Despite the tremendous progress that may be made in almost any field of endeavor, we always have those who think that the "old-fashioned" ways, or products, are, or were, better.

With each successive year—which means with each new generation—some of the old-fashioned preferences probably disappear. A few remaining souls still may rather rely upon a horse and buggy than an automobile, but by now they must be very few indeed. Already jet planes are beginning to retire piston-engined planes.

The story of progress is so contemporary and so closely a part of our daily lives that we sometimes fail to recognize that we, ourselves, may fail to keep up with what is happen­ing. Things that we may consider to be very modern because we witnessed their creation only a few years ago already may be "old-fashioned" to high school freshmen.

In the medical world, treatment that might have been pop­ular for a disease in 1940 may be completely outmoded in 1960. Even medical discoveries of the '50s may be "old-fashioned" in the '60s. As a matter of fact, science already is turning to space for new medical discoveries.

However, over the years, and for generation after gener­ation, a great number of "home remedies" for many illnesses, accidents, and physical discomforts have -managed to stay alive. They have been passed down from elders to youngsters everywhere in the world. Many of them are strikingly similar although they may have originated on separate continents among completely alien peoples.

This area of medicine is commonly called "folk medicine." Few of us have failed to contact it at one time or another. Usually folk medicines are the "old-fashioned" remedies, the cure that "Grandma used"; the sage advice of the oldster who remembers when "My old friend Howie would have died if they hadn't used that old remedy! Yes, sir—even the doctor had to admit it worked!"

Periodically, there seems to be a revival in "folk medicine." A country doctor may publish a book about the subject, an old-fashioned cure for a specific ailment may prove to be effective and get passing attention in a news article, a doctor may declare that an old-fashioned remedy still is the best for a specific condition.

Basically, most folk medicine is closely associated with herbs, foods, oils, minerals, and components frequently found in any household. Methodology and techniques of folk medi­cine are especially adaptable to "home use."

It is not difficult to understand how many of these medi­cines and treatments originated and why they were popular. Among pioneers and peoples where doctors were few and far between or nonexistent, medical aids were the products of experience and necessity. People used what they had at hand. Sometimes, "what they had at hand" is still used by our most modern medical experts.

For instance, an English woman herb doctor, two centuries ago, was apparently having success in treating dropsical pa­tients with a concoction made of some 20 herbs. Dr. William Withering of Shropshire, England became interested in her success and, after considerable research, concluded that the foxglove in her treatment was the answer to her success. His dissertation, published in 1785, entitled An Account of the Foxglove and Some of Its Medical Uses still is considered to be an excellent treatise concerning digitalis, which comes from foxglove.

Herbs used by primitive tribes for medicinal purposes have received much attention from our most modern researchers. Herb therapy has a fascinating history. For centuries the properties of the poppy's opium have been well known. Peruvian Indians used the bark of a tree to combat fevers. Jesuit priests learned about it and took the knowledge to Europe, and thus was quinine introduced to world medicine.

Similar examples are so numerous that it would take books to tell the complete story, if it ever could be told. The culti­vation of medical plants has long been of great importance to all of us.

Along with the exploration into medicinal qualities of herbs, plants, barks, foods, animal matter, minerals and physical therapy, considerable importance has been directed toward practices founded in superstitions.

For instance, there is the case of nine-year-old Gretchen Kraut, a flaxen-haired little Pennsylvania-Dutch girl who lived well over a hundred years ago.

When she came screaming in fright to her mother from a field near the Kraut farmhouse, the mother was certain that something dreadful had happened on this hot summer day.

She rushed out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron. Her two smallest sons toddled after her, curious to learn why their sister was screaming so loudly.

Gretchen pointed down at a bare foot where a slight abrasion showed a little blood.

"A snake!" she screamed. "A snake bit me!"

Fear struck at the mother as she knelt and examined the foot. There were no puncture wounds that might come from the fangs of a poisonous snake, yet how was one to know? Undoubtedly the child had been bitten. The harmless field snakes would bite on occasion—but so would the deadly, poisonous ones!

"Come!" the frantic mother snapped. She grasped Gretch-en's hand and they started across a field toward a neighboring farmhouse. The smaller children trotted after them, one of them crying now in fright aroused by the unexplained excitement.

"I stepped on it," wept Gretchen. "It wiggled and turned and it bit me. Then it went away."

"Old Mrs. Voorhees knows what to do," Mrs. Kraut said. "She knows about powwowing. She'll know what to do. About snake bites she knows."

As they approached the Voorhees farm, two women came out into the yard, shading their eyes with their hands as they watched the woman and children approach, sensing the alarm in the situation.

"What's wrong?" demanded the older of the women. "Why is that child crying so?"

"A snake it was that bit her!" Mrs. Kraut gasped, out of breath.

"We'll see," said old Mrs. Voorhees. She examined the foot of the crying child and nodded sagely. "Be still, child!" she commanded.

"Do something, Mrs. Voorhees!" pleaded the mother.

"Yes."

The old lady quieted the girl and then, with a small show of ritual, spoke in an intense, dominating voice: "God has created all things and they are good. Thou only, serpent, art damned. Cursed be thou and thy sting! Zing! Zing! Zing!

A complete silence followed the words. Gretchen stared at her injured foot and wiped tears from her cheeks with chubby fingers. Mrs. Kraut looked imploringly at the old lady, and then at the other plumpish woman, Mathilda Voorhees, the old lady's daughter-in-law.

"It will be all right," Mathilda said with a reassuring smile. "See—there's no swelling nor redness. Gretchen will be all right."

"No thanks to you, Mrs. Kraut," scolded the old lady. "The child should a charm wear to protect her. See that she does. Next time the snake more deadly it might be, and the words I speak might not so well work!" She patted the small, blond girl with affection and then once again she spoke the magic words: "Cursed be thou and thy sting. Zing, zing, zing!"

Some who practiced powwowing among the Pennsylvania-Dutch pioneers frequently dealt with snake bite in the above manner. It is most doubtful if the cure was effective when the offending snake was poisonous.

Thus folk medicine—born of experience, superstition, prac­ticality, and tradition—indeed may involve a strange mixture of truth and fallacy, effectiveness and ineffectiveness, safety and danger, cure and failure. Some of it is pure nonsense, as illustrated above. Some of it is common sense. Some of it is as medically sound today as it was 3,000 years ago.

Whatever the pros and cons may be about folk medicine, there remains a consistent interest in it. Perhaps it is an al­most primitive impulse to distill life and living to essentials and simplicity. We watch a dog seek mud for an insect bite and assume that the treatment might work for us. We watch animals resort to other remedies for their accidents and mal­adies and wonder if the same remedies might not be effective for humans. We may even have unexplainable drives to use certain foods or juices or minerals to remedy an illness or to bring relief, and conclude that nature is directing us.

Dr. Jarvis touched upon this turning to nature for help when he wrote: "Nature opened the first drugstore. Primitive man and the animals depended on preventive use of its stock of plants and herbs to avoid disease and to maintain health and vigor. Because man and the animals were constantly on the move, Nature's drugstore had branches everywhere. Wher­ever in the world you were sick, you would find in the field its medicine to cure you, its materials for curative herbial teas and ointments."

In America our own lore of folk remedies has become a composite of many countries and many peoples. Our own history created demands. For instance, after the Civil War, many of our debilitated war veterans wanted tonics, which gave rise to a large number of so-called Indian herb bottled goods. Many of these tonics might have had a measure of source in Indian folk remedies, but many were little more than "old-fashioned" home remedies. Sarsparilla, rhubarb, cascarilla, wormwood, alum, mandrake, yellow dock, cherry bark, blackberries, wild geranium, and witch hazel leaves are only a few of the old standbys found in some of these tonics.

Some such remedies involved no herbs and today may seem startling in their descriptions. The following incident appar­ently is well authenticated.

In the '90s, Carl Schmidt, a middle-aged transfer man in a West Coast city, jumped from his wagon to a wooden sidewalk and received a deep puncture wound in his right foot from an exposed nail.

He quit work for the day and went home. Mrs. Schmidt washed the wound and wrapped it with a bandage. Within the next 24 hours the foot and leg were greatly swollen. The wound was angry-appearing and festered, according to the story of relatives and friends who remember the incident.

A young doctor was called in. He diagnosed the case as blood poisoning and, by the time he was on the case, it was indicated that amputation would be necessary to save Schmidt's life.

"If that's the only way, then you'll have to do it," Schmidt groaned. He looked away from the doctor and at his wife, his eyes glazed with pain and the realization that he was about to lose a leg. He saw the tears in her eyes and tried to smile reassuringly. "Don't, Hilda. Please."

"I'm going to send a telegram to Dr. Ellias," she said abruptly. She looked at the young doctor. "He's been our family doctor for years."

The young doctor nodded. "I know him," he said. "I'll be glad to have you call him in. But I'm certain his diagnosis will be the same as mine."

Dr. Ellias, a man well into his seventies, was visiting in a nearby town. Mrs. Schmidt, with the help of the young doc­tor, composed and sent a telegram to the elderly doctor. Within an hour they had a reply which is reported to have read:

"Buy all salt pork you can get from butcher and pack leg in it. Will draw out poison."

By the time the telegram had been received, the butcher stores were closed for the day. Mrs. Schmidt appealed to their family butcher. He opened his store and gave her the required salt pork which was immediately packed around Schmidt's leg, somewhat to the young doctor's misgivings.

Those who are acquainted with the incident say that by midmorning of the following day, the salt pork had become green with discharge from the poisoned leg while the leg had become almost white. It is reported that Schmidt recovered completely and his leg was saved.

Today some families which have resided for many years in the same residential area where Schmidt lived report that they still occasionally resort to the salt pork remedy.

The tremendous forward stride made in the practice of medicine over the last 75 years has relegated many of the folk cures to obscurity. The introduction of medical plans, insurance protection, free services, and the general availability of medical care to millions has also served to spell the rapid decline of home remedies. Doctors and competent medical care have come within the reach of almost everyone, in one form or another.

Furthermore, the advent of far-reaching mass advertising campaigns to promote and sell "proprietory" medicines such as pain relievers, antiseptics, cold remedies, laxatives, cough syrups, antihistamines, tonics, and similar products, undoubtedly have caused many "old-fashioned" household remedies to fade into history and the annals of folklore.

Nevertheless, there are probably millions of homes where— possibly on a top shelf of a library, or in an attic—there still may be found one of the home handbooks of medicine that attained great popularity in the last century and even into the present century.

A few titles of these books indicate their contents and uses: Handbook of Popular Medicine, The Practical Guide to Health, Medical Common Sense, Safe Counsel, Dr. Danel-son's Counselor With Recipes, The Standard Medical Instruc­tor For The People, Home and Health, Secret Nostrums And Systems, Dr. Chase's Recipes Or Information For Everybody, Gunn's New Domestic Physician Or Home Book Of Health, Robb's Family Physician.

In most of these books could be found methods of diag­nosis for a great many illnesses and various treatments. A large number of the treatments reflected the accumulated teachings of folk medicine, and served to keep those treat­ments alive.

In America the sources of such folk remedies often were deeply rooted in Europe. In the Minnesota country the Scan­dinavian folk remedies were much in evidence. In New England many medicinal treatments from England or the Continent were widely used, being passed down from genera­tion to generation.

The Pennsylvania Dutch had virtually a whole school of folk medicine pertinent to it. In the South the influence of Africa could be found, combined with the French and other colonizing people.

Eventually the medical practices and methods of the Ameri­can Indian found their ways into the settlers' cabins and into town and, finally, cities.

An excellent example of the Indian influence upon medical treatment in this country is evidenced by the Kickapoo Indian remedies that gained widespread popularity in the middle 19th century. Included in the Kickapoo remedies were a blood purifier called Kickapoo Indian Sagwa and Kickapoo Indian oils and salves, reputedly excellent for relieving all types of pains, to cure sores, asthma, and other ailments.

Many Indian treatments were herbal and some undoubtedly were effective and constitute, basically, some of the treatments still used in modern medicine.

No one knows how or why some of these folk remedies were selected or how they became standard procedure in many communities. However, we can trace the origin of quite a few herbal treatments to a strange doctrine frequently called the doctrine of signatures.

In essence, this was the use of a leaf, stalk, flower, or root that physically resembled a human organ to combat a dis­order of that specific part of the body.

Other concepts held sway at one time or another. The his­tory of medicine goes back many, many centuries. The ac­cumulated knowledge is vast. The applications are many.

Possibly, one of the most significant facts that we might remember about the amazing progress of medicine in the last fifty years or so is in our far greater knowledge about why a remedy works, or a preventive is effective.

This might be illustrated by the fact that a "fantastic" con­coction of toad skins used by the ancient Chinese for treat­ment of dropsy was not quite as "fantastic" as we might believe. Researchers today know that the toad skin is rich in bufagin, which brings about a free flow of urine to help drain tissues, and in adrenalin, which speeds or slows heart action, increases blood pressure, and speeds breakdown of sugar.

Another instance may be found in a drug called rauwolfia, from the leaves of a plant found on Himalayan foothills, for ages a Hindu "tranquilizer" and, reportedly, frequently used by Mahatma Gandhi to restore his philosophic detachment when under stress. With the aid of medical science, the drug is now used for hypertension, otherwise known as high blood pressure, and in the treatment of mental diseases, because today's scientists and physicians understand better the active principle of rauwolfia and how and why it works as it does, as a tranquilizer.

Our comparatively recent and quick spurt to medical knowl­edge has been so intense and deep that those of us who lived in the Thirties actually have witnessed an astounding era of progress.

Probably more than half of the drugs used by doctors in the early Thirties were the same drugs employed in the Middle Ages. Since then there has been such a change in the use of drugs and drug therapy that even pharmacology and materia medica have now become "Chemotherapy." Since World War II we have seen the advent of most of the news-making antibiotics such as Streptomycin, Chloromycetin, Aureomycin, and others. Cortisone and ACTH—steroids— have come into their own since the war. Anticoagulants, so useful in treating heart diseases, have become important.

Hand in hand with this revolution in medical care has come the increasing practice of relying less and less upon "experi­ence" in formulation and indications for the use of drugs. A turn toward specific therapy has been greatly apparent. The efficiency of the doctor has been greatly increased. The effi­cacy of old-time treatments have been greatly overshadowed by the newer and more effective treatments.

Despite this progress and the discoveries and the new availability of medical help, there still remains an active and almost startling interest in "folk medicine."

Although the finest medical aid in the world may be as handy as the telephone, thousands of persons will avidly study a new book or article about "folk medicine" and try out the suggested treatments.

And, of course, there are always those who firmly maintain that the "old-fashioned" ways are best.

In the following chapters the reader is given an opportunity to review and compare some of the folk medicine treatments with the most modern treatments. The field is enormously large, the pace of medicine has become so rapid that even before these words reach print new medical discoveries will have made news. And some of those new discoveries may well have their origin in the efficacy of age-old folk medicines.

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