professionals for everything from hangnails to headaches, folk medicine or the home cure was a much larger element in staying fit and well. Part of this, of course, was dictated by a scattered rural population that did not have ready access to the emerging and often crude profession of medicine.
The reality of that circumstance was vividly demonstrated recently by the Forest Preserve District of Du Page County at its Kline Creek Farm house of the 1890s near Winfield. The old farm house was filled with displays of folk and patent medicine treatments, from kitchen to parlor-where there was advice on mourning in case the cures didn’t work.
“Except for broken bones that needed to be set, the doctor was not called for most illnesses until home cures had been tried,” said house manager Pat Walton.
“Before telephones, you had to hitch up a horse and drive to town in a buggy to summon the doctor,” Walton said, “and you had to hope that he was not out on another call.”
In the meantime, the injury victim was frequently placed on the dining room table, where he or she would be handy to the surgeon, if he ever got there.
Quoting author Albert Britt, who wrote about life on an Illinois farm, Walton said that many families viewed doctors with suspicion, to be sent for only as a last resort. As a result, even when a doctor was called, it was frequently too late for treatment that might have saved the patient.
Volunteer guide Cheryl Andersen gestured at a dining room table laden with folded bandages and splints and household books that offered medical advice.
“People tried to be ready to help themselves in the event of injury or illness,” she said, “and they often kept a medical book next to the family Bible.”
In the Montgomery Ward catalog for 1895, 15 medical books were advertised, as were many medical devices, most of highly questionable efficacy.
Along with the magic-cure devices was a patent medicine industry that promised such things as good health, sexual vigor and bowel control, and delivered many of its claims in libations with a high alcohol content.
Passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 was the beginning of control in this wild and outrageous era.
But through it all, Grandma’s cures and folk medicine’s “wisdom” remained a big part of the health picture. And lest you think that only mundane afflictions such as upset stomach or aching muscles were treated, stress was one of the major targets of patent medicine and home cures. Widely known as dyspepsia or neurasthenia, stress was “probably due to not taking the advice of the self-monitor, which has its home in the stomach,” according to information unearthed by Denyse Cunningham and Linda Clemmons, former research interns with the Forest Preserve District of Du Page County.
Folk medicine as it was brought over from Europe was infused with many new tenets by Native Americans, some of more obvious credence than the deer marrow and French brandy bit. For example, a group of icebound explorers near Montreal was cured of scurvy when the men followed the advice of Native Americans and drank a tea made from black spruce needles, which, it turns out, are rich in vitamin C.
In addition to their empirical contributions with the wide use of herbs, the Native Americans might also have taught the Europeans something about the value of fresh air, sanitation and cleanliness as those things pertain to health.
Each culture has its own inventory of folk cures. Within the Hispanic culture there are many beliefs and home techniques aimed at curing illness, said Esperanza Velasquez, regional director for the Illinois Migrant Council in Woodstock.
“Folk medicine is very important to Hispanics,” Velasquez said. “The combination of prayer and the use of herbs is considered the best way to cure many things.
“Science may prove that some things don’t work,” Velasquez said, “and there are many things that I don’t understand, but I have seen some miraculous recoveries of people using folk medicine.
“Some of us may not believe in all of it, but I respect it with all my heart,” Velasquez said.
There are, of course, instances when home cures can cause trouble, some of it serious. Earlier this year, a 54-year-old Glendale Heights man was found to be suffering from lead poisoning as a result of taking a home remedy medication that he got directly from India.
Du Page County Health Department sanitarian Jay Sundberg said the man’s physician had treated him unsuccessfully for nine months before finally discovering a high lead content in the man’s blood.
“We did an environmental investigation,” Sundberg said, “and could find no other source of lead except in one of the pills he was taking. Tests showed that they contained 5 percent lead, which is about 40 times the average daily consumption and could be fatal.”
The man has undergone chelation, a medical process for removing lead from the blood, and is recovering.
Many cultures, among them Asian/Indian, Mexican and Asian Pacific Islands, use folk medicine with a high lead content, Sundberg said.
“Many other countries do not have the protection that we enjoy through the Food and Drug Administration,” Sundberg said. “There are so many substances shipped and mailed into the U.S. that regulators are unable to test all of them adequately. The obvious message is that you should take only medicine that meets FDA standards or has been prescribed by a physician.”
The FDA does not get involved in folk medicine unless some aspect of it is commercialized, according to Darlene Bailey at the agency’s Chicago district office.
“It is our responsibility to enforce the provisions of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act,” she said, “and unless a home-remedy is put on the market, it does not come under our jurisdiction.”
In the unfortunate event that neither folk nor professional medicine nor natural recuperative powers were successful in bringing about a cure back in the horse and buggy days, a very regimented code of behavior was dictated for survivors of the deceased. And if home cures were the norm, home wakes and funerals were also common, according to Walton, at the Kline Creek homestead.
A coffin was ordered from a New York firm that promised 30-hour delivery to Chicago, and the corpse was laid out in the parlor, where friends and neighbors arrived later to pay their respects.
“Widows were expected to wear black for at least two years,” Walton said, “and they were strictly forbidden by custom from participating in any social affairs for at least six months.”
Widowers, on the other hand, wore black only for one year, after which they could switch to gray, Walton said.
However, as is the case today, it was more likely that people did not die, but instead recovered from their infirmities, sometimes with the help of grandma’s “cures,” and sometimes in spite of them.
And even in this age of sophisticated science and technology, folk medicine survives, perhaps even prospers in a sense as we try to be more realistic as to what our personal responsibility is for our own health and what we can expect from the professional health providers.
Christine Scanlon, director of nursing at the McHenry County Health Department, said we are all in charge of our own health, and she urges people to check out home remedies with their physician.
“Some things seem to work,” she said, “even though there is no science to back them up. But it is best to make sure you are not doing something that will make you worse.”
Dr. Randy Albert, a family physician at the New Lenox Medical Center and a member of the Silver Cross Hospital staff in Joliet, said, “Folk medicine definitely has a place in today’s society, and I encourage my patients to treat themselves with home remedies that have proven to be effective over the long haul.”
High on Albert’s list is the old standby, hot chicken soup.
“It isn’t the soup, it’s the steam that you inhale that clears up congestion and makes you feel better,” he said. “I recommend it to all of my patients for relief from a cold.”
As a Peace Corp volunteer in Korea for two years, Albert said he saw the wide use of ginseng to cure all kinds of things. “People believed that it could cure anything,” he said, “and that is what a lot of treatment comes down to, what you believe will help you.
“Many people who come to me just need reassurance that what they are doing is right,” Albert said, “and I think it helps if a physician touches them and makes them feel comfortable and cared for.
“You have to use reason with home remedies,” Albert said. “If you try something and it doesn’t work, you should get professional help.”
But with bruised nerves. Who is going to help you with that? Pass the deer marrow and the French brandy.
