Salmon Bay Remedies

(W 57th St in 1890!!)

I'm spending the afternoon in Ballard Library (and at the beach) reading Passport To Ballard, researching for another project, when I came across Chapter 14 "Staying Healthy On Salmon Bay". Before there were hospitals out here, there was indigenous plant healing, and then just after that there were pioneers with no medical assistance. Kay Nelson writes the medicine chests of those days were - alum, sulphur, borax, ipecac, camphor, ammonia, morphine and opium. My mom did not keep those things around in her first aid kit. So I'm very curious about them.

More so I wonder about their use of food, spices and herbs to deal with ailments (and also where Nelson got her information). Nelson lists: mustard/bran/oatmeal for poulstices, cayenne pepper, egg yolks and whites for burn ointments and eyewashes; bloodroot, mandrake, dandelion, burdock, yellow dock, chamomile, sassafras, Scot aloes, rue, red clover, gentian, pennyroyal, tansy, rhubarb.

How did the pioneers prepare these plants? Perhaps sometime I should try one of their remedies for heatstroke (after all it's summer now): a wet cloth is wrapped around one's head, while a second bandage soaked in salt is wrapped around the neck. Then dry salt is applied behind the ears. Then mustard plasters are applied to the calves of the legs and soles of feet. Worth a try I guess?

Did the pioneers bring the plants here or learn to make use of native plants? Mustard originates from the Himilayas, oat from the Fertile Crescent, bloodroot and sassafras from Eastern U.S., dandelion, yellow dock, chamomile, red clover, gentian, pennyroyal, tansy, and burdock from Eurasia, aloe from Africa, rue from Macaronesia, and rhubarb from China. But I guess we can't blame the pioneers since they had to take with them the knowledge they had. Go figure many of these plants are now so well established. Can't get rid of the dandelion, that's for sure.