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"Mother and Daddy (Howard Hoyle) used the old mountain remedies on us children, and we were hardly ever sick," said Watson, who shares some of those remedies.
"If we had the croup, or congestion in our chest, Mother would rub our chest with hog grease," she said. "And if we had a cold, she'd peel an onion and set it up in the window sill. Didn't care if it smelled and you know it did. She'd also make us drink boneset tea, or if it were late at night, she make us drink hot ginger tea."
For a bout of asthma, mullein leaves, generally found in cow pastures, were seeped for a tea. The trick was drying them out, but not in the sun. If the bout was really bad, the child leaned over the stove with his head almost in the boiling pan of mullein. A towel was placed over his head to provide a tent-like effect for inhaling.
While cat nip causes felines to act crazy, used in a tea it was sure to make babies sleep.
To stop vomiting, scrape the bark from a peach tree, soak it in water and after about an hour, take a cup or two. For diarrhea, Watson's mother kept plenty of canned blackberry juice on hand.
To cut down on caffeine, many folks back then would drink spice wood tea, Watson said.
For problems with cholesterol, eating hot peppers was the solution. If you had trouble with your kidneys, you would take a pin and prick a clear blister on a balsam tree.
"You'd drain that liquid, we called it 'bleeding the balsam,' and get you a cup full," she said. "Smelled awful, about like turpentine.
"To purify blood, take galax leaves, mistletoe, lion's tongue that's a little green weed with white veins and briar root. Mash up together real good. Mother would put the mixture in half-gallon cans and store them in the spring house. It was so cool there, that stuff would last for a week or more."
If you had a boil that needed to come to a head, slippery elm was the cure. For hives, try ground ivy.
"If we got snake bit, Mother would make an onion and salt poultice to rub on the bite," said Watson.
If you want thicker hair, forget expensive drug store solutions, Watson said. Instead, take a teaspoon of sage and stir it up in a cup of boiling water. Let it cool, then pour the solution through your hair once a day for several days.
"Don't rinse after you do this," she cautioned. "Now for a baby's hair, you wet your hands in camphor and rub them through the baby's hair. People believed that would keep a baby's hair from ever coming out."
In addition to camphor, Watson advised keeping some bark scraped from a white oak tree handy. "At the end of a long, hard day and your feet are tired, boil the bark and wash your feet in it. It will make you feel better than anything you'll buy at a store," Watson said.
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