Granny Witch Rx
Appalachian Granny Witch Remedies
(of course, folks, use your common sense, and see a doctor when needed!)
Like all Appalachian Granny Magic folk lore these charms/potions/spells are basically, Cherokee, Irish, and Scotts-Irish in origin, often a strange mixture of the three. In the magical mountains of Appalachia the folk magicians of the area have for generations used herbs, and such to treat common aliments. (Of course, once should not consider these a substitute for your modern doctor.) Some of the most common treatments are quite effective. Some of the charms are rather odd and almost frightening sounding to our modern sensibilities.
Chicken Pox
Soak in an oatmeal bath twice a day
Posion Oak/Ivy
Washing with Clorox bleach then buttermilk, (I suggest the latter only, unless you have a high pain threshold.)
Menstrual Cramps
Take your oldest pair of shoes and place them upside down under your bed. Also a potion containing equal parts of sourwood honey, raspberry tea, or juice, and moonshine (any clear spirit,) is said to help, if take one shallowful at a time as needed, and I bet it does!
'Sour' Stomach/Heartburn
Take one cup full of, what my Mawie calls 'Soda,' so don't ever offer me a 'soda,' and be surprised when I recoil. Soda is hot water, and baking soda. Eating a raw potato or chewing on a mint leaf is also prescribed.
Cuts and Scrapes on the Skin
Place a spider web over the area, and blow on it.
Bladder/Kidney infection
Drink large amounts of dandelion tea.
Diarrhea
Drink blackberry juice. (This one cured my son when he was in the hospital when he was just a baby, and the doctors had proved useless. Some canned blackberry juice from one of my grandmother's old relatives cured him the first day we gave it to him, after weeks of his being sick!)
Earaches
Urine drops in the ear, or blow tobacco smoke into the ear.
Sunburn
Take a vinegar bath.
Headaches
Never throw your hair clippings away, throw them out for the birds to make nests from, or you'll have headaches, but I've heard this in reverse as well, that if the birds get your hair you'll have headaches, so you should bury it. Also an old sock tied about the head for a night, then burnt is prescribed.
Jaundice
Catnip tea is recomended, it is used as a preventative measure even for newborns.
Toothache
Putting vanilla on the tooth, or sleeping on wet ashes is often prescribed.