Respiratory Remedy During the Depression Era in the Bend

The Great Depression Answer to the Ventilator in the Bend

The events of this week brought discussion of the critical need for ventilators. In the 1930s and 1940s, the contraption, the “iron lung” that had been invented, enabling many polio survivors to breathe, predated the much-needed ventilator of during this COVID-19 crisis.

Longtime readers know my maternal grandmother, Gladys Rainey Smith, served as a nurse in the Big Bend during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Seldom were residents of the Bend hospitalized. The usual protocol involved a doctor such as Dr. H. B. Spaulding from Ralston making a house call with Grandma present. She received his instructions and then made daily visits to evaluate and treat patients. (For this reason, Grandpa could cook and Mother learned to cook when she was about 7 years old.)

Many patients sent for Grandma as soon as they had called or sent for the doctor. Since she lived in the Bend, she often arrived before the doctor did. Grandma’s standard care following diagnosis of lung congestion prompted her to pull out cloth, onions, and sometimes turpentine from her bag. Everyone in that era had a cast iron skillet so she requested one from the family. She went to the wood cook stove of the patient’s home and begin frying onions in lard. Many families also had lard in their kitchen since most butchered hogs to provide protein for their families in those lean times. Mother recalled that Grandma sometimes put a dash of turpentine in her poultice concoction.

When the fried mixture reached the consistency Grandma wanted, she stretched a long piece of cloth on the kitchen table. The piece of cloth had to be long enough to reach around the chest of her patient. She then poured the onion mixture in the middle of the cloth and hand-sewed a smaller piece of cloth over the onions to hold the medicinal concoction in place. It was then applied to the patient with the onions laced with turpentine next to the chest of the sick one. She secured it finally with large “safety pins” at the back of the patient.

Many residents of the Bend in the Great Depression indicated they regained health as a result of the onion poultice applied by Grandma or even their mothers and grandmothers. Mother said Dr. Spaulding would often enter the home of the ill person and exclaim, “I can tell Gladys is here!” Yet he never told Grandma not to apply the onion poultice to his patients.

Bud Miller
from Belford
Grade School
Group Photo
in 1934

More than once, I had Bud Miller recount how Grandma applied onion poultices and helped people get better. Ironically, on the Find A Grave site, there is the account of the death of Bud’s younger brother, Vaughn, from pneumonia. He died at age 13. One of the great nieces of Bud and Vaughn, Janet Lynn-Smart, posted the tribute from the “Belford News” column written by Grandma with the byline Mrs. Calvin Smith published in The Fairfax Chief newspaper. Here is a link to it:  https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16366421/vaughn-miller (Sharon White Gibson, our nearest neighbor is the daughter of Vaughn's sister, Martha Ethel Christy White.)
    

Photo of Charles
Eugene "Bud"
Miller from
findagrave.com

Charles Eugene “Bud” Miller was a longtime resident of the Bend. He liked to recall how he pushed my mother, Bernyce Smith Gates, on the giant strides, one of her favorite pieces of play equipment on the Belford Grade School yard. Bud was eight years older than her. In their later years, they enjoyed reminiscing about their school days when attending Belford Grade School. It was located just half a mile from Mother’s farm.

Bud was married for 47 years to Peggy Conner Bledsoe Miller. Two of her sons, Lee and Bill, continue to live in the Bend. Lee and his wife, Carol, and Bill and Delores, his wife, cared lovingly for Bud after Peggy’s death until his own death at his home in the Bend.

This in no way is an endorsement of the naturalistic, holistic, herbal or however one wants to categorize this treatment. Yet at that time in the Bend, it was the best method to promote healing. It would be years before prescriptions of penicillin and antibiotics would stem aggressive diseases that routinely took the lives of our ancestors in the Bend.

Just as COVID-19 invaded our world, the Bible states that sin entered what was a perfect world. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 5:12 about our condition resulting in death –

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.

As we pray for our scientific researchers to have wisdom beyond themselves to develop a vaccine, God planned a remedy for our sin. Only by allowing humans to choose the wrong way, could they, without coercion, freely choose to receive the gift of grace purchased by the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. These words from Romans 5:15 succinctly described this wonderful forgiveness offered to us.

For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.

Romans 5:17 contrasted the death brought by sin with the life that can be ours only in Jesus Christ.

For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

Finally, as finite mortals destined for physical death, we read in the final verse of Romans 12 of the unwavering promise of eternal life if we have our hope and trust in Jesus -

So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.