Herbal Medicine Part 1: A Childhood Interest

My sweet Granny Smith not
long before she passed away
at the age of 92.

I'm gonna be straying away from my usual canning topics for the next few posts. After attending an herbal medicine workshop with Appalachian herbalist and instructor Robin McGee, I have a renewed interest (or maybe obsession?) with herbal medicine... the interest was there before, but it REALLY was awakened by this wonderful class with a fantastic, down-to-earth instructor.

I've been making soaps and lotions for many years, scenting my products ONLY with natural, essential oils and have been using the oils for their medicinal properties for quite some time. I enjoy being in my "mad scientist laboratory" mixing up my concoctions and remedies. So when this opportunity to learn more came up, I jumped at the chance.

After taking the workshop, my mind began meandering down memory lane, and I realized that I've always had an interest in herbal remedies, old wives' tales, old time medicines and remedies, and more.

Granny Smith all dressed up for my parents' wedding

My Granny Smith (my Daddy's mother) was my earliest teacher, mostly with stories she told and her natural ability to make a person feel better with the simplest things. One story she told often was about her own father, my great grandpa, Papa, his name was Andrew Jackson (not the president, but a giant of a man), with great, huge handlebar mustaches, he died when I was 5 or 6, but I have fuzzy, vague memories of him... as a toddler sitting on his lap, fascinated, and a little nervous, listening to his booming voice, his huge laughter, and that enormous mustache.

Granny said when she was a young girl, Papa had a problem with "the sugar" (diabetes)... and at one point his big toe became infected from an injury and wouldn't heal. He had tried everything and the toe just got worse, turning black and swollen with the infection... Papa finally went to the local doctor, who promptly said, "Andrew, you're gonna lose your whole foot if I don't take that toe off." Papa asked the doctor to give him two weeks to try to get that toe healed and if he couldn't, he'd come back and let the doctor amputate his big toe.

Papa came home that evening and said to my Granny, "Sis (that's what he always called her ... her name was Annie, but Papa always called her Sis... or Tom), go out in the woods and find me a pine tree... gather some good, thick 'rosem' and bring it back here." She went... when she brought the pine resin back, Papa took it and packed it all around the infected toe, bound it up in a clean bandage, and left it for a week without removing it.

After the week had passed, he removed the bandaging, washed the area good and checked it... the infection was completely gone, the toe was "white as snow" (that's how Granny phrased it)... the black infection was no longer there and he didn't have to have that toe amputated. Granny said the "rosem" drew out the poison from the infection and healed that toe.

Papaw Smith

Granny knew so many things... she never finished school, never had a public job, had a slight speech impediment from having been "tongue-tied" when she was born... but I've never met a smarter, harder working, more capable woman in my life. Sometimes she would take us grandkids walking in the woods and she could tell us the names of every plant, tree, shrub, and weed we came across and what it was good for (I wish I'd listened better)... I remember one time she picked a small branch off a tree and said, "Young'uns this is a tooth brush, you can clean your teeth with it." She showed us how to fray the ends of the twig and scrub our teeth with it. I learned later it was a birch twig and many mountain folks did, indeed, use it for cleaning their teeth.

Granny had a brother, Howard, who, it was claimed by all the folks in the valley, could cure the "thrash" (thrush, or candida) in babies by blowing in their mouth, and he could cure warts by just rubbing them... I never had any first hand experience with this, I just heard...

Granny was the woman in the valley who everyone called on when they had a sick loved one... not to come heal... but just to come "help." She took food, she had a strong back and could help lift an invalid, she didn't mind scrubbing dirty sheets, wiping noses or hindends, or cleaning nasty chamber pots... and you always just felt better when "Miss Annie" was nearby. She was strong, and solid, and capable.

Granny was my Papaw Smith's second wife... she finished raising the 5 children from his first marriage, and raised their own 6... she was not a gentle woman, but she WAS a gentlewoman, she had a sharp tongue and a firm manner, a no-nonsense, frank, opinionated woman... she milked cows, gathered eggs, churned butter, helped slaughter and butcher, grew a vegetable garden, had beautiful flower beds, cooked, canned, cured, and stored food, kept a meticulously clean home, made most of the family's clothes, quilted with the "Ladies Aid" once a week, attended the local Free Will Baptist Church every time the doors were open, singing in the choir with her strong alto voice heard above everyone else, she put flowers on the graves in the cemetery, and was always the first to visit if anyone in the community was sick, or had a new baby, or had a death in the family... with her large, strong hands, a basket of food, a quilt she had pieced by hand, or just to talk... and laugh... Granny had inherited Papa Jackson's big booming laugh, and she used it regularly.

Papaw and Granny Smith's house... my Daddy and his brothers and sisters grew up here. I have so many fond memories of family times in that old house.