ROADSIDE REST

Some Old West Pioneers Survived Illness Despite Those Medications Grandma Used

Not the Indians. Not the elements. Not the bad guys. But rather, the greatest threat to great-grandpa's life in frontier Arizona was great-grandma's liniment bottle. In a little book long out of print, Echoes of the Past, Volume Two, published in 1964 by the Yavapai Cowbelles, Dr. Florence B. Yount listed some of the medical techniques commonly employed by pioneers in the American Southwest. Because of distances to professional help, most well-established frontier households kept a private pharmacy. Standard compounds were calomel, turpentine, castor oil, Seidlitz powders, paregoric, laudanum, and assorted herbs. A popular theory - "If a little bit will do some good, a lot will work wonders" - was employed with a vengeance. Or as Dr. Yount observed, "A fierce disease called for fierce treatment." Herewith: Asthma: Five drops of rattlesnake grease (adult dose). Rope burns: Cowboy urine. Snakebite: Externally, poultice of turpentine and gunpowder; internally, all the whiskey the victim can hold. Toothache: Pack with a piece of the frog [a mass of horny material] from the middle of a horse's foot. Dysentery: Pulp of roasted prickly pear cactus pads. Rheumatism: Wear a brass belt, rub joints with tincture of black cat, and drink a tea brewed from cockleburrs. Nosebleed: Hang cold butcher knife down the back of the victim. Leg cramps: Turn shoes upside down under bed. Goiter: Wrap a snake around the neck and allow it to creep over goiter.

Corns: Rub with salt and lemon solution for 10 nights. Malaria: Swallow pills of rolled-up spider webs. Difficult labor: Drink tea made by boiling wedding ring in water. "A pleasant way to treat anemia," reported Dr. Yount, "was to push iron nails into an apple, leave it overnight, pull out the nails, and eat the apple." And, "The famous Prescott Arizona's Territorial capital] Cure patent tonic of the 1870s was a strong tea from mullen leaves, sweetened with sugar and taken freely for three to six months. This guy [the medicine manufacturer] planted mullen all over town, so there would sure to be a good supply." Preventive medicine was equally imaginative. (And equally ineffective, probably.) Smallpox could be held at bay by a necklace of rattles from snakes. Lockjaw serum was extracted from cockroaches. Influenza would not invade a room where there was an uncovered dish of onions, or where sulphur was burning on the stove. Nor were the wellness myths of the West so out of line with the beliefs of mainstream America. A typical medicine chest of that day might harbor hips (fruits) from the rosebush, mint, powdered peonies, saffron, tobacco, and tree bark. "Lots of people died of the treatments, not the disease," opined a modern medical researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine at St. Louis. Even so, "granny nursing" was less lethal than many of the salves, ointments, elixirs, nostrums, and "vegetable" compounds peddled in fancy jars and cans by hucksters and printed ads. In 1872 five U.S. states and territories grew poppies to satisfy the nation's widespread opium addiction. More tons of opium were imported. Laudanum, or tincture of opium, was openly sold by drug and grocery stores to tens of thousands of "opium eaters." The most famous over-the-counter treatment for "female disorder" contained 21 percent alcohol or about the kick of a Manhattan cocktail. Other patent concoctions were loaded with cocaine. Despite casually controlled traffic in dangerous and ineffective products, plus a rich and often contradictory folklore of home treatment, bright young scientists were able to introduce fundamental advances in medical care: the first major disinfectant, carbonic acid; and the first generally accepted anesthetics, ether and chloroform. Now, 15 decades later, medics are confident they soon will be creating genetically altered animal organs, such as kidneys, as transplants into needful humans. One simple cure for cancer, or the common cold, thus far defies discovery, but our generation has benefited from a host of health miracles, now taken for granted. Fading from collective memory is my childhood's scourge of polio, virtually defeated worldwide at present by the serums of Sabin and Salk. Today's national apothecary overflows with rational medical weapons. But as late as 1893, a Yavapai rancher, bitten by a polecat, or skunk, went on a five-day train trip in search of a madstone, a concretion occasionally found in the stomach of ruminants (cloven-hooved, cud-chewing, four-footed animals, including cattle). It was thought that a madstone would draw the poison of rabies. In El Paso, Texas, some 500 miles distant, the Arizona cowman finally located a madstone, the temporary use of which was available for a $50 fee. And as our Dr. Yount faithfully reported, "He never did get rabies."