Appalachia People How they doctor themselves before modern medicine

foreign [Music] some places are just hard to get to in the middle of nowhere and I explore these places these old forgotten places of our pioneers and I run across stuff like this whole graveyard really open most are unmarked unknown and I noticed a lot of babies in these graveyards a lot of babies yeah I'm gonna share a little history with you of how these people used to talk to themselves and why there's so many babies in this graveyard so much history here most of it's forgotten now these Appalachians are among the oldest mountains in the world and they hold a lot of history themselves the Native Americans come in here thousands of years ago this is their land and they lived one with and they worshiped this land they know all the plants all the cures and all the animals and they worshiped his life this was their Lane and they were a lot of different people here too a lot of different tribes here in the Southeast along these riverways and waterways even along the mighty Mississippi it was all kinds of tribes and they are said to being over a million here at one time thriving along the southeastern United States and lived in villages like this big community all up down each Waterway dig seven thousands of years now the first European explorer to come in here in this country was Hernando de Soto in 1540. he was from Spain he was looking for gold land to claim for Spain but he brought more with you here than just his people and his Conquest for gold he brought back something here to these Americas that the Native Americans didn't have any immunity to and knowingly no one that they brought a disease in here called smallpox that was devastating to their Native American so these great tribes ninety percent of them disappeared for the next hundred years or so why settlers started moving in this country these people were already gone all was left is what you see today of the modern tribes these great people died of disease it didn't the sad thing is they didn't even know what was killing [Music] well sub 200 years later they come into this country these mountains trying to settle trying to start their own life from the east coast and from their Old Country which they came from a lot of immigrants coming into this country [Music] and they started little places like this throughout the mountain these rugged mountains a little Homestead little farm with their bare hand out of this will here's a little picture of a little boy and a little girl that I noticed in one of these old pictures peeping out around that old cap fresh and it lived in places like this all up and down these mountains all up and down these Appalachians these families lived hard some of them had big families and they worked hard at it it was a simple life it was just hard work and they made everything on their own they lived off the land and they made everything to sell they either made it trade for it done with that even her own clothing they were on their own in these mountains they were so hid away in these mountains so separate but they enjoyed their life and it was a hard life for most of them carving something for nothing these men they about worked herself to death if they didn't an early grade working on these old Farms it's laying trying to make something to pass down through the generation and these old coal miners they surely died early they really worked herself to death but that's how they had to make a lip and the women they come into this country these were hard women most of them here's a picture of them having a baby but most of them just laid on the bed and they lucky they had a midwife with them when they had these kids and they had plenty of kids too but some of them didn't make it baby died about childbirth and a mother too then was sad times just happened all up and down this country [Music] and these people they they learn their different medicines how to cure this and how to this from their old ways they've been brought in here with them but a lot of it they learn from the Native Americans they call them Mountain witches but they were medicine people these were medicine women they knowed all the herbs the point what was their medicine cabinet their Pharmacy here it is I'm a firm believer that every cure every disease and illness is in these mountains it just needs to be found and develop here's the most sought after plan in these mountains ginseng th here's what it looked like most sought after plant sad to say it's over harvested but these old people they know what this plant was they know what it can do thank you [Music] now these mountain people they had big family and they were tight knit communities too in these mountains and a lot of them suffered and struggled some of them just didn't make it [Music] it's sad so many mothers trying to care for their babies in these mountains and not much they could do for besides what they could give them herbs and medicine they knowed in these mountains you little kid they had a hard time growing up all the fevers and little the sicknesses they had no cures forward back in the day and a mom of the house full of kid trying her best to feed them and raise them as best you could and it didn't matter what color you was what race you was they all suffered back in these mountains [Music] these communities were so isolated they had no much medicine at all and trying to take care of a kid is just hurting don't know what's wrong with it you're doing the best you can and these mothers had a hard time there was no they was probably a day or two days away from any kind of town in these mountains and it's sad when you sing stuff like this and my seedness graveyards some of them are marked here's a baby but you don't know what happened you just don't so say but the biggest thing in these mountains on children adults too but children really had it hard was typhoid people and everybody asked but what is tapboard paper well [Music] it's a bacterial disease spread through contaminated water or food or just close contact of somebody carrying this disease and here you could see some of them smart some most is not [Music] and it had a 30 percent death rate even higher among the children [Music] sad times even even the White House of our country in 1862 President Lincoln his son died from typhoid fever we now here's one of the carriers everybody's heard of Typhoid Mary her name is Mary Malone she was an Irish immigrant a cook and she said to a spread a carrier spraying tide Point fever to over 200 people and all across the country and then some of them people carried it to other people so it just sprayed and it finally spread into these mountains and these little communities and they just wasn't no cure for it they done the best they could a lot of them died in these little graveyards just pulled up unmarked grape little baby but the best thing about it is the good Lord knows whoever one of them are and where they're at that is hot in 1891 they had been a hundred thousand people died from this type of fever it was a daily disease with no cure at the time but the pure finally come in 1911 but it was years later before it made its way into a vaccine into the amount a lot of these little children didn't grow up to be adults they caught some of these viral diseases and it just they just couldn't live through it just wasn't much medicine back in them days except for what they got out of these mountains so a lot of them didn't make it sad time now you didn't have no modern medicine like they did today and they sure didn't have no doctor come to their house for a long time it was slow in these mountains but eventually times changed they had nurses and doctors go throughout these communities checking on the health of the welfare of the people and it slowly helped change things got vaccinated and stuff needs a little country doctors would go just from Community to community trying to help what they could what medicines they had at the time but one of the biggest things was being safe now they had their own little cures here in the mountains they called it moonshine white lightning and it held a lot of little problems but it didn't cure everything it was more or less something else just for a community drink and back in the old days they do such things as bloodlet where they'd let blood out of so much blood out of you supposed to help you made you better but I think that was just a waste of time just old medical cures that didn't work now I could remember back in my grandmother telling me that her dad was a Baptist preacher that go around the communities in the county and preach and he back in the Spanish Flu of 8 1918 he would check on people and he would he'd come back and say that they would be whole family just died of this blue it was so devastating in these mountains [Music] you got to understand these mountains are so isolated so things were slow coming in here and then they were slow leaving too so much history passed through these old mountains good and bad time [Music] now they had all kinds of concoctions and stuff for illnesses and everything you can see right here one of them was castor oil I can remember when I was a little old bitty thing anything to tell you castor oil or cod liver oil take it and it was good for worms and people say well you got no worms well you know they was worms people get worms just like anything else this would drive them out of it but them days is long gone [Music] a lot of them didn't make he told mountains were hard on paper and they they suffered for it too but it's sad when I see stuff like this unmarked Graves from back in the early days hard-working settling people in these mountains you don't know who they are how they died and a lot of their families just died off generation and our generation so they're forgotten about we don't know who they are but the good Lord knows every one of them and ever so so I want to thank y'all for watching hope you enjoy these little things of History throughout our mountains so God bless thanks for watching and I'll see you next time foreign

Channel: DONNIE LAWS

Views: 50,899

Keywords: Appalachia People How they doctor themselves before modern medicine, Appalachia people, medicine women of Appalachia, Appalachian History, Pioneers of Appalachia, early medicine, Appalachian Graveyards, Typhoid Fever in Appalachia, Early pioneers, Appalachia life

Id: AqmRu4jytgE

Length: 16min 42sec (1002 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 18 2023