Laudanum and Coffin Screws

On this Sunday night I was thinking about something our cousin Beth asked me the other day. She'd been considering how to locate a family member and knew that several had sort of "disappeared" from the censuses at a certain point.

She asked if I knew whether a fever or something had "gone around" during that time.

I couldn't help her with her particular problem, but I want to point out how fortunate we are today to have medications, vaccines, treatments we can easily access when we or family members are sick.

It really wasn't that easy not so many years ago, especially in this state. My older brothers were born at home--not by choice, either. One nearly died. And that was in the 1930's.

Back in the 1880's in Kemper County, Mississippi, there seemed to be a pattern of illness during at least a couple of summers. I have only the two years in my copy of the ledger of Calvert Store, at Rio (just over the Kemper/Lauderdale County line), so I don't know whether the illnesses were typical summer problems or were unusual events just during those two years.

I mentioned the ledger just before Christmas this year to show how much simpler the holiday was "back then." If the families got anything special "store-bought," it was going to be candy, oranges, apples...maybe fabric for a new dress. Someone bought an umbrella.

I'll start with one of the first pages...apparently a typical day.

You'll notice that people were buying typical things: thread, turpentine, bacon, sugar. But take a closer look. On this one page, at least three people were purchasing assorted drugs--two got "liver medicine," but pay special attention to Mr. Fondren's list of meds near the top:

If you do it right, reading the ledger takes more than a few minutes--more than even a few hours. You begin to see the rhythm of the country life only after you've looked at the book for a while. You find yourself flipping forward or backward to see what a family had going on.
 
By the way, the ledger indicates that an occasional Native American (probably Choctaw) came through the community, perhaps because many still resided in nearby Neshoba County. Look for "Norris Indian," "Davis Indian," "Shug Indian."
 
(As an aside, Skinner descendants, check out what Roe and his father were buying that day.)

In July we assume that crops are going along mostly without the help or interference of the farmers, who in those days were more dependent on the whims of Mother Nature. So I've clipped out (figuratively speaking) a few snips from the book to show a different, ominous trend in the community.

Laudanum, liver medicine, pills, castor oil, salts, paregoric, bitters: something was going on in the community. Bear in mind that these purchases were made over a period of only a week and a half or so. You tend to skip over these entries and shake your head: "Wow, those people were really going for the quack remedies back then." And some of the things contained large amounts of  alcohol, we know.
 
But in perusing the ledger, as you slow down you begin to see the sorts of entries I've included below. Go back and look at Mr. Cate's list of purchases just above and then read this one, and others by other residents:

The thing you learn to look for is "C Screws." That would be "coffin screws." Within a period of about three weeks, a good many people had died, after having been dosed with whatever drugs their desperate families could buy in the store.
 
No, we do not have it so bad these days.
 
Yet in the midst of all this, we notice that life continued. People realized their children should be in school, if they were well; and they bought ink, pencils, a hat, paper, a pen, readers, spellers, arithmetic books, fabric for new clothing...even gloves and "brogans."

I didn't intend to write a "downer" of a post. To the contrary: I am really inspired by what I see these people enduring and then rising above 130 years ago, in a time when they walked wherever they had to go, or rode a horse or traveled in a buggy (if they were lucky and the distance was too far to go on foot); when they had to be much more self-sufficient than we'd ever dream of today...even down to taking care of their sick relatives and, at the last, making the clothing and building the coffin they would bury them in. And in the midst of it all, they tried to see to the education of their children.
 
There's really much for us to learn from these pages.


Ælfwine