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Sun December 3, 2006

The folk remedies have stuck around

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Oklahoma Frontier Drug Store Museum curator Mark Ekiss shows a bottle of Cannabis used as a remedy in the late 1800s at the museum in Guthrie last Wednesday. BY NATE BILLINGS, THE OKLAHOMAN
Folk remedies
Oklahoma Gardening host and producer Steve Owens shares some common medicinal plants and their uses. However, he emphasizes, medicinal plants can have adverse effects if not taken correctly.

• Purple Coneflower (Echinacea spp.): Used to treat snake bites, toothaches, heal wounds and boost the immune system.

• Bee Balm (Monarda spp.): Used to treat coughs, colds, flu, fevers, insomnia, headaches, sore throats.

• Cattail (Typha spp.): Used to treat coughs, dysentery, digestive disorders, wounds, burns.

• Yarrow (Achillea millefolium): Used to stop bleeding; as a sedative to treat burns; used to treat insect bites and as a painkiller. Contains thujone, which is toxic in large doses.

• Plains Yucca (Yucca glauca): Given to women in prolonged labor, used to reduce dandruff and baldness.

• Elderberry (Sambucus spp.): Used to treat eczema, rashes, colds, flu, fevers. Contains cyanide-producing glycosides.

• Goldenrod (Solidago spp.): Used as a diuretic and to treat kidney stones.

• Passion Flower (Passiflora spp.): Used to treat insomnia and sooth nerves.

• Selfheal (Prunella spp.): Used to treat sore throats and mouth ulcers.

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By Jeff Raymond
Staff Writer
Merle Wagner eats nine — not eight, not 10 — gin-soaked raisins every day with glucosamine tablets to prevent arthritis.

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She swears by the more-common-than-you'd-think cure.

"I don't think you get that much out of the gin, but it might be a combination of the two," said Wagner, 70, of Edmond.

Others fight a cold with a cup of hot tea fortified with honey and a dash of whiskey, or recover from vomiting with Sprite and crackers.

Folk medicine traditions remain strong in Oklahoma, due in part to the lingering old and ever-arriving new.

Mexican immigrants may visit a yerberia, or herb store, or consult a traditional healer, or curandero, for ailments from weak blood to diabetes. Blacks and American Indians have their own extensive — and sometimes overlapping — herbal remedies and spiritual cures.

Amid double-digit increases in health insurance premiums and expensive blockbuster drugs, traditional remedies would be making a comeback had they ever disappeared.

In the only comprehensive look at alternative therapies, from herbs to aromatherapy, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, found 36 percent of American adults older than 18 who were surveyed used some form of alternative medicine in 2002. As a child, Chrissy Rodriguez, 39, got a splinter between the nail and tissue of her big toe. After washing the soon-to-be-infected, swollen digit, her mother wrapped it in bacon fat and gauze, and taped it. The next morning, the splinter