LITTLE ROCK — Over the weekend as I was planting some comfrey in my garden, my thoughts turned to the role herbs such as comfrey played in the medical treatment of our ancestors. That thought, in turn, caused me to be grateful for living in an age when we do not have to depend on yearly purgatives or bitter slippery elm bark tea to treat our ills. That is not to say that the herbal remedies of the past were totally ineffective. Indeed, in recent years we have seen dramatic growth in the use of traditional herbal medicine. The antecedents of these traditional herbal treatments go far into the ancient past before recorded history. However, in isolated parts of Arkansas these herbal practitioners, known in the dialect as "yarb doctors," continued to see patients until recent times.
While the larger towns were home to trained physicians, the rural areas were serviced by a variety of doctors of dubious preparation. In 1947, folklorist Vance Randolph wrote of the prevalence of unlettered doctors: "the backwoods country swarms with 'yarb doctors' and 'rubbin doctors' and 'nature doctors' who have never studied medicine at all." He continued: "Some of these nature doctors are women, others are preachers who do a little doctorin' on the side, andmany of them are unable to read or write. They rely mainly upon herbs, barks, roots, and the like."
Catherine S. Barker in a 1941 book on the Ozarks described an argument between sisters whose mother was severely ill. One sister insisted on calling a doctor, while the other urges: "Never let no doctor go a-cuttin' on you. You go right out and see old Aunt Liza Turner, out to Mountain Gap. She kin brew you some roots and herbs what'll fix you up right now. She's got secrets don't nobody else know."
Most rural people, and poor urban residents too, knew some herbal remedies for home use. Farmer's almanacs often included various remedies, and inexpensive guidebooks were readily available. Much of the appeal of the yarb doctor was the widespread belief that many of the "cures" can be traced back to the ancient wisdom of American Indians.
Memoirs written in the years before World War II often tell frightening tales of children being required to take yearly purges, when various plant teas were drunk to induce bowel movements, or turpentine was administered to kill intestinal worms, or teas were consumed to thin the blood for the summer.
Many of the recipes called for honey as a sweetening agent. One guide recommended a hearty dose of boiled maiden hair fern leaves and honey as a cure for coughs-as well as for "acrid humors."
Some yarb doctors mixed a bit of corn whiskey with their concoctions, although others opposed it. One Indian doctor recommended drinking "spirits" in which dried bloodroot has soaked as "a good strengthening or tonic bitter."
Both yarb doctors and family matriarchs oftenadvised the use of poultices. Poultices containing the inner bark of the slippery elm were considered to have many curative powers for sores, burns, and wounds. The mullein plant, which has large leaves as soft as flannel, fulfilled a multitude of purposes, most especially as a poultice. A surprising number of poultice recipes called for cooked onions.
Probably the most widely used medicinal herb was the root of the ginseng plant. And not just in the mountainous areas where it is native. Referred to as sang, the ginseng plant is believed to have vast restorative power, including returning sexual vigor in men. The root became exceedingly popular in China not long after its introduction there. One source reports that ginseng sold at eight-to-ten times its weight in silver in 1784 "Pekin."
Comfrey, which I grow in my garden as a good groundcover and which got me to thinking about herbs in the first place, has a long history as a medicinal plant. Nicholas Culpepper, an early 17th Century English astrologer-physician, praised comfrey as useful against a vast host of afflictions. "A syrup made thereof [from comfrey roots] is very effectual for all those inward griefs and hurts . . . ."
Maybe I ought to plant a few extra comfrey.
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Tom Dillard is head of the special collections department at the University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville. Email him at tdillar@uark.edu. This column originally appeared June 3, 2007.
Editorial, Pages 80 on 08/30/2009