Ahh-CHOOOOO !

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Cold and flu season’s here. These days a quick trip down to the local Walmart will arm the grippe sufferer with every pharmaceutical weapon imaginable. But in 1937 Sam Walton, age 19, was still 25 years away from opening his first Walmart store. Aspirin tablets had already been around since 1915, but there were still plenty of folks back in the hollers who relied on such traditional remedies as the following (don’t do ALL of these simultaneously!):

*Make a tea from the leaves of boneset. Drink the tea when it has cooled. It will make you sick if taken hot. Leaves of this plant may also be cured and saved for use in teas during winter.

*Make a tea from powdered ginger, or ground up ginger roots. Do not boil the tea, but add the powdered root to a cup of hot water and drink. Add honey and whiskey if desired.

*Boil pine needles to make a strong tea.

*Take as much powdered quinine as will stay on the blade of a knife, add to water, and drink.

*Parch red pepper in front of a fire. Powder it, cook it in a tea, and add pur white corn liquor.

*Put goose-grease salve on chest.

*Drink lamb’s tongue and whiskey tea.

*Drink whiskey and honey mixed.

*Drink red pepper tea.

*Eat onions roasted in ashes (good for children.)

*Eat a mixture of honey & vinegar.

*Make a tea by putting some pine top needles and boneset in boiling water. You can sweeten it with honey or syrup.

*Drink tea made from wintergreen fern.

*Make a combination tea from boneset leaves and horsemint leaves.

*Take a three-pound can of pine twigs and rabbit tobacco. Boil together and strain. Drink some every three hours, taking no more than one full juice glass within a 12-hour period.

*Drink some of the brine from kraut put up in churn jars. It makes you thirsty, and you’ll drink lots of water.

Source: The Foxfire Book, Anchor Books/Doubleday & Co., New York, 1968

More articles on winter:

Time for a skate!(Opens in a new browser tab)

Cold Winter Shadow(Opens in a new browser tab)

Dashing through the snow(Opens in a new browser tab)