Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 146, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1919 — QUAINT REMEDIES [ARTICLE]

QUAINT REMEDIES

In old-time Philadelphia quaint remedies were used. Thus we find pokeberries used to make plaster for a cancer. Grapevine sap was used for a hair tonic. To produce a sweat tea was made from magnolia leaves. The berry of this plant was supposed to cure consumption. For the toothache the bayberry root was an accepted remedy. Berries of the cedar tree were supposed to stiffen the spine. A purge was made of alder buds or of elderberries. Goldenrod, the mullein plant and even the lowly burdock were laid under tribute for various maladies. It is hard to find a common weed that was rejected by the eighteenth century pharmacopoeia. The grandmother of all the Philadelphia quacks was a. beldame by the fiame of Sibylla Masters, who two hundred years ago made a fortune by the patent and sale of “Tuscarora rice” for consumption. It was nothing more or less, apparently, than, hominy made from Indian corn. Her husband put up a water mill somewhere near the city to make it. She was an innocent practitioner compared with certain modern profiteers— Philadelphia Public Ledger.