PRAIRIE MEDICINE
Some of the clearest memories I have of my boyhood out on the homestead are of illnesses and minor accidents, and the treatment we had available to us. Our nearest doctor was in Hinsdale, about fifteen miles away. While he would make house calls, even that far out in the country, we would only call on him for major things, such as the birth of a child. To travel fifteen miles to see a doctor, when your choice of transportation was team and wagon, or riding horseback, or walking--well, that was a long way! A trip to Hinsdale, with horses, took two hours or so each way. The result was that with only rare exceptions, when we we were sick or injured, home remedies were applied.
What sort of illnesses did we have? All sorts of things. I'll tell you of a few of them. Probably most frequent ailment at our house was "stomach ache." Our Dad had real trouble with his stomach being upset. Not having such things as Tums or anything like that on hand (I'm not sure they had been invented as yet), his remedy was simple and good. He would place a couple drops of peppermint extract on a teaspoon of sugar, and take that. Sometimes he stirred the mixture into a cup of hot water to make a fragrent tea.
That ailment was awfully contagious! We kids would almost simultaneously come down with the same problem, while the peppermint bottle was still out. We had to have the same treatment right now! I know we didn't fool anyone, but we often complained of stomach ache so that we could the have sugar and peppermint treatment.
We did have to be a little careful, though, because if we complained just a bit too earnestly (or sometimes couldn't help complaining over a really bad stomach ache) we got the next standard treatment. I don't think it is available nowadays-- Castoria, the children's laxative. I think it was an extract of the castor bean, or maybe of prunes. Whatever, it was highly flavored to cover its true origin, and colored dark brown, about like vanilla extract. I do know that it worked just as promised! But if it didn't, the bottle of real castor oil was right at hand. Oh, how I remember taking that horrid stuff, holding my nose with one hand, opening my mouth, gulping it down, and then quickly trying to rinse the bad taste from my mouth with water. We all hated castor oil.
Like most youngsters, even today, we had sore throats quite frequently. I, especially, suffered from bad tonsils, and often suffered from a very bad sore throat. Treatment for this began with gargle, a homemade concoction sometimes made of vinegar, hot water and salt, or of just plain hot water and lots of salt. Our parents did keep a large bottle of Listerine on hand, and sometimes that was used, straight from the bottle, as a gargle. Naturally, we kids preferred the homemade gargles over Listerine. I really don't recall that any of the gargles were very effective.
Then, if the sore throat became really painful, and the tonsils became enlarged as mine were a lot of the time, we faced "swabbing." That was dreadful! A wad of cotton on the end of a little stick was dipped in iodine, and our throats liberally swabbed with the powerful antiseptic. It made one gag, and we kids always were worried that we might swallow some of the iodine, for it was reported to be poison! When we were a little older, mercurochrome became popular as an antiseptic, and it displaced iodine for swabbing throats and for minor cuts and scratches. We kids liked it much better than iodine.
Despite the preventive efforts, we often came down with severe colds, in both heads and chests. We doped our poor stuffed-up noses with either Mentholatum or Vaporub, both fairly strong and aromatic mixtures of menthol and vaseline. Then when we went to bed at night, we had Vaporub vigorously rubbed on our necks and chests, and the areas were covered with flannel cloth to "keep the heat in." We had never heard of taking vitamin C, or nose drops, or even using aspirin to relieve the symptoms. Antihistimines hadn't been invented yet.
When we developed really serious chest colds, with deep coughs and croup, there was a further step to be taken. When we went to bed, Mom rubbed us thoroughly with Musterole, a vicious smelly grease made of essence of mustard and some kind of vaseline. It was really strong, made to take the place of mustard plaster, I guess. It not only carried a real stink, but it burned one's skin, and was truly awful if some got in your eyes! It had the power, though, and it seemed to help break up a cough, and we used a lot of it.
Once my little sister, Mary, when just a little girl, had such a bad cold on her chest the folks thought she was going to have pneumonia. An elderly neighbor lady, an old timer on the prairie, happened to come by, and suggested a radical treatment. We gathered most of the onions we had in the garden, and she made a crushed onion plaster. She covered poor little Mary's back and chest with the onions, and covered it all with flannel. It was indeed strong medicine, but it worked, and Mary recovered quickly. If I remember right, Mary was never very fond of onions after that.
We all caught the usual childhood diseases, and generally shared them with all the kids in the neighborhood, mostly through our contacts at school. We drank out of a common water dipper, at school, and so all were exposed to any cold or other illness which one person might have. We all caught the German measles, and spent our hours at home in darkness, to protect our eyes. At that time no one knew just how dangerous measles are. Having them as a child may have been the original cause of my sister Mary's multiple sclerosis later. Then we all had mumps, with classic swelling of our jaws. Fortunately, they didn't "go down" with either of us boys, as they sometimes did. And we had chicken pox (which you don't catch from chickens!), and cow pox, which we may have caught from the cows. That cow pox was much more severe than chicken pox, maybe about half-way between chicken and small pox, in severity.
Something which we definitely got from our cows was ringworms. It is caused by a tiny parasite which digs into the skin and causes a raised, very itchy, scaly ring-shaped sore on the skin. I once had a terrible one high up on my left arm, around toward the back of my arm. Mom didn't know just what to put on it, so she swabbed it with good old iodine, out of a bottle that was half dried up. Wow, how that treatment burned! The iodine was too strong, and raised a big blister on my arm. But it cured the ringworm! I still have a faint scar to show for that!
By far the worst illness we kids had was scarlet fever. The Richters got it first; no one knew how or where they caught it. They brought it to the little country school, and I think every youngster in the school got it. My older sister, Jean, came down with it first at our house, and then Mary, who was not yet in school.This was in February, and the weather was nasty cold.
Finally, one day both Robert and I became ill with it, at school! I'll never forget that walk home. It was only a mile and a half, and my head was aching so I could hardly see anything. But somehow we made it home, and were undressed and put right to bed. At that point I went into convulsions, Mom has said, and was desperately ill for many days. We all ran high fevers, and were constantly in need of water to drink, or a pail to vomit in, or whatever. All four of us kids were sick at the same time. And to top it off, our Mom, who never seemed to be sick, came down just then with an attack of appendicitis, and needed lots of care.
All the work fell on poor Dad. Naturally, he was really worried about us all, and did everything he could to help us. The doctor from Hinsdale couldn't come out, for there was a regular epidemic of scarlet fever all over the area. Several children died that winter. But the doctor did send out something--quarantine signs to be put up to warn anyone coming near our place that our house was quarantined and not to be entered!
This made it impossible for Dad to go to town for medicine or groceries, or even to get the mail. Only when neighbors came by (as some of those good folks did) could he order the things we needed. It seemed like forever, but we all were down for about three weeks, and then began to get better. When we were all well enough, Dad took us to Hinsdale in the sleigh to see the doctor. The doctor said it was alright for us to return to school, but we must first fumigate the house! That was quite a process, involving burning some sort of sulphur candles in the house while we all stayed outside for several hours. I don't think that did any real good,except to perhaps thin out the mouse population!
Well, we got back to school, and then I had a relapse! Again I was terribly sick, and it took about six weeks for me to grow strong enough to return to school. During those six weeks I had to take a tablespoon of cod liver oil with every meal. I went through quarts of the smelly stuff! Also, Mom made me lots of homemade cocoa, and I drank that and ate graham crackers when I couldn't keep anything else down. To this day, whenever I get stomach flu or similar illness, I actually taste and smell cod liver oil and cocoa and graham crackers, even though nothing of the sort is around! I really do!
Being sick in bed had some advantages, though. One of the "treats" we enjoyed when sick was having "milk toast." Both Mom and Dad could make that to perfection: homemade white bread (we never had store bread) toasted on top of the old cast iron cooking range, soaked in hot milk, with lots of butter, and seasoned with salt andpepper. Boy, that was good!
When we were a little older, after the scarlet fever epidemic, all we kids at Richter School were taken to Hinsdale one day for small pox vaccinations. Bravely (I never did learn not to volunteer to be first!) I said I would go in to the doctor's office first. There was really nothing to the process; a little scratching on the skin of the upper left arm, then the doctor smearing a little vaccine on the scratches. The nurse covered it with some adhesive tape, and it was all over. I went back outside, and was leaning against the side of the doctor's little office building, talking with some of the other kids. Then all of a sudden I came to-- I had passed out! People who were inside the office said my head made a most interesting sound, bumping down over the shiplap boards, as I collapsed. That fainting (really a matter of going into a form of shock) has plagued me all my life. There is something about my innards that is triggered by an injury, or something like an injection, which causes my blood to gather in the lower abdomen, and I pass out. I've been embarrassed by it time and time again.
But back to the small pox vaccine; it really "took," with all of us. We had big ugly scabs on our arms, where the vaccine had been applied. But eventually all our arms healed up, and none of us got small pox!
Did we go to the dentist? So far as I can recall, none of us Cumming kids went to a dentist until we were well along in our teens, and had long since left the homestead. Yes, we had lots of cavities and toothaches. The only help for that was a sort of medicated wax which was pushed into the cavity of the aching tooth. Sometimes our Dad had to pull a truly bad tooth for us, without anything to ease the pain. I know that I made my first visit to a dentist when I was seventeen or eighteen, and then only because I had an ulcerated tooth. I guess we did have some teeth extracted by Doctor Cockrell, in Hinsdale, but he was not a dentist, and didn't have any regular dental equipment.
I do recall one visit our Dad made to the dentist in Glasgow. He had a very bad tooth, and the nearest dentist was in Glasgow, twenty-five miles away in a straight line, across country. And that's just the way Dad went, walking across farms, coulees, creeks, and all. He preferred walking to riding horseback. The dentist pulled the tooth, and in doing so opened a big hole from the gum up into the nasal passage above. It was a painful mess, so Dad stayed overnight in Glasgow. Then the next morning he walked home, carrying a fifty pound sack of flour! Dad was a great walker; none of us could keep up with him. He had trouble with that "tooth hole"for years after that.
We had lots of minor injuries when we were little--scratches from barbed wire fences, bruised toes (horses loved to stomp on my toes!), and the like. Once Robert, while walking barefoot, stepped on a board with a nail in it. The nail came clear up through the top of his foot. To make matters worse, this board was right out in front of the chicken house, and surely must have been contaminated with chicken droppings.
Go to the doctor? Oh, no. Dad just used the big stock syringe he used to vaccinate cattle, filled it with Lysol solution, and disinfected the nail hole with that. Painful, but effective! Robert had no infection whatever from that bad wound.
The only major injury I can remember was when our little sister, Mary, broke her leg at school. This was in her first year of school, and she broke it in a sledding accident. It was really fortunate that she didn't have both legs broken! Robert was away at high school, and Dad was teaching some thirty miles away, out south of the Milk River. A neighbor took Mom, Mary, and Jean to Vandalia, where they caught the local train to Hinsdale. There Doctor Cockrell set the leg (both bones were broken below the knee) and put on a cast.
That left me home alone, with all the chores to do, and school to attend, too. I was eleven years old, and batched alone for three days, milking the cows, taking care of the chickens, and so on. Boy, was I lonesome! I hated to go home after school to the empty house. But everything went alright, and Mom and the girls were home on the fourth day. By then Dad had gotten word of the trouble, and he came home, too, for the week-end. I remember that while alone there, I broke the standing rule at our house which said that the dog couldn't be in the house! I had Laddie stay inside with me at night, and that helped a lot.
Of course, many other things happened to us, many scratches and bruises, but I won't bore you with those. Oh, maybe one more! One cold frosty morning I rode old Snip, our saddle horse, out to find the cows which I had been unable to find the evening before. About half a mile from home he decided to buck a little, and easily tossed me off--to sit down firmly on a big prickly pear cactus! Would you call that an injury, or an illness? I tell you it was both; my feelings were hurt plenty, and I was nearly sick at my stomach from those miserable cactus spines. If looks could kill, that horse would have been dead on the spot! As it was, he just kept a little ahead of me, not letting me catch him all the way back home. I couldn't have ridden, anyway, so it was just as well. Dear Mom had a bad task that morning, pulling all those cactus spines from my "derear."
No, we didn't have modern medicine, but we all survived just fine! Prairie medicine was good enough!