Common Medicines for the Family Home

By Anna Kathryn Lanier


A few weeks ago, I came across a reproduction copy of THE FAMILY NURSE or COMPANION OF THE AMERICAN FRUGAL HOUSEWIFE by Mrs. Lydia Child. It was originally published in 1832 and is full of helpful medical help. One chapter is Common Medicines.


Mrs. Child says, “Every family ought to keep a chest of common medicines, such as ipecac, castor oil, magnesia, paregoric, etc., and especially such remedies as are useful in croup.” She stresses that medicines should be kept covered and have their names on them. Medicines such as opium, laudanum, nitric acid, etc. should also be marked “in large letters, Poison or Dangerous" and kept out of reach of children.


“The operation of medicine is always favored by very simple food, very sparingly used. Gruel is the best article. As a general rule it is better to avoid the use of emetics, when cathartics [purging] will answer the purpose equally well.”


What do these medicines do?


Castor oil is a cathartic producing little pain. It is recommended for pregnant women and those who just delivered, as well as children. You can mask the taste of it by mixing it with cinnamon water or with sweet coffee.


Carbonate of Magnesia is good for an acid state of the stomach. “A heaped up table-spoonful, well mixed in water or milk may be taken.”


Paregoric is used to control diarrhea.


What kinds of medicines were common in an 1837 household? Besides those mentioned above, Mrs. Child suggests:


Manna as a laxative, but because of its mildness, it can mixed with senna, rhubarb or some other cathartic.


Rhubarb is “at once a tonic and cathartic…Some aromatic is usually combined with it, to render it less painful. 1 ounce of senna leaves, 1 drachm of bruised coriander seed, and a pint of boiling water; steeped an hour in a eathern vessel, and strained.”


Jalap is also a cathartic (evidently, making people vomit was considered a good remedy for many illnesses). It is recommended especially where physic is required and is good to use in cases of dropsy.


Alum in “a weak solution held in the mouth is excellent for canker.”


Ginger, cinnamon, cloves and carroway are not only cooking spices, but may be used for medicinal reasons as well. The Home Nurse knew how to use these spices for helping family members with such things as dyspepsia, tooth aches, digestive problems and flatulence.


Cayenne may also be used as home remedy. Sprinkled on flannel it can be used as a rubefacient [causing redness of the skin] and was thought to be effective “for violent pain of the bowels and as a wash for rheumatism.”


Camphor must be dissolved in alcohol or expressed oil and is good for nervous head-ache or faintness. “Likewise comforting to bathe the hands, feet, and forehead, in cases of dry skin and nervous restlessness.” Camphor can also be used for muscular pains.


Mrs. Child lists twenty pages of common medicines in her book (along with long definitions of how to use them…the list is not twenty pages long). THE FAMILY NURSE is available via Barnes and Noble and a great resource for anyone writing in the 19th Century.


Anna Kathryn Lanier
http://www.aklanier.com/
http://www.annakathrynlanier.blogspot.com/  

Medical Expenses

My June historical western release is Doctor in Petticoats. The heroine is a doctor in a blind school because she can't persuade the medical community in her town to take her seriously as a doctor. But she is highly qualified and jumps at the chance to be the only physician in a small community.

While I didn't need this information for my story, it is one of those things I researched and now have archived for the day I may want to know.

Here are a few prices for medical procedures and assistance in the 1800’s:
A visit within one mile — $1.00
Each succeeding mile — .50
Simple case of midwifery — $5.00
For bleeding — .50
Bullet Wounds — Between $1.00 to 10.00
For setting fracture — $5.00 to 10.00
Amputating Arm — $10.00
Amputating Leg — $20.00
For advice and prescription in office — $1.00
For difficult cases, fee based in proportion to difficulty.

But as was often the case, the doctor accepted goods in lieu of money. And doctors didn't refuse to treat someone because they couldn’t pay.

I'm assuming the $10.00 bullet required more digging and stitching. Wouldn't it be nice to pay only $5 for a birthing? I know my dad says in 1957 he paid $50 for my brother's birth.

Just thought I'd throw this little bit of trivia out there for those of you who have inquiring minds like myself. Maybe one of you can use it in a book.
Do you also gather more information than you'll use in a book? If you're a reader can you tell when a person has over researched?

Paty Jager
www.patyjager.net
www.patyjager.blogspot.com

Frontier Medicine

In my novella SALVATION BRIDE, the heroine Laura Slade, is a trained doctor. Set in the 1870’s, this was not common, but possible. By this time, several medical schools admitted women. Laura, however, didn’t. Instead, she apprenticed under her Uncle John, who had been to medical school and served as a doctor in the Civil War.

More common in the 19th Century women were home-trained healers and midwives, who learned the art of healing from their mothers and grandmothers. My current work in progress takes place in the 1860’s shortly after the Civil War. The hero, Garrison and the heroine, Sammie, are on a wagon train heading West. Sammie has been trained as a healer by her mother. She takes with her on the trip her medicine chest.

The chest would contain such items as those listed in BLEED, BLISTER, AND PURGE by Volney Steele, M.D. Common household remedies would be “feverfew, fleabane, boneset, rhubarb, oak of Jerusalem, thyme [and] marjoram,” (page 138). A few store-bought items would also be included: Opium tincture or laudanum and whiskey for pain and surgeon’s plaster to bind broken limbs (the latter comes in handy when Garrison breaks a bone during the trip).

Sammie would know how to make poultices to relieve pain, help heal burns and possibly, even, to prevent pregnancy. She’d make plaster of mustard to “ease the ache of bruises, arthritis, and pleurisy.” She might even apply sugar to wounds, once commonly known to dry out a fresh wound and inhibit the growth of bacteria. (page 143).

Cholera was the most common and the deadliest disease to sweep through a wagon train or settlement. It wasn’t understood at the time that cholera was caused by contaminated drinking water. The best way to fight the disease was to replace fluids ‘volume to volume” as the patient suffered from severe diarrhea. However, this treatment was not well known. Opium, if available, was also given to “relieve the pain and slow down the increased bowel action and cramps,” (page 80).

Diphtheria, measles, small pox and scarlet fever were all deadly diseases, especially among children, with no cures but to wait it out. Diphtheria, in particular, was the most dreaded. Highly contagious, a single case could start an epidemic, resulting in a high number of children dying when a “pseudo-membrane in the throat and pharynx…obstructed the windpipe and shut off air to the lungs.” If the child survived this, she might still die from heart failure, caused when a potent toxin was secreted that effected the heart, (page 264).

One often overlooked disease on the frontier was scurvy, which was almost as deadly to the immigrants as cholera. With a common diet of corn meal, flour, beans and boiled or salted beef and few fresh vegetables and fruit, scurvy ran rampant in the West. Scurvy affects the overall health of the patient, causing extreme fatigue, nausea, pain in the muscles and joints of the body, bleeding of the gums (oftentimes resulting in the loss of teeth) and hair and skin become dry. The simple cure for scurvy is the intake of Vitamin C, but the correlation between diet and scurvy was not discovered until the late 1800’s. Ironically, a common native plant along the trail, watercress, was full of Vitamin C and would have been a simple cure to this disease, if the immigrants had only known.

Many an immigrant’s diary is filled with entries of sickness and death on the journey. In COVERED WAGON WOMEN by Kenneth Holmes, two journalists note such occurrences. Anna King, on page 42, relates, “I wrote to you at Fort Larim that the whooping cough and measles went through our camp, and after we took the new route a slow, lingering fever prevailed….Eight of our two families have gone to their long home. Upwards to fifty died on the new route.”

Sallie Hester reports “We had two deaths in our train within the past week of cholera – young men going West to seek their fortune. We buried them on the banks of the Blue River, far from home and friends,” (page 237).

By today’s standards, medicine in the 19th Century was crude in the best of hospitals. On the frontier, it was downright rudimentary. As much as I’d love to give my heroines insight to the knowledge we have now, I shall have to resist and let them heal their patience with the remedies tired and true at the times.

_______

I’ll give away a copy of SALVATION BRIDE, an best-seller from The Wild Rose Press to one lucky commenter. Also, anyone leaving a comment on my blog today will be eligible for the Seduced by History monthly prize, a book bag full of romance novels (see left for the details).

Anna Kathryn Lanier

Where Tumbleweeds Hang Their Hats
http://www.aklanier.com/
http://annakathrynlanier.blogspot.com/

Texas Medicine of the 1800s

Although the nineteenth century has been termed “The Golden Age of Medicine” the doctors of the Texas wilderness still practiced medicine much as it had been practiced since the Middle Ages using the ancient Greek theory of the four “humors.” Blood was thought to come from the heart, phlegm from the brain, yellow bile from the liver, and black bile from the spleen. According to this theory, disease and sickness occurred because of an imbalance in one these humors. If one was in excess, it had to be removed or equalized, hence the use of emetics to induce vomiting and the practice of cupping or draining a certain amount of blood to remove the “harmful humor.”

Wounds and bacterial infections caused the majority of deaths and disabilities. Doctors of this time battled malaria, yellow fever, pneumonia, cholera, dysentery, post partum infection, tuberculosis, measles, and small pox. They could splint fractures, suture wounds, perform amputations and drain infections (and all with unsterile technique.) For medical instruments, many had only stethoscopes. Other tools—saws and knives came from the kitchen. This particular device
was used to remove arrows...

For a treatment to be effective, most thought it had to have a foul smell or taste. Powders were sought over tablets, and colored tablets over white ones. Some medicines in use at the time included quinine, calomel, blue mass pills, belladonna, ipecac, columbo, asafetida, boneset, squill, pokeweed, hog's foot oil, castor oil, digitalis, lobelia (or Indian Tobacco.) There were many home remedies and poultices and plasters were common—some producing enough heat to burn the patient.

Morphine or laudanum was often prescribed for pain relief. Also, paregoric (camphorated tincture of opium) was used to inhibit diarrhea, coughing, and to calm fretful children. The concept of drug dependency was not considered. Anesthesia (with nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas) was not used for surgery until 1844, although one New Orleans doctor used ether several years earlier. Before this, the most sought-after surgeons were the ones who worked fast so that the pain would be less. In 1847, chloroform was first used for pain during a delivery.

My new release, Texas Wedding for their Baby's Sake, takes place just after the battle at the Alamo and the rebels are the Mexicans and Anglos in the Texas Territory who want to secede from Mexico's rule. Researching the battle, I learned that Santa Anna de Lopez, the president of Mexico, brought only one physician on the charge north—for his own personal use. There were no doctors or medics for the common soldier--nearly 10,000 men, not to mention the wives and soldaderas that followed. For the Texians at the Alamo's small hospital, medicine ran out two months before the battle. People had to depend on home remedies, folklore, and borrowed knowledge from the Native Americans, using whatever was on hand for their aches, pains and sores.

Here are a few home remedies used back then. Do not try these! I have no idea as to their efficacy or safety, but I found them interesting to read about. Information was obtained from A Pinch of This and a Handful of That; Historic Recipes of Texas 1830-1900.

Snake and Spider Bites -- Beat onions and salt together, wet tobacco, mix thoroughly. Split wound and apply at once.
Warts -- Take a persimmon stick and put as many notches on it as you have warts. They will go away.
Sores – (1895) Powdered alum is good for a canker sore in the mouth. Never burn the cloth bandage from a sore; you must bury it for the sore to heal.
Knife Cuts – (1853) Clean wound well and apply a piece of fat bacon or fat back. Strap it on for several days.
Puncture Wounds (Nails, Gunshot) Put some old wool rags into an old tin can, pour kerosene over the rags and light. Then smoke the wound. This also works with chicken feathers.
Boils or Infection – (1890) Salve: Take one part hog lard, two parts quinine and mix.
Bleeding from the nose – Bathe the feet in very hot water, while at the same time drinking a pint of cayenne pepper tea or hold both arms over the head.
Other bleeding – Place a spider web across the wound.

We've come a long way haven't we?

Mary Edwards Walker, M.D.

Doctor, Civil War Veteran, Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient

In my book, SALVATION BRIDE, I write about a heroine who's ahead of her times. Laura Ashton Slade is trained doctor in 1873 Texas. But a woman who truly was ahead of her times is Mary Edwards Walker, M.D.

Mary was the fifth daughter of Dr. Alvah and Vesta Walker, born on November 26, 1832 in Oswego, New York. Both her parents had unconventional views on female education....they believed women should receive a formal education. Mary started her employment as a school teacher, just as her sisters did before her. However, she soon broke tradition and attended the Syracuse Medical School, the country's first medical school and the only one to accept both men and women as equals. She graduated in 1855 at the age of 21 after three 13-week semester, which cost her $55 each.

She married fellow doctor Albert Miller not long after graduation and the two of them set up practice in Rome, NY. But both the practice and the marriage floundered (she accused her husband of infidelity). After only a few years, she separated from her husband, but it took a decade for them to divorce, due to the divorce laws at the time. Mary remained in Rome, practicing medicine, advocating social causes and writing the magazine SYBIL. She was friends with Amelia Bloomer, who the under garment is named after and one of her causes was dress reform for women.

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1860, she attempted to join the Union Army. When denied a commission, she volunteered as a nurse instead. While working at a hospital in Washington, D.C., she discovered mothers and wives of soldiers living in parks and sleeping on benches. Spurred into action, she helped found the Women's Relief Association.

In September 1863, she was awarded a contract as an Active Assistant Surgeon for the Army of the Cumberland. When she was finally commissioned into the military in 1864, she became the first woman Doctor to service in Army Medical Corp. She modified her officer's uniform in response to the demands of traveling with the army and working in field hospitals near the front lines . She was later transferred to the 52nd Ohio Infantry.

During this time in the army she was also a spy for the Union.

In 1864 she was taken as a prisoner of war, the first American woman POW, and spent four months in a Richmond POW camp. She and two dozen other Union doctors were exchanged for seventeen Confederate surgeons.

She left the army in 1865 and was paid $8.50 a month in a pension. Even when it was raised to $20 a month, it was less than what a widow received as a pension.

On November 11, 1865, President Johnson signed a bill awarding Mary Edwards Walker with the Congressional Medal of Honor for her Meritorious Service. She is the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, the United States' highest award.

Her medal was revoked, along with 910 others, by an act of congress in 1917 when the Medal of Honor standards were revised to include “actual combat with the enemy”. Mary refused to return her medal and wore it daily until her death. In 1977, an army board restored her medal, citing her “distinguished, gallantry, self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching loyalty to her country, despite the apparent discrimination because of her sex.”

After the war, Mary's activities became more political. She fought for women's rights (including changes in marriage and divorce laws), dress reform, and health and temperance issues. She traveled across America and abroad lecturing on her beliefs. During this time she also wrote two books, HIT, an autobiography and UNMASKED OR THE SCIENCE OF IMMORALITY, a book on the infidelity of men.

For most of her life, Mary was a strong proponent of dress reform, stating that women's clothing was immodest and inconvenient. She herself wore full male dress for the latter part of her life and was proud of her multiple arrests for wearing men's clothing. In 1866, she was elected president of the National Dress Reform Association. Her eccentricities, however, often alienated her from fellow reformists, especially suffragists. Noticeably, she was against a constitutional amendment for women's right to vote because she felt the constitution already gave women the right to vote.

She spent her last years on her family's Bunker Hill farm in Oswego. She died at her home on February 21, 1919 and is buried at the Rural Cemetery in the Town of Oswego.

For additional information on Mary, check out:

http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/walk-mar.htm

(this is a really good site, one I didn't read before I wrote this, so it's worth looking over for additional information.)

http://www.townofoswego.com/dr.html

http://www.northnet.org/stlawrenceaauw/walker.htm

http://www.mishalov.com/Dr._Mary_Walker.html (Medal of Honor Citation)

http://www.medalofhonor.com/TheOnlyWoman.htm

http://tekzones.com/Dev/SAMC/MaryWalker.htm

Anna Kathryn Lanier

SALVATION BRIDE

http://www.thewildrosepress.com/salvation-bride-p-1126.html

http://www.aklanier.com/