Ancestry Magazine

My Missouri ancestors used a number of creative home remedies. My great-grandmother blew smoke from her corncob pipe into her granddaughter’s ear to cure an earache. Another dear old soul made cough medicine from rock candy, whiskey, and cherry bark. Whether it was a dry mustard plaster used for pneumonia; black draft and senna tea or castor oil used for constipation; or a poultice made of sauteed onions, peppers, and turpentine used for a sore throat, these pioneers were resourceful in curing themselves. If a patient lived through it, turpentine or kerosene and sugar once a day for three days, skip three, etc., “cured” worms. Bacon or fresh cow manure made a fine poultice to draw out a “stone bruise.”

Besides dosing sick children with milk toast, Great-aunt Margaret and her sisters trusted strongly in the healing powers of Vaseline. When one of the cousins, Marlene, was run over by a motorcycle, Margaret doctored her split leg with Vaseline and wrapped it in a cloth. Marlene couldn’t walk for a week, but her leg got well.

And so the frugal and hardy pioneers shouldered on, which reminds me that my own mother was run over by a farm wagon as a child. By mistake, they backed up over her to see if she was really hurt. She lived until she was 87.

Rudolph Family Salve
(courtesy of Great-aunt Margaret)
4 oz shoewax
8 oz beeswax
8 oz deer tallow or mutton
4 oz cod liver oil
4 oz lard
4 egg yolks

Heat the first five ingredients until melted. Let mixture cool. Add the yolks of four eggs and stir all together. You can add “Indian riches wind” balsam, providing you can get it. If not, use other balsam.