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A Look Back as Women as Healers A Look Back at Women as Healers

Trying to find another use for the variety of herbs that I grow and dry I tried making a salve my husband could use on his cracked hands in winter. After hours of work I ended up with a vast amount of bright green oily stuff that never did look or act like a salve.

It got me thinking about the women who came before us. The ones who had to take care of their families in a time when skilled medical and surgical care was almost nonexistent. There were very few doctors and if there was one, chances are he would be miles away from your family when they needed him.

Think about it. No drugstores where you could stop by and pick up a prescription or any one of a thousand neatly packaged remedies for everything from dry skin to migraines. When they hurt these people looked to nature and their own two hands for a remedy. For the most part it was the women who ministered to the ailing. They used a variety of herbs, roots, barks, and homemade nostrums sometimes handed down through generations in a family. While some may seem bizarre to us, I can only imagine the anxiety felt by a woman, of say 1800, as she sat by her sick child's bed frantic with worry about both her diagnosis and treatment. Here are just a few of the home remedies that she might have used in certain situations:
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-The inner bark of slippery elm, mixed with gunpowder, was made into a poultice and used in case of a snake or animal bite. -A diet of skunk cabbage was thought to be a cure for asthma. -For a cold, very hot boneset, pennyroyal or catnip tea was used. If these didn't help, a person could always try wearing one sock filled with black pepper and the other stuffed with split onions. -For whooping cough and measles a mixture of honey and lobelia was thought to help-but so was steeping a hornet's nest into a tea. -Of course, there was a lot of purging, puking and bleeding going on in those days. In fact, although it's not done today, bleeding a patient was so popular a therapy that it stuck around for centuries. -On one final note, our forefathers were advised that to stop consumption from killing off the entire family, they should bury the first victim face down.

These women that came before us had to know how to make poultices, liniments, tisanes, teas and tonics. They had to be able to bandage, bathe, bury and give birth. The amount of time it must have taken to minister to a sick family member must have been overwhelming to them considering all their other time-consuming, labor-intensive jobs. Very often women not only took care of their own families but were called upon to take care of sick neighbors as well. Traveling to nearby homes they helped deliver babies and treated the injured victims of the many horrendous accidents that could befall an early settler.

As fate and death often would have it, these women were then expected to dress and prepare for burial the very ones they tried to save. The old cemeteries throughout our country are testaments to the many women and children who died at a young age. These times were physically demanding and often merciless on the human condition. What is surprising though is the number of early settlers, men and women, who did live to a ripe old age. And more surprising still is how much they accomplished during their lifetimes. They built a country.

___________________________________________________ M. Lee Conrad is a freelance writer who lives in Vermont with her family.She can be e-mailed at leekem@aol.com. ___________________________________________________

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