Taking The Cure

Seventy five years ago, when I was a mere lad, diseases were rampant in small towns throughout the South.  Doctors had skills in setting bones, removing bullets and stitching up cuts, but going past that, treatment of diseases was “iffy” at best.  The local practitioners could align broken legs and bind up fractured ribs with adhesive tape and with no painkillers. Cuts were washed out with alcohol, stitched, again with no relief from the pain of the curved needles, and then the whole works swabbed with tincture of iodine.  The yellow-brown stain from this often lingered well after the wound healed and the stitches had been removed. Injections from a hypodermic syringe came through a needle that had been re-sharpened on a whet rock in the doctor’s office, and felt like a fishhook barb.
But even then doctors were expensive, although they often would accept as payment a slab of bacon or a sack of corn meal or a jug of “white lightning” from Rock Bluff or Booger Bay. Treatments for ailments as mundane as warts and “stumped” toes, rusty nail punctures and childhood diseases were given at home.  The medicine used often had been handed down through generations of grandmothers, woodsmen and in some cases Indian medicine men. Tree roots and bark, sap of plants or the plants themselves, well pulverized and forced down ailing throats or applied properly actually cured or gave the appearance of curing “what ailed you”.
I noticed the other night on TV that a fast-talking huckster was promoting a product that would cleanse your intestinal tract (his words), thereby getting rid of all accumulated fatty deposits and, I assume, foreign objects that you had tried to digest, and put you on the road to good health and attendant weight loss.  I was struck by this, not enough to send off my $9.95 plus $4.00 for shipping and handling (again, his words, not mine), but because I recalled the annual springtime “through” of medicines that our mothers gave us when we were young.  For those of you that did not experience this, I will explain.  A bitter liquid called calomel, which was a mercury compound, was forced into our mouths, and a few hours later followed by a large dose of castor oil.  I will leave it to you to decide why this was called a “through”.  I would imagine the total cost was about twenty cents, including shipping and handling.  As Carley Simon sings so eloquently “What Goes Around, Comes Around” or does she do “it‘s Coming Around Again”?.  The “through” has returned, but at a much higher cost.
Other products were there for the unsuspecting child that had a real or feigned illness.  Castor oil was the ultimate cure-all.  A good friend of mine, now departed, explained its magic like this:  you would arise on a school day, dreading what lay ahead, which could be a test or a bully that had threatened you on the playground.  You would say “Momma, I don’t feel so good”, and she would pour a dose of castor oil, a vile tasting mess, down your throat.  After some time she would ask how you felt and you would be afraid to claim illness since she would then insist on another dose.  My friend said it never cured anything but cowardice.
Patent medicines were sold in drug stores, grocery stores and from the automobiles of traveling hawkers.  Surprisingly, many are around today.  Claims of magical cures are no longer made and some of the names are changed slightly, but the intimations are still there. Carter’s Little Liver Pills have metamorphosed into “Carter’s Stimulant Laxative”, and can be found in your pharmacy.  It will be next to Ex-Lax, the chocolate-flavored elixir that pranksters often passed off as candy to unsuspecting playmates who were hungry for anything sweet.  By the way, Ex-Lax was a cure for coughing.  If you took enough, you were afraid to cough, or sneeze, or make any sudden moves that might relax certain muscles.
The Mayo Brothers’ Barber Shop in Chattahoochee was that town’s answer to the Forum of ancient Greece.  It was where the sages gathered to watch a few haircuts and to discuss the world’s events.  In 1939 Hitler’s Panzer forces invaded Poland, and continued rolling on through Europe.  One Saturday I was awaiting my turn in the chair.  The discussion centered on the almost assured “end of civilization and/or the world”.  Here was the reasoning: Hitler claimed that his Third Reich would last “a thousand years”.  In the Book of Revelation the author mentioned a thousand year reign of evil that would precede the Second Coming, and the Beast that would supervise this happening had as his mark “666”. 666? The hairs on the back of my neck rose!  I had seen “the Mark of the Beast!”  In fact I had seen several, painted on pieces of tin and nailed on trees and fence posts! I left without my haircut and went to the nearest “Mark”.  It was outside of town but within walking distance.  I neared it with fear and trembling, only to find that it advertised “666 Tonic”, which I assume was good for what ailed you. It must have worked.  It kept Hitler away from our shores. 
Dr. Ludd M. Spivey was an ordained Methodist minister that was assigned in the 1920s as president of a small college in Lakeland, Florida.  Florida Southern College had two buildings, about two hundred students and a lot of debt.  The trustees voted to close the doors, but Dr. Spivey vetoed this, and set out to raise money and to make the school unusual.  He convinced the noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright that he should design its buildings.  Spivey then went out to raise funds.  The first Wright building was to be a chapel, and the story of how the money was acquired connects to patent medicine.
Dr. Spivey was in Chicago and the day was typical for that city:  cold and windy.  He was walking down the street and he saw a lady who was dressed shabbily and looked cold, so he invited her to dine with him.  In conversation she learned about his dream for his college and about the proposed chapel and the estimated cost.  They parted, but within a few weeks, Dr. Spivey received a check for the amount he had cited.  The check was from a patent medicine company and the chapel, still standing, is a monument to Dr. Spivey, Mr. Wright and a “bag lady“.
There were other patent medicines out there. Some are no longer in existence.  As a child with asthma, I had to inhale the smoke from Asmador, which was made from eucalyptus leaves.  Today we wheezers have immediate relief from a variety of potions, oops, I meant medicines, that are more effective.  I was given cod liver oil, usually by my mother, who wielded the spoon while my father forced my jaws open.  Today we purchase fish oil pills.  I take them, but I learned that for an hour or two after taking one my breath smells as though I am holding a sardine under my tongue. Now I wait till I get home and pop the pill and go to bed.  And then my cats join me and seem to enjoy the air that I breathe out.
Iodine has been “decolorized”, and it’s about time, too. Vick’s Vap-o-Rub is gone, and that is good.  (The non-existance of Vick’s Vap-o-Rub has been disputed, however, it does not change my opinion of this “kudzu killing” salve.)  My grandmother used it and mustard plasters to treat my colds, and that is why I went through life with only six hairs on my chest. Nothing could grow where Vick’s had been.  It could kill kudzu.  She also believed that turpentine was good for ground itch and, with a small amount of whiskey added, bronchial problems.  Enough whiskey would cure almost anything in those days.
Yes, I know that I have not mentioned Epsom Salts, Ben Gay, Cloverine Salve, camphorated oil nor a hundred other nostrums.  But I have to save some for a future column.  Stay tuned!