Asphedity or acifidity bags contained various herbs and pungent substances and smelled terrible. Photo courtesy of Dave’s Garden.
Before I started to school, I had the measles. My maternal grandmother was the daughter of a doctor. Mother called Mom to come visit. She came to stay for a few days, made sure I was in bed the whole time, and told Mother to keep the room dark. It was believed, and may be true, that measles could affect the eyes. That meant I couldn’t do some of my favorite things, reading and playing with paper dolls. For me it was a miserable experience but not dangerous, just boring.
Both grandmothers had a wide range of home remedies. There were salves you rubbed on your chest if you had a cold, but the two grandmothers didn’t agree on the brand. There was some horrible cough syrup that was black and made me gag. That’s when I learned peppermints work just as well. Baby aspirin was put in a spoonful of water and dissolved before swallowing. I still hate to take pills.
Why did we not go to the doctor for a prescription or a shot? Simply because doctors and medicines cost money in the time before medical insurance. And money was scarce in that time and place. Or maybe it was because these old remedies had worked so well in the past; so why change?
At that time, polio was a great threat. It was rumored that it spread in swimming pools. That was ok; Jacksboro had no swimming pool. But everyone had measles, mumps, and chicken pox. There were vaccinations for small pox and whopping cough, though. Sometimes they left a big round scar on your upper left arm.
My mother’s family lived on a cattle ranch seven miles west of Archer City. The three children rode a primitive school bus to a school about ten miles further west. My Uncle Jeff Seay told me once about some other children on the bus who wore asphedity bags pinned to their undergarments. Asphedity or acifidity bags contained various herbs and pungent substances such as ginseng, pokeweed, and yellow root. These protected the wearer from catching colds, flu, and other ailments bred in close conditions. Uncle Jeff said they really kept everybody else away from the wearer. The smell was nauseous.
My favorite home remedy was the Madstone. I have actually never seen one or met anyone who used it successfully. But folk medicine lore is full of annotations referring to the madstone. It was a fossilized gallstone from a deer, preferably a white one. When a mad dog, or other rabid animal, bit a person, someone ran to get the madstone. It was soaked in warm raw milk, placed on the wound, and soon it absorbed part of the poison. When the madstone turned black, it was removed, cleaned with hot water, and the process began again. Sometimes the applications lasted for several days. But old-timers swore by the method.
Asphedity worked because it kept anyone with a contagious disease away. Madstones worked, not because they were fossilized gallstones, but because warm, raw milk will draw out poisons. The fumes from eucalyptus leaves found in various chest rubs open up nasal passages. Cheap, maybe, but who wants to go around stinking all the time?