The More Things Change...

I (Donis) haven't been feeling all that well lately. We've had a lot of rain here in the Phoenix area, which is horrible for my head and I haven't really been able to spend time on the computer. I feared at first I had succumbed to the "tripledemic", but it seems not. I did have a Covid booster last week, so that may have contributed to my woes. Anyway, my head is a mess and nothing seems to help right now. but a warm cloth to the forehead. The old remedies work best sometimes.

In 2017, I wrote a novel called Return of the Raven Mocker, which was set during the influenza pandemic of 1918. No one knows for sure how many died in the flu pandemic, but modern estimates put the number at somewhere between thirty and fifty million people worldwide. Unlike our recent pandemic, which seemed to target us oldsters, the Spanish flu mainly killed young people, and was so virulent that a person would be fine in the morning and dead by nightfall. Once the disease began to spread, whole communities tried to quarantine themselves. People would mark their doors with a red “X” to let their neighbors know the family was infected. There were few doctors available because of World War I, so nurses were the absolute heroes, keeping people fed and looked after, and often falling ill themselves.

 One of the primary research materials for my novels is always the newspapers of the time, and it was fascinating to see what people knew in 1918 and when they knew it. From the perspective of 100 years on, we know how things turned out. But, like now, they had no cure and no idea what was going to happen. In the early days of the pandemic, the government actually encouraged the press to downplay the seriousness of the situation, because the war was still going on and nothing was to be allowed to interfere with war production!

Then there was the mask business – people were encouraged to wear masks and half the population of the country went insane, sure it was a big government plot! Eventually, factories all over the United States were no longer able to stay open because most of their workers were ill, and the stories in the papers began to change radically, printing all kinds of weird and generally useless advice about how to avoid becoming sick. People died from being dosed with turpentine, coal oil, mercury, ox bile, chicken blood, and other unmentionable home remedies they were given by their well-meaning caretakers. There are modern scientists who believe that some of the deaths in the epidemic were caused by aspirin poisoning rather than the disease. Aspirin was relatively new on the market, and folks may have figured that if a little aspirin was good for fever and aches, then eating whole handfuls every hour was even better if you were really sick. 

However, when you have no cure, there are old remedies that can actually be useful. Garlic really does have antibiotic properties, and was used a lot as a treatment during the 1918 flu outbreak. I found a recipe for garlic soup in an early twentieth century cookbook that called for 24 cloves of garlic to be simmered for an hour in a quart of water. That sounds like it would kill any germ that dares to try and infect you. 

 My great-grandmother swore that placing a bowl of raw onions in a sick room would absorb the ill-humors.  I found a number of remedies that called for binding something to the feet. An 1879 cookbook recommended taking a large horseradish leaf, placing it on a hot shovel to soften if, then folding it and fastening it in the hollow of the foot with a cloth bandage. I also found foot-poultice recipes that used burdock leaves, cabbage, and mullein. All the above are guaranteed to “alleviate pain and promote perspiration”. 

Chicken soup really, really does help. Your mother says so, and so does science. Prohibition was the law in Oklahoma in 1918. Even so, my grandmother’s favorite remedy for fever, cold, or flu, was a hot toddy.  She swore that this never failed to break a fever and rouse a sweat.  A hot toddy is made thus : 1 teacup hot water juice of half a lemon 1 tablespoon sugar 1 jigger Scotch whiskey My grandmother was so enamored of this curative that she made it often, just as a preventative.

As for me and my headache, the toddy didn't do the trick, but at least I didn't care about it so much. That's about all I can write now, Dear Reader. Time for a hot rag on my forehead.