Slavery and Medicine by Katherine Bankole

Author:Katherine Bankole [Bankole, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, African American & Black, Medical
ISBN: 9780692895290
Google: b8I4swEACAAJ
Publisher: Liberated Scholars Press
Published: 2017-05-18T15:56:45+00:00

Mother Duffy of Louisiana recalled that to cure pneumonia "hog's hoofs" tea was required; and for an earache, "don't put no oil [in it], No, you split a pod of garlic and wrap if in cotton so it don't bum your ear. It sho will cure it, yes" (Clayton 1990, 64). Lindy Joseph, born in enslavement in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, also provided dispensing remedies:

Coal oil and salt warmed is good for rheumatism/You can take rusty nails; put vinegar on dem; let stand; dat's good for worms. Drink about a half-glass at de time/Take castor oil; soak on cotton; put in the hollow of your throat; will stop hoarseness/Take Jacob bush and boil it; drink the tea. It's good for fever. I never is had a doctor for fever. Mole tea is good for fever too; just boil it/Sassafras tea is good to brak (break) out measles/Hot ashes and salt wet in vinegar is good for pains in de sides (Clayton 1990,144—145).

John McDonald explained to the Louisiana Works Progress Administration interviewer that he could remember several dispensing remedies that are a part of the African materia medica:

. . .we had plenty dem old-time cures, you know. De doctor give us quinine and bitters, but we used plenty [of] asafetida and rabbit foots to help out. We'd tie a bit of asafetida up in a rag, and put it 'round the baby's neck to keep colds away, and to help it when dey cuts teeth. . .Cure for measles? Well, now dere ain't none. Just keep your hands off dem poison bushes and be careful to stay indoors (Clayton 1990,164-165).

Silas Spotfore, of Louisiana, was born in Fort Adarns, Mississippi, and recalled dispensing remedies for rheumatism, chapped hands, colds, hoarseness, headaches, vomiting, flesh moles, warts, sty on eye, and "stomach trouble." His remedies included "horseradish for hoarseness" and "plenty [of] doses of burnt 'lasses (molassas) and lard for stomach trouble" (Clayton 1990, 196). Warner Willis provided additional dispensing strategies:

Collard leaves we put on head for misery and again we made a poultice with them for boils. Once when I had a carbucle on the back of my neck and they said I was goin' to die, I cured myself with it. When we wanted to stop bleedin', we got a handful of soot out of the chimney, and it would quit. Cobwebs did the same thing. If you got a sprain, take clay, mix it with vinegar, bind it on the wrnch and it goes out. When children had worms they ma made a tea of Jersualey weed [Jerusalem artichoke], and it was a wormifuge [wormseed] that cured 'em. When [the] palate was down, all you had to do was to lift up a tuff of hair from top of [the] head and tie it with a cord. In three days it was all right (Clayton 1990, 215).

Probably the most misunderstood aspect of the African materia medica is the incidence of divining. The value of divining was dismissed as an aspect of medical

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