Over the Back Fence

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Medicine has certainly made tremendous advances in the last 120 years. I picked that time period because both of my parents were born on farms in the 1880s and had very little contact with doctors during their early years.

The number of doctors per 1,000 people in farm and ranching areas was small. It was not that doctors were averse to traveling out into the country to make house calls, but simply that people in those days were practically broke much of the time.

The farmers were land rich and cash poor. Some would hold off calling a doctor until a disease or other medical problem was almost out of control.

Country doctors also were cash poor. Many times they would receive payment in the form of a hen or a calf.

The farm wife was the repository of the family's knowledge of things medical, and many times she had a book of home medical advice such as "The American Family Physician" or "House Surgeon and Physician." Books like these were found in almost every farm home, and certainly in wagon trains going west.

The books covered everything from setting a fractured bone to treating chicken pox. One of these books recommended that each wagon train take along a medicine chest containing herbs, quinine, opium, castor oil, bandages, laudanum and surgical instruments.

When my brother and I were growing up, mother occasionally relied on some folk medicine because we were too poor during the Depression to consult a doctor regularly.

How well I remember the last time I took castor oil. It happened way back in the 1930s, when I was about 10 years old. I had an upset stomach and constipation, so my mother put a spoonful of the oil from a castor bean into a glass of orange juice, as if the juice would in any way mellow or hide the throat-searing taste.

The oil was effective, by the way, but it left the patient feeling worse for the rest of the day. Curing a medical problem with castor oil was like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer. And it was years before I could summon up the courage to have another glass of orange juice.

Lots of home remedies from the past actually work. Take the down-home remedy for colds: a steaming bowl of chicken soup. Several years ago, the medical department of a major university published a study showing that the steam from chicken soup was efficacious.

The study found that breathing steam saturated with chicken grease helped the sinuses to open and provided considerable relief. And the soup itself wasn't bad, either.

In the past 30 years, medicinal herbs and plants have become big business. St. John's wort has been lauded by some in the medical world for helping alleviate depression or mood swings. Orthopedic doctors have recommended glucosamine for building the structural integrity of joints and connective tissues.

The line between traditional and folk medicine is being erased, but many of the products in health food stores have yet to be acknowledged or studied by the medical profession.

They have found in recent years that certain kinds of tree bark have healing powers. This is consistent with the discovery more than a century ago that there was something in the bark of a certain willow tree that could stop headaches, fever and many other ailments. The product was synthesized and given the name "aspirin."

I have one other searing memory of a home remedy: mustard plasters. I was probably 6 or 7 when I had one applied to my chest to fight a cold or case of the flu. It was hot. Hot like you wouldn't believe.

Since she never used it again, my mother must've discovered the other side of home remedies: Some just don't work.

(Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.)

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