By Elaine Rassel
A friend gave me a cookbook she found (at maybe a rummage sale?) from Remsen Happy Siesta Nursing Home when Remsen was celebrating 100 years. In the back of the cookbook, the residents were interviewed monthly with different topics for them to relate on in their lives.
I had an incident with a tooth on Christmas Eve and because I had to do with what was available, I went to look as to how people treated any illness or incident without any medication or when medical care wasn’t available.
Many years ago I had a coat made from sheep. (Jeanette always said when it got wet that she could smell animal!) Anyway, I needed some repair work done on one of the cuffs and my sewing machine wouldn’t sew over anything that heavy. I was sent to a private home where a lady did this kind of repair. She had been in a German concentration camp and had escaped taking a “shower”. She was telling me that there were no doctors available and when you got sick, you did what you could or else just die. She remembered having a bad sore throat. Now we would go to the doctor and get some help, but there was no help for her. One older woman told her to drink her own urine and that would take care of it. Yes, it did! Now would you have ever thought of doing this?
One of the residents, Agnes Schilmoeller related that all of her family got the scarlet fever except her little brother. When they got over this, they all got the measles. A doctor made several trips to take care of them. She had horrible headaches from this. In 1918 her father came down with the flu and when he got over it, the rest of the family came down with it. The doctor came several times on a road deep with mud with whiskey from the drug store. Those were the days of prohibition so whiskey was supposed to be used for medicinal purposes only. Whiskey and soda water were the only meds they took for the flu but they all survived. There were other families that weren’t so fortunate.
Emma Schumacher said when her family all got the flu in 1918, her mother gave them fried onions in sugar. She said she didn’t know what this was supposed to do but they didn’t taste too bad. When her little brother was just four years old, the doctor removed his tonsils using their kitchen table for the operating table.
When she was young, Esther Hewicker had so many earaches. Her mother would put sweet oil in her ears and covered them with hot towels. When Esther was at school, she would sit close to the pot belly stove to keep her ears warm. First she would sit on one side of the stove and move on the other side to keep the other ear warm. Gradually she outgrew the earaches.
All the women interviewed this medical care question talked about their babies either arriving at home or some were fortunate to have a baby born in a hospital. Esther’s baby was born in the Sacred Heart Hospital in Le Mars. She related another interesting thing—she had found the name, Ila Mae, in an article in the Des Moines Register but her husband kept telling everyone they were naming the baby, Ila Jean. So, they named her Ila Jean!
Alvina Kauffman said that years ago when some part of their body ached and needed heat, they would heat oats in a bag in the oven and lay the warm bags wherever the heat was needed. For a toothache, they’d dip cotton in oil of cloves and dab that on the toothache. When she was about 12 years old, she came down with pleueresy pneumonia. The doctor from Marcus came out many times in a horse and buggy to take care of her. Eventually he had to tap her side to drain out the infection. She was down for 12 weeks and had to learn to walk all over again by holding onto the fence. She remembered that a private room in a hospital for a mother and baby was $11.00 a day—that was 35 to 40 years ago!
Anna Hansen related that a popular remedy years ago to draw out infections and slivers was to wrap smoked bacon around the infected part. The salt in the bacon would soon draw out the infections or sliver, etc. For sore throats, they would use goose grease, rubbed in well, and then wrap a warm sock around the throat. (They didn’t use the German concentration camp remedy!)
Lucy Hansen’s family was pretty healthy as they grew up but when anyone did get sick, they were given camomile tea to drink. She mentioned that in those days, people did not take good care of their teeth so they lost them early in life. Babies born at home required the mother to stay in be for a couple of weeks. (Times have changed!)
Mary Kunkel told how her mother and all six of the kids came down with chicken pox. They just got over that at they all got scarlet fever. They all survived. There was one time when one of the kids came down with scarletina. The whole family was quarantined with a large notice posted on the door. No one other than the family was to enter the house. When anyone had an earache, skunk oil was put in the ear. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But it was odorless and clear. Her brother-in-law would render the skunk out in the grove on a home made stove.
There was a panel of Jim Sudtelgte, Ervin Hanno, Eddie Nilles and Frances Kenkel that told of their chief remedies. These remedies were mustard plaster, skunk oil, goose grease, Sloan’s liniment, Watkins liniment, hot whiskey, honey and sulfure in hot water. These seemed to be all purpose solutions to most ailments. The doctor dispensed a lot of medications himself but there was some from Meinert’s Drug Store. Annie Meinert (Mrs. Ray Niemann’s sister) followed in her father’s footstep’s as a druggist. She never married after the tragic death of her fiance´ in a train wreck. Later she sold the drug store to Les Bedel.