Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Appalachian Folk Medicine
Episode Date: December 23, 2014This week on Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee and Justin pass your baby around a table leg. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net) ...
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And so I would like you to please welcome to the stage Dr. Sidney McElroy and her husband the host of the podcast
Sobhones I'm going to play it on. I'm going to play it on. I'm going to play it on. I'm going to play it on. I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
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I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on.
I'm going to play it on. I'm going to play it on. I'm going to play it on. I'm going to play it on. I'm going to play it on. Is it hot? Hi, Mike. Hi. Am I too? Yeah, we're both hot.
Hello, everybody.
I'm Justin McRoy.
I'm Sydney McRoy.
And welcome to Saul Bones, Marital Tour of Midskyte of Medicine.
Sydney, welcome to Huntington.
Thank you.
I think we should say welcome to Huntington.
Welcome to Huntington, everybody.
This is a very, this is my classy Pepsi Max.
This is a really special venue for us, for Sydney and I.
Not only we directed shows here, we directed Scrooge,
an old West take on Scrooge.
It was brilliant.
We had a covered wagon, you should have seen it.
It was great, you should have seen it.
And this is actually where we met
and we fell in love here in this very building.
Right.
Thank you.
We were in the Wizard of Oz.
Yeah.
Do you remember that?
Yeah, I remember.
I was the critical role girl of Oz number three.
I was everybody's favorite Lorde Growley, of course, two pivotal, you remember, from the
film.
It was in the movie sort of.
And then we dated for, oh gosh, what's it been now?
Three weeks and I went to church camp and didn't call and she dumped me.
He didn't call. I didn't call. I didn't call. I didn't call. I was young. I had a lot to learn.
I had a lot of good news to hear. I was hurt. She was hurt broken. So she dumped me.
But later we met at a place called Banana Joe's Island Party.
We'll skip this part in the story when Charlie's older. And then we we
meet at a bar again. And I'll be honest, Justin, I'm just
getting really stressed out. Okay.
This is hard for me to focus right now.
Okay.
What is it?
Well, Charlie, she just, she has colloquial and she doesn't sleep and we're exhausted.
I know, it's been hard for me too.
I wish I was something we could do.
Well, and I mean, I'm a doctor, you think I'd know.
So I've tried everything that like conventional medicine tells me and I'm running out of options
But I've come across some stuff. I've been looking into like Appalachian folk cures
Okay, right that were handed down and there's something I want to try but
We just haven't had time with the show. Let's do it now. What are we what do I'm not going to do right now?
I mean we got to do the show. I'm not busy. You want to do it right now? I mean they only pay
We could do it real we could do real quick my sister Riley is taking care of her we could ever bring her
Cool and cool her sister Riley and cool demanded she be called aunt cool. So that's her name aunt cool
Pernet, Antquo, where are you? Hey!
Hey!
Hey!
Yay!
Okay.
This is our daughter, Chuck, and this is her aunt cool.
So what's the thing?
What's the treatment?
Okay, so let me borrow a real quick.
So here's what we do.
Okay.
Let me get this spittabrag.
Okay.
You guys hang out here.
Stay here.
So what we can do?
We pass her back and forth.
Okay.
So we pass her back, just like back.
Well, technically we're supposed to pass her around a table like.
She's not going to do that.
No, she's not going to, no, we're not going to pass her back.
Well, something else.
Is there anything else?
Is there another thing you could pass her back?
Under a mule, or a horse?
Okay, we can't pass her back between a mule. Okay. All right perfect. Yeah, well
14-year-old, stay right here. Okay, everybody. We're gonna pass our baby back and forth. Oh, let's go over the stand-up. I don't be perfect
Is this on? Hey, is this thing on? Perfect.
Okay, so we're going to pass our baby back and forth.
Let's do it.
Stand right here.
Stand right here. Don't move.
Three times and one.
Two.
And three.
Do you have colloc?
No!
I'm so happy to see you. No! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I don't know what the spit rag. We love the cat.
And the cats and the cradle and the silvers won't.
Dad said I got to go do a podcast.
Sitting I am so in to Apples your focus now.
That was amazing.
It didn't work.
It was a May for a few seconds. so we all got slipped up in the magic.
I'd call it a massive failure.
I know, but it was so for a while.
It was really exciting, you got to have more.
I have a lot more, but now I have no faith in them.
I think faith is essential to work.
So Cindy, tell me about folk medicine, specifically, Appalachian.
All right, I thought since we're here, we're in Huntington, West Virginia.
Let's talk about some medicine that was handed down in our region.
Okay.
Okay.
You ready?
Somebody's ready.
Timber is ready.
Okay, so does everybody know where Appalachia is?
Look around you.
Sam, it's here.
You're here.
So it's not just West Virginia. It's a part
of the southeastern U.S. and you've got, you know, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee,
North South Carolina. There's a whole chunk, you know, Appalachia. Appalachia. You get it.
You're hip. And it's also distinguished by the fact that it's hard to get to, it's very rural.
And so especially in the 1800s, you had like this very distinct culture.
And what came with it was a very distinct medical tradition.
A lot of it was actually handed down from Scotch or Irish folk medicine because most of us
here are descendants.
Right, that's hard.
That's hard.
Yeah.
Through line.
Yeah, exactly.
And people tended to stay here so it just concentrated those traditions.
People weren't going in and out a lot.
And if they forgot them on the trip over, It's not like they could call.
They couldn't call back home and say, did you say like a goat or a mule or a table leg?
Ah, the phones don't exist.
Let's just try them all.
There's nobody here I'm talking in my hand.
How about a teen ant?
Well that worked.
Right, well a teen ant work.
So, you know.
Yeah, because it's a hat. Because they didn't have phones. Right, no, I got it. So, you know.
Because it's a hang.
Because they didn't have phones.
Right, no, I got it.
So you're talking about that.
Okay, I just want to make sure I didn't know.
That was good.
I didn't know if it was reading or not.
And there were not a lot of doctors either.
So it wasn't like you just go to the doctor and do what everybody else was doing.
You kind of had to do what the family tradition said you should do.
Right. And their idea of disease was largely based on like the four reasons. I'm going to have to do what the family tradition said you should do.
Their idea of disease was largely based on the four humors, the idea that you've got
all these liquids in your body, that you have to balance.
You get some weird ideas coming from that.
They actually collected them.
Have you heard of commonplace books? Yes.
Yes.
That's the Night Vale people, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, OK.
Our bitter rivals over at Welcome to Night Vale.
All podcasts hate all other podcasts.
It's because we're this close to welcome to Night Vale's
studies.
We can't wait to try to get into it.
We're just trying to get into it.
We're just trying to get into it.
We're just trying to get into it. We're just trying to get into it. We're just trying to get into it. We're just trying to get into it. We're just trying to get into it. We can't within striking distance of welcome and night veils sometimes.
But they would collect commonplace books with cures and family traditions and all kinds of things and hand them down.
So not the brand name? Like the actual books.
Okay. With stuff in them.
I'm with you now.
Yeah.
Sorry.
So that's okay.
And there was also a lot of religious and magical thinking that kind of went into the treatments.
So a couple of things that they thought caused illness,
and then we'll get into the treatments, which I think
are the best.
One, if you cut your nails on Monday,
you're going to be sick by Friday.
So did you cut your nails Monday?
I'd spit my nails. So wait, if I cut my nails
Monday, so just don't cut your nails Monday? No, any other day. Any other day is fine.
Yeah, just on Monday. Just not Monday. Okay, that's doable. Yeah, I can swing that. That's doable. Yeah. I can swing that. That's no problem. And don't break birds' nests.
I never break birds' nests.
Good.
I can't marry last time I saw one.
It's mean.
It's mean.
That'll be mean.
That's useful.
You'll get a headache.
Right.
You'll get a weight.
What?
A headache.
A headache if you break a bird's nests?
Yes.
Because you get the bird tab on your window.
Hey, what'd you do to my house? Hey, I saw you.
Is that on your forehead?
Yeah, what?
No, it's on your forehead.
That's OK.
OK.
I saw you crush my house.
I raised my kids there.
My bird gets from when they were in eggs.
How could you come help me rebuild my nest?
I think the best though.
Are you okay?
No, it's the end of the bit.
No, no, no, it's it.
Okay.
No, no.
I'm not sad in my life.
I know when a skit is over.
So there was also some Native American traditions kind of in with all the Irish stuff.
And one was that if you had a like throat congestion, that your throat was crammed with the
ghosts of dead insects.
Now that is true.
That makes sense to me.
Because where else are they going?
I'm killing a lot of bugs.
So, can you guess how to cure it?
You drink grade.
You drink ghost raid.
No.
Drink gatorade.
No.
You summon the spirit of a frog.
Is that a bear? Are you doing a bear?
No, that's a thing.
You can't have a fake cure to a fake thing.
Only one day can be fake.
It's in the book, I don't know.
Okay.
Summon a spirit of a frog to eat the insect ghost you eat the frog go how do you know where it is?
I mean you go good. Do they come in a capsule maybe you get a frog
Kill it
It's like that you smash it
It's so that. You smash it in the discerning. See, it can be a little bit soul. It's like, as a child, come on, we're in this.
Okay.
So, thank you.
I appreciate that.
I do.
Okay, that's weird.
Move on.
Okay.
Let's talk about some more treatments.
Okay.
Something really basic.
Let's say you have a nose bleed.
You get nose bleeds.
I do.
I get that, especially this time of year. Dry, dry, dries out. A lot of people. Next time, we just need you
to bleed on a knife. I just, on the knife, just, to not, not a knife for ever using again.
I'm assume we'll have a special knife for this. I don't know what's going to cure your nose
bleeds so you want to keep it. I mean, eventually. Eventually, everything cures your nose bleed.
Did you know that?
I think I've said it before.
All bleeding stops eventually.
All bleeding stops eventually.
And I think that's certainly true.
I don't buy that one.
Let's talk about asthma.
OK.
I think these are better.
I have asthma once.
I have asthma once.
You remember?
What happened?
What?
It was Thanksgiving.
Last year, I had asthma for like a week.
I know.
It's a callback.
A week.
I had asthma for a week, and I got some special drops.
Which in retrospect might have been Ricola, and my doctor might have been placating me, but I'm pretty sure I had asthma.
But you got cured.
What?
How could I have fixed it?
Okay, so let's say your kid has asthma.
Like Charlie has asthma.
She doesn't.
Well I say she does.
No, she doesn't.
I mean, I don't, maybe.
Not yet.
Okay.
Hope not.
Anyway, so you hold them up against a tree and then drill a hole in the tree right above their head, not in their head, above their head.
Okay?
And then you take some of their hair and you stick it in the hole and then you plug up the hole and then by the time your kid is taller than that hole, no more asthma.
Okay.
No. Okay. What? Okay.
First off, how did they stumble upon this?
And what in what reality did someone say, man, I can breathe pretty good today?
Dad, do you remember when you trailed a hole in a tree?
And I grew up past it.
I bet that was it.
How did they not exile that guy?
There's a downside.
A downside? Go on.
If the tree dies, you die.
The ring too.
So if you're going to drill a hole in a tree,
you better be precise, and it better be really bad as mom.
You better try everything.
You better try to invent an inhaler out of wood
back in the old timey days before you start drilling holes in trees.
Well there is something else you could try.
What?
Buy a small dog and have it.
And just have it.
Because the asthma will go from your kid to the dog.
Just have it all pass.
It will pass from your kid to the dog.
Are you telling me that back then, in all time of the days,
there was no one in the area with asthma and the small dog?
Specifically a chihuahua.
But those are pretty easy to find in rural Appalachia mid-1800s.
Oh no no, did I say small dog?
I'm in a chihuahua.
Someone on a commercial, so that's what you need.
And they thought as the, was the dog got older and died,
the asthma would go away
So wait because some kids
No, no no no no no no no no
The dog has to die to the dog takes your asthma as a agent. Yes
Probably the process of aging for dogs is really a slow treatment for human asthma is what you're telling that's God's grand design. Well I guess I guess I guess Chihuahua's have airways that
collapse over time I know this is a sad thing so it would it would look like the
dog God asthma from your kid because your kids getting better probably you
can't all night everybody shoot this is what we do. This is our show.
Hit me.
Give me something else.
Okay.
Pick my spirits up.
So colds, and this is cool because my mom told me
that she actually did this stuff.
Her grandpa told her to do this.
Eat a lot of onions.
Or fry onions, add some cornstarch,
and then put it on your chest.
And like, especially if it's really hot and blisters you.
So you put cornstarch on your chest.
No, with the fried onions. With the fried onions, a little paprika, a little garlic salt.
That's a poultice. No, it's an appetizer.
an appetizer. Anapultus.
Anapultus.
Fine.
It's not.
But that's fine.
Did it work?
Did she try?
You know I didn't ask her.
I didn't ask her for work.
I mean she's okay now.
Excellent.
That's all I need to know.
So eventually, right?
She also tried whiskey rock candy.
So you make rock candy and add whiskey.
I...
Oh.
Oh.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. She also tried whiskey rock candy. So you make rock candy and add whiskey.
Oh, it's coffee. My cold's flan up. These are for kids. Whoa.
It's candy. That's a cool kid. And that's true just about any of these. You could
replace it with or just drink whiskey or just drink whiskey
or at least you'll say I don't think I'm worried about my cold anymore in the grand scheme of things it doesn't seem that bad
Wow it could be worse if you have flu what you do is you get a piece of yarn and you soak it in maids water. Do you know what? Maids water?
No.
Maids water.
Made apostropheus water.
Maids water.
No.
Still don't.
Sorry.
The pee of a virgin.
Nice trial, time and deuce.
Tie it around your waist. Nice try, but the J-man's on the all-timey dudes.
You couldn't get better past this.
2014 Sloth.
I'm on your game.
Your nose.
Or you could hang your hat on the bedpost and then drink whiskey until you see two hats.
That'll work.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha ha.
You won't care about your cold.
Don't you want that?
Or the flu?
Then you'll come to dinner.
I'm busy.
What are you doing?
I'm carrying my cold, and there's still one.
Ha ha ha. Here in my cold, and there's still one. Yeah, I'll go around and find me a virgin.
Weird old dudes.
Family friendly.
That was family for what?
Just saying before we go there. The medicines, the medicines that I skilled at my car before the man.
Okay, constipation.
You want to fix that? No.
No, I'm fine.
I have a sneaking suspicion, the price will not be worth.
It's not that bad.
You just rub yourself and cast your oil.
I mean, you can take it, but why stop there?
Just rub yourself in castor oil.
Just ladder myself up.
I'm sorry, Sagan.
I'll try that.
I'll try anything once.
It's even better if you have diarrhea.
OK, wait, so it's the same treatment?
No.
OPM.
OOOOOOO!
That's better.
OPM! OOOOOO! That's better. OPM!
Yeah, excellent.
Alright Justin, are you still pooping all the time?
I have no way of knowing.
I don't care.
I don't care.
I don't know.
You telling me?
Yes, you are.
You weren't that bad, but I like.
You were obviously still poop moving all the time.
On second thought, don't try that.
Don't try that.
Don't try that.
Okay, how about hemorrhoids?
Hemorrhoids.
Got them, hate them, would love to cure them.
Did you share them?
Did you just tell everybody?
They guess.
I have the look.
You know that look of somebody with hemorrhoids, that guy, hemorrhoid guy look, kind of like...
LAUGHTER
Is it over yet?
Is the play over?
Is this podcast done?
Why'd you bring me here?
My hemorrhoids are killing me.
That's where my character, hemorrhoid guy.
LAUGHTER Do you want to know how to fix him?
I'm on a roll, but go ahead.
Okay.
So you take a bar or soap.
Okay.
You whittle it into a pencil shape.
And you already know what's coming.
Wow, standing, presumably.
Then you coat it with grease and some hog fat and some petroleum jelly and, you know,
just insert.
Put it behind your ear.
Me insert.
And you're just what?
No.
The other end.
Oh.
Where the hell are the hellsarts?
So wait.
This is going to make my hemorrhoids feel better.
I highly, highly doubt that's going to improve the general hemorrhoids sensations in the area,
the sharpened pencil shape.
I think it's probably the least thing we want interwelping.
Instead, you could just carry a buck on your pocket and then you won't get any.
Sorry, say again.
Carry a buck eye, like from the, you know, a buck eye tree.
Okay, from the buck eye tree.
Yeah, the buck eye tree.
Did you say instead?
Yeah, just carry it in your pocket.
Okay, I'll go with that.
You're the next time, give me that, I'll show you before I start shopping.
Did you?
Are you doing that?
I read ahead before the show.
Speaking of which, can we hurry it up?
Okay, how about liver troubles?
I got those, I bet.
Yeah, they actually thought a lot of people had liver troubles.
They blamed any like, I'm tired, I'm sleepy, I just don't feel good, they were like,
oh, it's your liver.
Okay.
So there were a lot of liver pills.
Sure, I know those are fake.
Yes, they are fake
But people they didn't have the access to them so they had to make up their own fake liver cure
so
You could take nine
eggs
Stick with me hard boil them take the yolks string them up and wear them around your neck and
Then go to bed. What's this for?
Liver truffle. Okay, well perfect. It's made up anyway, right? So why not? So why not?
Why not? Why not? Strings to make your neck. And it'll like suck that, well, I mean, you could
also use it for a jaundice, which is a liver
trouble. Okay. I mean, it won't work, but it won't work. You can do it. You can do it.
Go ahead. But you'll be a step ahead when you have to make devil nags next morning.
So you'll be one, one leg up already. I don't know what you do with the whites. What?
The white. You eat the whites. You eat them up. They're good for your liver.
Worms were a big problem in rural areas.
Still are sometimes.
One thing you could do, if you had worms,
is take a dish of like warm milk and then just have your kids smell it.
And the worm would like come up out the nose
because it wanted the milk, you know,
jump in the milk.
Cause you know worms, they love milk.
They'll come right out of those first some milk.
They love that.
You think this would be debunked like the first time?
First time!
Cause that doesn't work.
That doesn't work.
No one ever made that work.
The first time, so it's like
Damn, bro. I tried it
The war would be worse. What if it did?
That's worse. You imagine that's worse. That's the way it was like you're and then it just pokes its little head out
I
Said milk I smell excellent. This is my warm voice.
Do you have a stye?
No.
I, you know, a stye.
I've had those in the past.
Do you want to know how to get rid of it?
Absolutely.
Out to me anything.
OK, pretend I have one.
OK.
OK, tell me I have one.
Sinny, you have a stye.
It's a lie.
And then it goes away.
No, it doesn't.
That you made that one, right?
It's in the book.
I'm going to tell everybody the book name.
Okay, but it's in the book.
That's great.
That doesn't make sense.
Again, the first time, the first time. Maybe people are like, you didn't
believe it. You have to believe you don't have a style. You have to sell it. It's like
take your bell and clapping your hands. You've got to, it's so high. Now, if you have an
open wound, put salt in it. That's the wrongest you could be. You can't get more
wrong than that. You think one time, one time. The first time, that's not helping. I feel worse.
One that I've seen is if you have like a spider bite, just put some tobacco on it,
like chew it up, spit it out, and pack it on there.
I saw that.
Somebody do that.
What, how, like, when, how, what kind of...
In the hospital.
They brought tobacco in with them?
They'd done that.
I mean, it didn't work.
That's why they were in the hospital.
Yeah, because none of these were in case, I mean, yeah.
We were in the hospital, so.
Yeah.
It failed.
But they tried that. If you have acne, you just need some
cow manure, especially like young ladies would take some, roll it up in a
bandana, and then wear it around their necks. Fixes their complexion. Your
complexion needs to be really bad or really, really fixed like so fixed.
I cannot imagine hanging with this cure for.
I guess you would excuse yourself from society for a couple of days, right?
No, you just walk around that way.
No, you don't.
You just walk around.
Who is this person that is so concerned about their acne, but not so concerned about having a manure necklace?
And how does one pay off, I don't understand.
Who is this vain person who's like, well,
but look at the results.
Just don't see.
You were trying to attract a farmer?
I guess, or flies.
They don't care.
They're like, ooh, cow manure.
Oh, smells like home. They don't care. They're like, ooh, cow manure.
Oh, smells like home.
Tastes like home.
So let's say you have a dog bite or a snake bite.
Okay.
Okay, so take a frog or a chicken, whatever you got.
Cut it in half, and then just strap it on there.
That's it.
That's the whole thing. They couldn't even make up more lies about it. That's it.
That's the whole thing.
They couldn't even make up more lies about it.
That's what bothers me.
Can we get a little showmanship?
Can you like, and then say to it, and then squeeze a lemon in your hair.
Can you make a little frog in a really elaborate way?
I mean, if I'm going to capture a frog, it is going to be quite the production for me to capture a frog.
That's fair. That's going to be a little bit of work.
If you didn't want to do that, which I don't, you could use a mad stone.
Do you know what a mad stone is?
Okay, it was usually a bazaar.
So like something from the stomach of a deer or a bear that had like hair and bones and left over animal bits.
Okay. A lot of fruitless searches I would imagine, a lot of unpleasant deer unfairly robbed from this mortal coil,
hoping to find a lump of hair and bone and teeth in the tummy.
Well that's true, they were hard to find. So you would pay to use somebody's.
Oh, OK.
I love that.
You got a blockbuster.
Two bucks.
You went to Madstone.
You ran up.
We got it.
They're late fees.
They're late fees.
But it works the first time, because they are exponential.
One cure I didn't like.
Bed wedding.
You were into the others.
No, the other ones are fine.
I love the other ones.
The other ones are fine.
For bed wedding, you take the sheets
and rub them in your kid's face.
Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha.
I guess like a dog?
Like, you rub their nose in it?
No.
And don't do that either.
But.
That's not a treatment.
It's like how Glinnback parents.
Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. It's not a treatment. It's like how glint back parents. That's not medical. It's like what I do to our Scottish
tear your nests when I was 12. Bad. Bad. No.
It was a rough time for kids. If you had an earache,
they would just pour some warm pee in your ear, just in your ear. Yeah.
Just bring it out of the blanket you just threw in your brother's face.
Yeah, keep that back. I've got to squeeze it out.
Lay on your side. Lay on your side. This is happening.
And there were specialized doctors for different things.
Like there were thrush doctors that would cure thrush,
like a yeast infection of the mouth,
and they were usually the seventh son in a family.
Oh, okay.
And so what they would do is blow in your kid's mouth.
That was it.
That's the whole thing. Well, I mean, if that didn't work, they would take their shoe, That was it.
That's the whole thing.
Well, I mean, if that didn't work, they would take their shoe, fill it with water, and
then your kid would drink it.
I'm on team all the time, dude.
You're just getting worse.
That's the pits.
I like that there were burn doctors, and they would talk the burn out.
They would just keep talking at like your arm or whatever until I went away.
You've been scorching the skin long enough to hop on down that trail.
Why don't you hop on off the first time.
The first time you invite a gentleman in your home and he's like, well, enough milk
and cookies for me.
Let me talk to your burns.
Is it Santa?
It's not.
That just he was in my, he was in my field of vision twice and I just went with it.
I'm sorry.
I did my best.
You know, it's weird.
There are like eye witness accounts in the stuff of it working.
Of it working
Not that I'm I'm not saying like so go do that. So give it a shot. Who knows it's in a book
What's the same there were blood stoppers blood stompers? Yeah
Okay, so like you're bleeding and I'm a blood stopper. Okay, I just stop. I was hoping for something. It sounds like an
Arla Schwarzenegger movie so you can imagine my disappointment. I thought there
be a little bit of stoppers. Get out of there. You cut that out. Blood. I think the
worst though were the goiter rubbers? I think you rub.
Goiter, that's your whole thing.
Let me get.
Let me guess.
The goiter rubbers came by your house, had a very polite conversation with you, provided
you with some medicine for your problem and left.
Is that what the goiter rubbers did?
No, they rub your goiter.
They just rub it.
So it goes away. I don't know what I expected. It doesn't go away. Okay. They just rub it. I guess. So it goes away.
I don't know what I expected.
It doesn't go away.
I mean, it does it because our who did was have somewhere to rub your goiter.
It doesn't help.
Takes my time.
Right?
Yeah.
Hey.
And there were a couple illnesses that today we don't really recognize.
So I don't want to say they were made up, but they were made up.
They were made up.
They're not real.
So like marking, so if you're pregnant, the stuff that you do will leave an impression
on your unborn child.
An example.
Hit me.
So there was a woman who was really craving cornbread.
But she didn't ask for it.
I've been there.
We've all been there.
She didn't need it.
She didn't ask for it.
She was just craving it.
And she kept scratching her neck.
And so her kid had a growth on his neck that looked like cornbread.
So, obviously.
It's like the worst miracle ever.
So the treatment was if you crave something, eat it.
So she had this moment where she was looking at it. She was like, did I crave cornbread?
I don't remember.
I guess I did.
I guess I must have.
I must have been craving some cornbread.
There's also one more.
OK, it's called liver grown.
What's liver grown?
Liver grown is when your liver grows into your ribs
and becomes attached.
That's horrifying. I didn't know that could happen.
It doesn't, it's not real.
But they thought it was.
That's a load off of them.
And they thought it happened to kids
when you left them on their backs too much, like babies.
Their liver would grow into the ribs.
So the treatment is you take your kid,
you hang them upside down by their foot and then you grab
their arm and flip him the other way and grab their foot and flip him. Should we...
I can't hourglass. Should we get Chuck again? Let's get Chuck again. Chuck, come on back now.
Don't come out here Chuck. We won't do that. That's bad. Don't do that.
So like just treat your baby like an hourglass. Exactly. Just measuring the time till he hates you. Okay. Not yet.
Do you score? Skied baby? Just turning. I should have turned the baby. Just turn the baby.
Well those are those are fantastic Sydney. Thank you for taking me on this tour. Thank you.
You're welcome. Any other last ones, last favorites to hit us with freedom. The last one, I guess, I still see this.
Nerves.
Nerves.
Nerves.
Nerves.
No, nerves.
Nerves.
Nerves, like, you know, in your body, like, nerves.
Appalachian people invented nerves?
No, no.
They say they have nerves.
I thought you told me those are real.
They say they have nerves.
It's like you can't dish.
Oh, they have the nerves.
That's not a condition.
It's not a, it's used to describe like 80 different things,
but it's nerves.
And the treatment is, you know, if your doctor will give you
some Xanax.
No, all that's the treatment?
That's pretty much it.
That's it, okay, except the treatment.
So nerves is fake, nerves is real.
Yeah, I mean, there are illnesses there,
but they're not nerves. Like that's the catch-all term, I mean, there are illnesses there, but they're not nerves.
Like, that's the catch-all term, I guess.
Excellent.
Yeah.
Well, Sidney, thank you so much for my education.
You're welcome.
I want to talk about this great book.
Yeah.
So I got a lot of this information.
I usually don't source things, but this book was great.
Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachia. By Anthony Cavendr.
Cool. Fantastic.
So if you want to read about all this crazy stuff, check it out.
Thank you to you all so much for coming out to see us.
This is amazing.
I thank you.
I hope you've all had a lot of fun in Huntington.
Do we have a good time?
Did anybody go to Hillbilly Hot Dogs?
What's up? Black sheep?
You want to go to Black sheep?
You want to go to Bob Evans?
I messed up.
That's great. We get a cut from all of that.
Yeah, we get a slice of all of that.
We actually count.
We have people counting to see.
So we'll get our cut from them later.
This is just fantastic.
Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you to the taxpayers for letting us use their song
medicines for our intro.
And outro, thanks to the maximum fun network for having us on
their family of programming.
They've got a lot of great shows. Jordan Jesse Goe, Stop Podcasts yourself.
Judge John Hodgman.
There's one you might not have heard of. My brother, my brother, and me.
It's, it's yeah.
There's that one.
Those guys
To go listen to those
They're all that maximum fun dot org. We got some solbona's t-shirts out. I've always wanted to say that got some t-shirts out in
Hit the merch table
So make sure you buy those and I think that's gonna do it for us
Thank you all so much for coming. I'm Justin McRoy.
I'm Sydney McRoy.
And as always, don't you all hold your head.
Thanks. All right, we're going to take a very short break.