Cooking up a remedy

Feeling ill? '
Why not try some cow cabbage, Spanish Moss or rabbit tobacco to fend off what ails you?'
Those were some of the things native Hilton Head Islander Louise Miller Cohen remembers seeing people use as a child during the 1940s and '50s, before modern medicine came to the area.'
She even remembers the name of the local medicine man who sold such folk remedies to the sick and injured.'
"Mr. Aiken," she recalls, while in between phone calls from her home-based decorating business on the island. "He sold cures in pint and quart sizes."'
They were remedies like tea, made from a tobacco plant called Life Everlasting that was guaranteed to cure coughs, toothaches and the flu. '
Aside from Aiken, though, Gullah families developed their own households cures using plants and herbs that were found in abundance around the area.'
Cohen remembers a lengthy list of remedies the native islanders used before there were modern doctors on the island. '
Many of the Gullah remedies originated in West Africa and were carried to Hilton Head Island by Africans who came to the area as slaves.'
"When they brought our people from Africa, they brought Africa here," she says. "Our people had the knowledge of plants and medicine."'
For instance, when Cohen's children had diarrhea, she gave them boiled blackberry root, she says. To treat a cough, she heard combining shoemaker root, holly bush and pine tops would help. Some people were even known to add a little honey, lemon or liquor to the concoction, she says.'
"I tell you, when they mix this potion up, in a couple of days you start to feel better," says Cohen, who also is a Gullah storyteller. '
The most popular home remedy in the Gullah culture, though, was the plant Life Everlasting, which, when boiled as a tea or taken straight, was touted as a cure for a cold or the flu.'
Cohen says other household remedies included drinking sugar water to stop hiccups in adults. For babies, a piece of a brown paper bag soaked in water and placed on the forehead did the trick.'
Other remedies used by the Gullah culture included cow cabbage for earaches, the ashes of gum tree balls placed on the skin to cure sores and Spanish Moss put in shoes to decrease high blood pressure. '
Questioning the method now, Cohen says it might have been the walking that helped lower blood pressure more so than the moss. Either way, she says the remedy was known to work.'
Though Sheila DiBartolomeo isn't a Lowcountry native, the Ohio native has developed an interest in herbal household remedies over the years, despite the fact that her mother, who worked for a doctor, used conventional medicine most of the time.'
"My sister-in-law got me on the path many years ago and I just took off with it," the Hilton Head Island resident says. "It's just intriguing."'
Her mother used a few home remedies, though. One was putting lemon and honey in tea to treat a sore throat. To cure ulcers of the mouth, she would take a gentian violet plant and rub it inside the mouth.'
DiBartolomeo has a list of cure-alls from her search of home herbal remedies that come from books, friends and her Italian/Croatian background.'
Chamomile is used a lot by the Italians, she says. It helps settle stomachaches, cures wounds and even lightens hair.'
To break up the phlegm that accompanies a cold, boiled thyme does wonders, she says. The most effective treatment is taking a pot of freshly boiled thyme with you to bed and putting it under the blanket to breathe.'
And for dogs losing their hair, try tea tree oil, DiBartolomeo says.'
Other home remedies she's discovered include breathing or rubbing peppermint on the temples to get rid of headaches and a mix of goldenseal and water to cure itchy eyes.'
While some families thrived on the home remedies developed years ago, Mary Powell, a Bluffton native, says such remedies were used sparingly in her household of 14 siblings. '
"We had doctors when I was a child," says the 96-year-old. "But medicine has progressed so much (now). Back then they were just learning surgery."'
The family doctor was the first place Powell's family would go to for aches and pains, but when home remedies were used, the most favored cure was turpentine, which was always kept in the house for cuts and scrapes.'
Today, aloe is Powell's preferred choice. She keeps the plant in her home to help heal burns, she says.'
During the years of her youth, though, Powell's family picked up several do-it-yourself remedies from the black people who lived and worked alongside them.'
Among those cures were using cobwebs to stop bleeding, a treatment she remembers her brother using, and placing chewed tobacco on the skin for bee or wasp stings.'
Today, the treatment seems peculiar to Powell now, even though it worked for her.'
"I don't know what it did," says the Beaufort resident with a laugh.'
There was veracity in every secret she learned, though.'
When one of her sisters accidentally stepped on a batch of hot ashes as a toddler, a woman told Powell's father to make an ointment of carbolic acid and wrap her feet in collard greens, she says.'
"He said it was all the difference in the world," says Powell. "It healed so much faster and better too."'
Bubba Crosby, one of Powell's nephews, also recalls the story of how his mothers' feet were cured.'
But the remedy the 79-year-old saw used most often would be the popular Life Everlasting plant, which he also calls "rabbit tobacco." It grew on the edge of farm land and worked wonders for those who tried it, Crosby says. But he wasn't among the ones who used it. Never had a reason to.'
"I've been pretty healthy all my life," he says.