Dr. Smith recounted some of the rich heritage of the Germans in the previous note. In this note, let's look at some continuing practices (he was speaking not much more than thirty years ago), which show how difficult is to change all aspects of a culture. Another man, not of a German heritage, had a daughter who suffering from a severe case of whooping cough. His dialect-speaking neighbors (meaning Germans) suggested he take her to the local mill and have the miller place her in the hopper while the mill was in operation. Following this advice, the man was amazed that the treatment helped cure her of the cough. Prof. Smith, with Prof Stewart, surveyed mills in Augusta, Highland, and Pendleton Counties, in Virginia, and found five where this was once a common practice. In Pennsylvania, an 1869 publication had recommended this cure, but it has been extinct in Pennsylvania for a century. In Virginia it flourished up to the past thirty years or so (say 1930 to 1960). Other Virginia Germans used the mill hopper to prevent stuttering and to help children who were slow in talking. The rationale for this was the gentle rocking of hopper would shake the cough from the body, and help the words flow from the body.
Other common cures for whooping cough were:
Dr. Smith said that within the last few months an elderly woman in an isolated mountainous area showed him cures for young children who had developed ruptures. One remedy included the use of an onion which was rubbed gently over the rupture. The onion was taken to a place in the brush where the child was least likely to go and was buried before sunrise. The other method involved splitting a tree, and this cure was known in both England and Germany.
A cure for a sore mouth, with similar cures in Germany and England, involved three straws, or rushes. In the German version, three straws from the stable manure were passed through the child's mouth and then returned to the exact spot from which they were taken. Another cure for this involved blowing into the child's mouth, but only a person who had never seen his father could do this. (In England, the power to do this was in a "left" twin, i.e., one who had outlived the other twin.)
What has this to do with genealogy? Without these cures, you might not be here. They perhaps saved the life of an ancestor before your branch sprouted. More exactly, these practices were a part of life in days gone by.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.