The daily Astorian., March 21, 2019, Page 12, Image 11

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BLOODROOT, SWEAT AND TEARS
sweat, the body would draw them in. If all
the waylaid sweat soaked into the head or
chest, the inevitable result was a cold.
In an era when underthings were made of
wool, the sweat-made-me-sick theory was
surely ripe for exploitation by men trying to
explain their social diseases to their wives.
Or, how good old-fashioned
home remedies drove me to
drink
By NATALIE ST. JOHN
COAST WEEKEND
The Hippocratic what?
A
merican scientists declared victory
over the measles virus 19 years ago.
It was gone for good, they said. But
as any child of the 1980s knows, villains
never really die — they just keep on terror-
izing camp counselors and frisky teenagers
in increasingly improbable sequels.
Set in Vancouver, Wash., Outbreak
2019: Full-Blown Measles is a straight-to-
video B movie about a group of supersti-
tious parents who accidentally resurrect a
long-dead virus, then fight it using essen-
tial oils, vitamin A and Facebook memes
about big pHARMa. As the undead dis-
ease hopscotches its way from one unvac-
cinated household to the next threatening to
give babies encephalitis, terrified pregnant
women sequester themselves inside their
subdivisions. Nearly all of the casualties are
children.
Kitchen witchery
While waiting to see if “Full Blown”
will be coming to a theater near us, we’ve
been dealing with a more mundane virus:
the common cold. The other day I heard
a rumor that so many kids were sick in
Ilwaco, Wash., that administrators consid-
ered closing school for a day so they could
douse the whole place in disinfectant.
While a cold lacks the spine-tingling
thrills and visual drama of a measles out-
break, it’s pretty unlikely to kill anyone.
Antibiotics are useless against viruses, and,
as demonstrated by the measles come-
back, undoing decades of medical prog-
ress is hugely trendy right now. So really, it
seemed like the perfect time to try out some
old-fashioned cold remedies.
I personally think western medicine is
a useful innovation, but I get the appeal of
DIY healthcare. Making herbal remedies is
a lot like cooking, but without the pressure
to make anything taste good. It feels witchy
and mystical and talismanic. It makes you
feel like you’re one of the ones who will
not just survive the apocalypse, but come
Damian Mulinix
With cold and flu season still gripping the nation, it’s a good time to review home remedies,
old and new. Some things, like herbal tea, are still recommended, while heroin is not.
HEARTHFIRE
&
BRIMSTONE
out the other side with a thriving farm and a
nice sideline in homespun dresses.
Sweat it out
My boss at the Chinook Observer lent
me his 1873 “Receipt Book,” written by
Dr. A.W. Chase, Ferrier and Bee Keeper, so
I could see how people treated colds back
when germ theory was still considered a
wacky fad, like wearing overalls backwards.
I had to laugh as I read Chase’s 146-year-
old advice, because he relied heavily on
several things crunchy types have “discov-
ered” in recent years, such as “beef tea” —
now exalted as a miracle healing substance
called “bone broth,” and “essences” —
essential oils. What’s old is new, what’s new
is old. We are living in very strange times
indeed.
Dr. Chase felt strongly that sweat was
both the cause and cure for just about every
ill. All too often, he said, men would stop
in the midst of cutting wood to chat with
their neighbors about “neighborhood scan-
The key to treatment was, you guessed
it, “exciting a free perspiration” by means of
“sweating powders,” herbal foot baths and
a uniquely Victorian torture method known
as the “Rum Sweat.” This involved pour-
ing rum into a saucer and placing it under
a chair, where the naked patient sat. The
caregiver would ignite the alcohol, then
use blankets to make a little tent around the
patient. If, after 30 minutes, the cold-suf-
ferer was not engulfed in flames, they were
to crawl into a bed made up with hot blan-
kets. Alternately, the afflicted could be
“packed” into a tightly wrapped cocoon of
hot, wet sheets for up to two hours.
It was at this point that I began to hope
Dr. Chase was better at shoeing horses
and keeping bees than he was at medi-
cine, though I was not optimistic, as the
bee-keeping chapter included a section ded-
icated to dispelling the apparently wide-
spread myth that African-Americans can’t
keep bees because the bees will attack
them. He even included a first-hand account
from an elderly black lady-beekeeper who
assured readers that she only got stung the
regular amount.
Fighting ‘poisons’ with poison
McClure’s Magazine 1907
President Abe Lincoln was treated with a
‘rum sweat,’ which was thought to purge the
body of toxins.
dals, politics and the price of pork.” It
never ended well. After 30 minutes of reck-
lessly exposing their sweaty hides to the air,
they’d fall sick. Failure to “re-establish per-
spiration,” the good doctor said, could only
make matters worse.
Being idle after any sweat-inducing
occupation was perilous because instead
of “throwing off” toxic substances through
I read on because I wanted to know what
he had to say about alleviating specific
cold symptoms. Dr. Chase believed coughs
would inevitably turn into tuberculosis if
not treated aggressively.
In between sweats, patients were to take
a mixture of butter, honey, good vinegar and
pepper several times a day. He also recom-
mended three to six daily doses of his spe-
cial recipe cough syrup, a combination of
anise and almond oils, turpentine and lau-
danum, a preparation of opium suspended
in alcohol. As if an elixir that could clean
paintbrushes and get you stoned out of your
gourd wasn’t enough, it also included ipe-
cac, which can rapidly induce forceful vom-
iting in large doses; digitalis, a plant that