Home Remedies and Quarantines
Much of my life was before the introduction
of Health Care in Canada.If you didn't have the money for a doctor,
you relied on home remedies. Some of them did not work, I agree.
(I know one in particular - but that will come later.) Many of
those old remedies worked miracles - perherhaps because they had
to. It was the days of "Mother's Friend" and castor
oil.
Bed rest was a good part of treatment in
the old days. It was believed that the body would heal faster
during sleep or when not placing physical demands on it.
We cringe today, to think that Aspirin
was given to children to fight fever, but, it was all that we
had and used sparingly. Rubbing alcohol was used to bathe the
wrists and body and cloths soaked in cold water were put on the
forehead.
There were no vapourizers in those days,
so a bowl of boiling water with a little "Vicks Vapour Rub"
(yes, we had 'Vicks') was placed on the table and we would cover
our head with a towel, making a little tent to contain the steam,
and sit and breathe deeply. That was done for bronchitis, I know.
When all else failed for coughs and flu,
in our house, my mother made the infamous mustard plaster. The
mixture was put between layered cotton pieces and folded so that
none would leak out. One plaster covered the chest and another,
the back. Believe it or not - this usually worked. (I doubt that
I'll receive emails for the recipe.)
When I was young, I could not ride in anything
that moved (even the horse and buggy at the farm) without succumbing
to motion sickness. (There was no "Gravol" at that time.)
You would not 'want' to hear about my ride inside my brother's
homemade scooter that he made with an orange crate, roller-skate
wheels, and other found goodies. It was his masterpiece! But,
after my constant pleas, he gave in and took me for a very short
ride, much to his regret. No - I won't tell you of that.
A remedy that I thought was cruel and embarrassing
was the dreaded brown paper. Whenever we absolutely had to ride
the streetcar, there was brown paper put on my chest. It was said
that when you moved and it rattled (and it did) you would be concentrating
on that and not become sick. Well, that didn't work! It was humiliating.
Not only was it difficult enough that you had to either hang your
head out of the window or run to the exit and hope that the streetcar
would soon come to the next stop, the rattle of the brown paper
was, to me, a punishment. I was a very shy child and this was
something that I could have done without.
In the winter, when there were colds in
every household, we girls went to school with a few drops of eucalyptus
on our cotton handkerchiefs so that we could put it up to our
nose when we felt stuffy. I often wonder how the teachers ever
survived those winters in the eucalyptus classrooms. They surely
would not have suffered from clogged sinuses!
In the stories I tell about the farm, I
will try to remember two home remedies that I experienced while
I was there.
The doctor came to our house only once,
that I can remember. I was deathly-ill with the red measles. No
- there was no vaccination against them in those days. He really
couldn't do anything and I am sure that it took almost every penny
that could be spared to have him come, but, it reassured my mother
that she had done everything that she could do and, I am sure,
more.
We found out later that while fighting
the red measles, my small body was infected with the German measles
and it showed up after I had been up out of bed for a day. That
is when it hit and back to bed I went again. I wasn't nearly as
sick with it as when I was, without anyone knowing it, fighting
the two diseases.
Communicable diseases in a household meant
that a large "QUARANTINED" sign was posted on your front
door. This is only a guess, but the doctor or school nurse probably
notified the Department of Health. Yes, we actually had nurses
in the schools.
When a house was under quarantine, no person
except the doctor was allowed to enter and only the wage earner,
or bread-winner, as they were called, was allowed to leave. The
patient was kept in the bedroom and it could get very lonely but
that is just the way it was. ~Joan Adams Burchell~ (copyright)
