COVID-19

Contemporary History #11 – COVID-19

What SARS-CoV-2 is
 imagined by the CDC to look like.
For an actual picture of it, click HERE.

The world was going grey right before my eyes! It grew worse with each breath I took. It was not long before the world had disappeared completely before me. It wasn’t my eyes, however, that were having the problem. It was my glasses. Everything cleared just as soon as I removed my face mask. I had learned that face masks can make your glasses fog up. Later I learned it was not just happening to mine. As the little ditty that we used to chant in the playground said, “Everybody’s doing it, doing it, doing it.”

Everybody with glasses, that is.

Sometime in February, just a few short months ago, this country, catching up to the rest of the world, was hit by a new virus not seen before (thus why it is “new” or sometimes called “novel”). According to the World Health Organization, this new virus is a type of Coronavirus which got that name because someone thought those little knobs that stick out from these viruses resemble little crowns or coronas. Coronaviruses include our old friend, the Common Cold. This one, however, does not give us just a little cold. If this one gets inside you, it can cause among other things, the onset of a severe acute respiratory illness. This is the second one of these little fellows to hit us this way so this one was called “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2”, or SARS-CoV-2 for short. The disease this Coronavirus causes was first seen in late 2019 (in Asia) so it was dubbed COVID-19, short for Coronavirus Disease - 2019.

Mr. SARS-CoV-2, since you are new here I’d like to say, “Welcome”, but you are not.

Now, because this little fellow is so new here, our medical community is just now learning about it themselves; learning something new about it every day. Because of that lack of knowledge, February and early March were filled with lots of conflicting information about it and what we should do. Eventually, however, the picture has, much like my glasses, become somewhat clearer.

One key to keeping this virus in check is to keep people away from each other so the virus can’t jump from person to person. Therefore, we were told to stay at home. If we did have to go out, we should stay at least six feet away from other people and we should wear masks. There were questions of how the virus is transferred from one person to the next, or even if it could be “picked-up” from things like door knobs or packages or even pets. If you got it once, could you get it again? How did you know if you even got it? Was it like getting the flu or better or worse?

First, we were given suggestions for what to do. Stay home, wash your hands, don’t touch your face, wear a mask. Then the suggestions about staying home and wearing a mask changed into orders. Do these things so you will be protected. Except for the masks. We were wearing the masks so, if we had the virus and didn’t know it, which apparently is possible, we would be protecting everyone else, plus ourselves. Turns out some of us had it and never got sick. Turns out the masks could work both ways, protect ourselves, but more likely, protect everyone else.

Which brings me back to the day the world turned grey on me. A guy I was standing near (six feet apart, mind you) at the time my glasses fogged suggested, “Lick the lenses. That’s what we used to do out at the shooting range (when he was in the Army). They don’t fog if you do that” LICK my lenses!? I’m not going to LICK MY LENSES! I said to myself. To him I said, “Thanks.” Apparently applying dishwashing soap to the lenses, rinsing them off, and then letting them dry without wiping also helps[1], but that has to be repeated often, often enough to make a person try to live with foggy glasses. Another suggestion I heard was to stick a piece of tissue between the bridge of your nose and the mask. I can’t keep the darn thing in place now let alone with a tissue stuck in there! By the way, the key to diminished fogging seems to be a tight fit around the nose (part of the tissue idea). I even heard of folks gluing pipe cleaners inside the nose bridge part of their masks. They say the pipe cleaners help diminish the fogging and offers bend-ability to form a better fit around the nose. Perhaps.

Typical face mask, front and back. 
These are two of 100 masks Walter
James, lifelong resident of Drums, 
gave to the Luzerne County Area 
Agency on Aging Butler Township
 Active Adult Center where I work
 as an Alternate Center Operator. 
I had the honor to be working 
on the days when these masks
were being made available to our 
Center Members. On May 21, 2020,
the following "Letter to the Editor",
written by Walter, was published in
the Hazleton Standard-Speaker. 
It gives a few more details 
concerning how he acquired the 
masks and all who received them. 

And that brings us to ANOTHER issue of the “wearin’ o’ the mask” – keeping it in place. Movement of the lower jaw, such as occurs when speaking, causes the mask to slide down. Soon the nose is exposed and one finds themselves grabbing the mask and pushing it back up in place. I should be counting how many TV reporters I see doing this exact thing while trying to give their reports through their face masks. The number would be high. Doctors everywhere must be cringing.

Of course, the mask is trying to do two things – mostly keep your germs in but also to help keep those of other’s out. The “out” part means the germs of others land on the outside of your mask and not in your mouth or nose. So, if your nose is exposed, the mask ain’t helping that part of the scenario. Now if you grab the mask from the outside and push it back up in place, those germs that were unhappily sitting on the outside of the mask, are now happily sitting on your fingers. Got a little itch on your nose? Without thought, you push that finger behind your mask and scratch the itch, suddenly the germs are happily sitting on your nose or wherever you scratched. Same thing happens, but worse, if you remove or adjust the mask by grabbing it from the front and then touch your face.[2]

Wearing a mask has been part of our lives for at least the last six weeks, for some even longer. By now, we should all know how to wear a mask! Still, the confusion continues. Just recently, May 14 to be exact, I was watching MSNBC’s MTPDaily and the guest was Dr. Vivek Murthy. Among other things, Dr. Murthy served as the 19^th Surgeon General of the United States from December 16, 2014 to April 21, 2017. During his remarks he commented on how often he has witnessed people wearing masks with their noses exposed, people grasping the front of the mask to adjust it or remove it, and other such issues. “A lot of confusion still exists around mask wearing.” he said – on MAY 14!

This pandemic of 2020 is not the first to hit the United States. There have been others and perhaps the worst was the flu pandemic of 1918. It is estimated that 675,000 Americans lost their lives during that pandemic. The 1918 flu was first seen in the United States in the spring of 1918 in military personnel.[3] 

Like this virus, that one spread quickly. Like this time around, folks back then were told to stay away from each other and to wear masks. The folks in San Francisco were some of the first of that pandemic’s victims to wear masks. They even had a law that made citizens pay up to $10 (about $150 in today’s dollars[4]) if they were caught outside their homes without a mask! Still, the San Francisco area experienced one of the highest death rates of anywhere in the country.[5] This causes one to at least wonder how they put on, and took off, their masks!

As for Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth was hit pretty hard by the 1918 flu pandemic, one of the hardest-hit states in the country.[6] Just like today, back then Luzerne County was right in the mix of things. A total of 50,000 children in Pennsylvania were made orphans by the 1918 flu and that included 1,134 children in Luzerne County[7].

Of course, when the 1918 pandemic hit, Nathan Drum, Mary Drum and their daughter Christie were living in Fritzingertown and son Elmer was in France fighting WWII. They are the Drums most relevant to this blog who were living at that time. Nathan’s father, John, had died in 1881 but Nathan, Mary, Elmer and Christie each lived long after 1918. It does not appear as though the 1918 pandemic made much impact on them, or the rest of “us”, at all. Thank Goodness, or I might not be here writing this!

Truth be told, I'm not exactly sure where Elmer was, specifically. He was inducted into the Army in Shickshinny, PA on April 30, 1918. Shortly thereafter, he was sent to Fort Lee, VA for training. His division left Fort Lee on June 11 to go to Hoboken, NJ in preparation for transport across the Atlantic; which occurred June 15. He served as a member of the AEF (American Expeditionary Forces) June 15, 1918 to March 30, 1919. For more on his service during this time, see the post The War to End All Wars.

A check of years of death of those listed in Helman’s Drum Family genealogy[8] resulted in only one Drum death found in 1918. Some death years are not listed and it is possible I missed one or two during my quick review. I saw that two of “us” passed in 1917 and I found one who died in 1920. I did not see a death indicated for 1919 and the only one listed for 1918 that I found was John’s daughter, Nathan’s sister, Louisa.

What we know of Louisa is that she was born January 4, 1862 and died March 3, 1918. Louisa married Levi Dreisbach and they had seven children, two of whom are listed as deceased by Helman in her 1927 book; the rest still living in 1927 when the book was published. Further research reveals that neither of those children died in 1918 (William [Willie] died June 25, 1897 and Beatrice died August 30, 1902). It is possible that Louisa was one of the first U.S. citizens to die of that flu but more research would need to be done to know if so. She probably did not die from the flu, however. History tells us, as stated above, that the flu was seen first in Military personnel in the “spring of 1918”. I guess March could be considered “spring” but, Louisa was certainly not in the military. if this was Louisa’s fate, it was not noted as such, at least not by Helman.

Nor do I recall any 1918 flu pandemic stories being told when I was little. Yet according to Martin Novak, author of the book Spanish Influenza in the Wyoming Valley: The Human Cost of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic as quoted by Matt Bufano in the Hazleton Standard-Speaker; “I believe it was devastating for the Wyoming Valley.”[9] Wyoming Valley is in the Wilkes-Barre Area, in northern Luzerne County. Perhaps the Drums Valley, in southern Luzerne County, fared better.

Or maybe the Drums and their neighbors washed their hands a lot and wore masks. This time around, in 2020, I was one of those who was NOT going to be seen wearing a mask, for gosh sakes. As we learned more, however, my tune changed. I started looking for a mask. As of this writing (in May, 2020) obtaining a mask is getting fairly easy. Here is just a part of one page from one web site selling masks[10] right now and there are quite a number more websites!

  

For a while there, however, for most of March and all of April and most of May, masks were very hard to come by even though they were being mandated by government officials. I heard a number of people say, “They want us to wear a mask but where do you get them!? I can’t find them anywhere!!” Pat Derr of Conyngham Builders Hardware store appeared on the local TV news VERY early into this thing saying, even then, that they had been sold out of masks for a few weeks and were having trouble getting more. I assume he was talking about dust masks similar to the kind I was wearing.

One of the early ways, if not THE only way, to get a mask was to make one. “No-Sew” instructions were put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also known as the CDC, and other sources. Sewing instructions and patterns began to appear in various sources as well.  This page appeared in the April 6, 2020 edition of the U.S.A. Today newspaper, page 4D.

It includes what you will need to make the mask (what tools and supplies), step by step instructions for constructing the mask (including a recommendation to “get creative” by putting a design on the mask like a bird or dinosaur or flower design), and a pattern to follow when cutting the fabric.

Philip^{(Ronald, Harry, Elmer, Nathan, John, Philip, George, Jacob, Philip)} decided he would make a mask for himself. I don’t know if he followed a pattern, or, if so, where he got it. But, using a needle and thread, and I assume scissors, he sat down on April 11 and began to sew one.

Here is his mask:

And here he is, wearing his creation. I told him that if the mask had been black, he could easily be mistaken for Darth Vader.

Purchased or handmade, it became very clear very quickly, one needed to have a face mask to survive in this new COVID Culture that was emerging.

As a Luzerne County employee, I received the following message sent to all county employees on April 4, 2020 by County Manager, David Pedri:

Friends and Colleagues,

I hope everyone is holding up during this unprecedented time here in the County.  I wanted to pass along this information I just received from the Department of Health regarding wearing masks.  The County has ordered more masks, however as you are well aware, these are at a premium across the United States.  Until we receive them, I would like every County employee who is mandated to come into the office to utilize a mask if you have one.  If you do not have a mask, please see attached “how to make a mask” diagram or utilize a scarf or bandanna.  I personally donated the mask I was assigned to our prison workers, so you will see me in the courthouse doing my best “cowboy bandit” impression!

I want to thank each of you for what you have done these past few weeks! Time and time again during this pandemic a County employee has been called upon to assist our citizens and every time you have answered the call.   Feel free to share the attached information to your contacts or on your social media. 

Will be in touch with more information as it becomes available.  Stay safe out there,

Dave

Attached to this message were mask-making instructions in English and Spanish. The English version is shown here.

Even my brother, Nathan, the doctor of the north[11],  got into the act. In late March he sent me his observations of life with SARS-CoV-2 in New Hampshire and then followed that up with life at his NH home in early April. His masks are a tad more sophisticated then those shown (sewn?) so far in this post. His masks include paper filters.

On March 22 he wrote:

CDC asked all routine eye care to be postponed, so we postponed routine (appointments) but kept those with medical Dxes on schedule…  Most of New England closed all restaurants except drive thru or take out, including alcoholic beverages and even mixed drinks.  Schools are all closed, trying to set up remote learning.  Colleges all closed with remote learning for rest of the year and probably also summer, but students are banned from clearing out stuff from dorm rooms.  Banks all drive thru only.  ATMs have withdrawal limits placed. Supermarkets are open with nothing to sell.  Walmart open with limited supplies.  State liquor stores are still OPEN!!!  Much of the blue-collar world is still working (plumbers, auto repair, furnace repair, FEDEX, UPS, etc.) Vermont had seven new cases last weekend…  Littleton has one confirmed case.  Coos county where I practice none, (but due to a lack of testing it is hard to know for sure.).

He followed that up with this message sent April 11:

We are staying home.  We order everything we can online delivered.  We open cartons outside and leave as much packaging outside overnight prior to processing into recycling bins in garage.  All grocery packages are opened and contents dumped into other containers when possible.  The rest are wiped with Clorox…  If going into a store I wear a mask.  If no masks available (in Drums), and there probably are not, you can make masks.  Sewn are better, but there are no-sew mask instructions available online.  Suz[12] is making some here for me, using instructions posted by the local hospital.  Basically, they are made from a rectangle of cotton cloth, she is using floursack material but T shirts also work, folded over to make two layers, left open at the top to receive a sheet of coffee filter, vacuum filter, or paper towel.  The paper is replaced daily, and the mask can then be laundered.  My staff used elastic rings meant for pony tails to go over ears.  Suz is using string that can be tied, like they did on MASH.  If nothing else, tie a bandana over your nose and mouth, like they did in all the westerns, and wash it frequently. 

If this virus thing continues through the rest of this year, I’m thinking Coffee (Cough-y?) Filters are the gift of choice for Nathan for Christmas! Shhh, don’t tell him. It’ll be a surprise.

Speaking of gifts, April 26 was my wife, Phyllis’s, birthday. So, what did I get her for her birthday? Not one, but TWO masks in her favorite color: polka-dots! I ordered them on-line. Well, I guess “polka-dots” isn’t a “color”, really, but I think it should be.  

In one of John Wayne’s earlier movies, the 1934 “hit” Blue Steel, he chases a thief who disguises himself by wearing a polka dot bandanna. They called him the “Polky Dot Bandit”. Here is Phyllis in her new face mask doing her best Polky Dot Bandit impression. After all, she DID steal my heart!

Yup, here she is, the latest Polky Dot Bandit. Just try robbing a bank in THAT get-up!

Early on, not able to get a mask anywhere, I did make “no-sew” masks for Phyllis and myself from tea towels that were still in a drawer from when Mom was here. We had to go out and buy some of those “elastic rings meant for pony tails” things Nathan mentioned in his message above to slip over our ears to keep the masks in place, but most of them just broke! I need to shop in higher class places, I guess.

Then I found a Halloween themed bandanna and was going to use that. I even washed it! I could have been the Halloween Bandit! “Witch way did he go?" Before I got to wear it outside my house, however, I remembered some dust masks I’d bought to be used while cleaning the house some time back. They were still hanging in the closet, sigh, unused. Those are the first ones I wore outside the house. Those are the ones that fogged my glasses.

I did finally find a mask that minimizes the fogging problem for me. Hanging above my dad’s workbench in our basement was an opened package of 3M Dust Masks from the 1960’s or ‘70’s. Three masks were still in the package. I believe the package originally held five (It was hard to tell. The package literally fell apart in my hands).  I did have to replace the elastic bands. The original ones had become brittle instead of stretchy. They broke faster than the pony-tail rings! I stapled old shoelaces dad had saved in a drawer onto them to tie behind my head. My dad is now someplace saying, “See? There IS a reason to keep everything!”

People did finally see the marketing possibilities for selling masks. The first advertisement I saw for masks being sold in this area was by Zanolini Nursery and Country Shop of Drums in late April. 

Unfortunately, I did not record the exact date when I first saw the ad. I called them on April 29 and learned they were taking orders but I had cut the ad from the Hazleton Standard-Speaker some days prior. The washable masks they were selling came in whatever designs whoever was making them decided to use at the time they were making them.

I wanted grey. I figured a grey mask would match my beard and be less obvious. The ones they were selling at that time were blue with white stars. I wasn’t sure I wanted blue with white stars covering my mouth but the price was right: $5.00 each. The woman I spoke to told me the masks were EXTREMELY popular. “This was the most successful advertisement we’ve ever had!” she told me. She quoted orders in the hundreds! But, since they didn’t have grey, I begged off and stuck with my 3M Dust Mask with shoelace ties.

But there are more problems with wearing a mask than these! For example, I find myself repeating stuff more during discussions while wearing a mask. First off, being so far apart, six feet, doesn’t help them hear me. I feel like I’m yelling at them! Then there is a certain amount of muffling that occurs as the sound tries to escape the enclosure. “Hello Fred” gets the response, “Did you say you want a loaf of bread?”

Actually, a loaf of bread would be nice. That was one of the first things to disappear from the store shelves after we were all told to just stay home. However, we were not too dismayed. We have skills after all, that could help us survive - like being able to bake our own bread! So back to the store we went for yeast – the next of the early items to disappear from store shelves! Apparently so many people were staying at home, and all trying to use the same survival skill of baking their own bread, that everyone bought up all the yeast. Commercially baked bread has reappeared on the shelves as of late; in fact, just today (5/16) I got two for the price of one!!! The yeast, not so much. I hope we (they, because I didn’t get any) didn’t cause it to go extinct!

And forget about brand, or even variety, preference. I like buttermilk bread. All of April and early May, I was eating “whole wheat and oatnut bread”. It’s all I could find. It was a little like eating handfuls of grain right out of the grain sack. I took a bite of the bread and suddenly felt like neighing. Still, bread is bread. I guess. 

Last week I was looking for Peach Jelly. I got Orange Marmalade. Very a-peel-ing.

Of course, the VERY first thing that disappeared from the stores, very early on, even back when the stay-at-home orders were still just a rumor, was toilet paper. Shelves stocked by every kind, make, and ply you’d ever want one day; the next? Barren. Weeks went by with stores providing only empty shelves where once toilet paper resided in abundance. 

Then one day I saw a sign that said “Toilet Paper – Aisle 3. One per customer.” I thought they meant one package, like I used to get. You know, four, six or eight rolls in a package. Oh no, this is a photo of what I got. I don’t usually purchase Cottonelle but, as they say, beggars can’t be choosy, especially when there were only five rolls on the whole shelf and you can buy only one of them.

I sort of understand how the bread and yeast shortages could have occurred. I’m a tad more confused about the TP shortage. Afterall, one might buy bread maybe every two weeks, or buy yeast maybe once a month, if that. Probably less! So, when everyone decided they wanted those things all at the same time, well, the stores just weren’t expecting that level of demand. However, TP is an item we DO buy regularly. The stores should not have run out of that unless folks started buying it in quantities of unusual size; which is, of course, what was happening. I am hoping that those folks who are apparently storing it all in their attics (where else could it be?) experience a heating fuel use reduction due to the added insulation in their homes. More insulation would mean less need for heat using less heating oil. Less demand for oil would force the price down. Maybe, because of them, we can all experience fuel price reductions! Sort of a way they can have their rolls and share the wealth at the same time.

Toilet paper too has made its way back from near extinction. My most recent grocery store visit found so much TP for sale, the aisle was reduced to a single lane, so much TP was stacked in there. They had it stacked along the back wall, too!

And we ARE experiencing home heating fuel price reductions. I filled my fuel tank on May 1 and found the price was half what I paid when I filled the tank in early February. That lower price was not due to my insulation theory from above, however. That lower price is due to crude oil prices being so low due to lack of demand for gasoline. We are all staying in our homes so much, we are filling our car gas tanks less often. Low demand forces prices down, prices for all types of oil are down. I haven’t seen gas prices like these since, perhaps, the year I graduated from Hazleton High School (1975). Not that I am complaining about prices being lower, but I am complaining about not having anywhere to go! No place to go means I’m not using the gas I got so I can’t take advantage of the lower gas prices! It’s a vicious cycle.

We read above how life was being lived in New Hampshire with COVID-19, but how is life here in Drums? Things here aren’t too much different from the description Nathan gives above. Just about all businesses closed and remained so. I was surprised I could still go into a Post Office to buy stamps and mail letters and packages. The bank across the street from the Post Office only provides service through the drive-thru. The bank I bank at, closed the branch I bank at in Conyngham, so I drive to West Hazleton to bank at the branch there now, via the drive-thru. Oh, and by the way, unlike New Hampshire, our liquor stores are closed. I read recently that some are now offering curb-side pick-up. Our restaurants too, are closed for inside dining. Most provide home delivery or curb-side pick-up of called in orders.

Some counties in Pennsylvania are being allowed some lee-way in being open. Luzerne holds the eighth place in highest number of COVID-19 cases as of May 15: 2,491 cases and 127 deaths. We won’t be opening just yet.

So, things in general, as far as lifestyle goes, are beginning to get better. The virus is just as bad as it always was but, perhaps we are beginning to learn how to live with it; well, at least incorporate it into our daily lives. 

I don’t think things will ever go back to “normal”. I think this thing has changed us, perhaps even in ways we may never fully realize. What we do realize, at least what I think I’ve recognized in many, including myself, is a resilience and strength I’d been missing. Perhaps that is what these type things do for us, move us all forward; make us all better; clarify our priorities; renew our strength.

As hard as finding a mask had been until recently, I knew, once masks became more available, it would only be a matter of time until I would see this:

This photo was taken about 8:00 AM in Drums, PA on May 15, 2020. If you can’t make out what that is, let me give you a closer look.

That’s right. A discarded face mask, the vanguard of the next pandemic: Face Mask Litter! That pandemic will hit when the fog clears and the announcement is made that face masks are no longer required. I know that day will come. Doctors will announce, “We have a vaccine!” and we will all be able to toss this virus aside like yesterday’s used face mask.

That will be some day!

---

[1] https://www.today.com/style/how-wear-face-mask-not-fog-glasses-t179465 accessed 4/26/2020

[2] The proper method for removing your mask is to grasp the elastic bands behind your ears, or to untie the laces if that is the type of mask you are wearing, and let the mask fall away from you. The mask should then be either disposed of or washed before further use. For even BETTER instructions on proper mask wearing see: https://www.sfcdcp.org/communicable-disease/healthy-habits/how-to-put-on-and-remove-a-face-mask/ accessed 4/26/2020

[3] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm accessed 5/16/2020.

[4] See conversion calculator at: https://www.officialdata.org/

[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/coronavirus-mask-guidance-remains-unclear-here-s-how-history-can-ncna1174451 accessed 4/26/2020.

[6] Bufano, Matt, “Virus has renewed interest in 1918 pandemic”, Hazleton Standard-Speaker April 13, 2020, page A10.

[7] Bufano, Matt

[8] Helman, Laura M., History and Genealogy of the Drum Family (Allentown, PA: Berkemeyer, Keck & Co., 1927)

[9] Bufano, Matt

[10]https://www.etsy.com/market/mask accessed 5/15/2020.

[11] Nathan, is a Doctor of Optometry. His offices are in northern New Hampshire.

[12] Nathan’s wife.

Getting Well, Part 1: They got a tea for that!

#41: Getting Well, Part 1: They got a tea for that!

Note: What I'm about to say here will give you an idea of how these posts get written - and when. I write them as if I'm writing as you are reading. However, these posts are usually written months in advance. In the case of "John's Keys", a post yet to come, it has been in the works for close to two years. I began putting this post, #41, together in October of 2019 LONG before the new Coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, became such a prevalent component of our daily lives; long before it was even imagined by most of us. I wonder how our ancestors would have reacted to this pandemic. We did survive the pandemic of 1918, but there is little to no information available that I've uncovered that tells us about that time as it relates to "us". What you are about to read in this post, therefore, has nothing to do with the present pandemic. Perhaps one will be posted in the near future, a "Contemporary History" post, perhaps, that tells that story. That will be then, however, so let's get on with this one now, "They got a tea for that!"

In the last two posts we looked at how we Drums went about getting our learnin’ done. At the end of the previous post (#40) I mentioned that when I was in the grade school classes, I told my mom that school made me sick. So, in honor of those sentiments, I thought it might be interesting to have a look at what we Drums did to stay healthy and what we did when we didn’t stay healthy (by that, I mean how we got healthy again. I just thought I better clarify that statement).

Something else I better clarify right up front is that I am not a doctor. Heck, I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, or even recently! A few of my ancestors were doctors. George Frank Drum^{(George, George, George, Jacob, Philip)}, known as G. Frank Drum, became a doctor and two of his daughter’s, Dora and Susan, each married a doctor. My brother, Nathan, IS a doctor; a Doctor of Optometry. His offices are in northern New Hampshire, but, relevant to my knowledge of the medical field, all of this information certainly begs the question: So what?

The play was in all the papers, well,
in the Hazleton Standard-Speaker, at least.

I suppose it really doesn’t count either that I played Radar in the Hazleton High School Drama Club’s Presentation of M*A*S*H* in 1974. This is the story of the doctors and nurses in a medical unit during the Korean War. Anyway, my character was Radar, the company clerk, not a doctor. My first toy, a Teddy Bear I named Teddy, played the role of Radar’s teddy bear in the production. He won the award for “Best Supporting Teddy Bear” during the Drama Club’s Awards Banquet. My mom made a tuxedo for him to wear to the banquet and he was so pleased with it that he hasn’t taken it off since! 

 

Nor does it matter, I suppose, that “Doctor” was one of my favorite games to play as a child. My friend Claire and I would spend hours on end diagnosing each other’s illnesses, bandaging each other’s “wounds”, and so forth. Thank goodness we were playing “doctor” and not “surgeon”!!

I even had a “Medical Kit”!  In fact, I still do! Here it is! The “doctor’s bag” that holds the kit is a broken metal lunch pail. A lot of the “instruments” in the kit came from a children’s book about doctors and medicine that included punch-out cardboard instruments including: a yellow “Health Chart”, a Reflex Hammer”, a medicine measuring eye-dropper, a microscope, a Head Mirror, two cotton swabs, two wooden tongue depressors,  and a hypodermic needle.

I supplemented those items with a real needle (minus the needle), a very large diaper pin (for what reason I’m sure has been long forgotten!), a plastic spoon, a box of 1 inch “Red Cross” gauze bandage, a surgical face mask, a Sucrets box (good for holding the face mask), 2 tongue depressors (the wrapper says “Pertussin relieves coughs), and a plastic Stethoscope. Another small roll of gauze can be seen still in the lunch pail, I mean, medical bag, in the photo.

My over-explained point in all of this is to say that I don’t know squat about medicine or medications. I have had First Aid training so if you are frostbitten, come see me. Otherwise, we are mostly out-of-luck. Still, I’ll give it the “old college try”, as they say; or “med-school try”, as the case may be.

In looking at this as a post topic, I realized this one is even harder than the one about “our” schooling. Once again, I lament the lack of diaries, letters, and the like that would give us clues, direct our research, into how the Drums interacted with medicine and medical care; to tell us just how well we did hold up!

One assumes most of us fared well enough, long enough, to at least produce some off-spring given my son is the 10^th generation of “us” since Philip first arrived in Philadelphia back in 1738. The early longer-life (or long-enough-life) successes are due largely to the ingenuity and creativity of our ancestor’s, themselves. They listened, observed, experimented; repeated what worked, tossed out what didn’t.

I look at all the remedies and potions and practices they lived by and with, now lost and forgotten in today’s world, and I find myself amazed. I discussed some of these remedies they would concoct in a previous post entitled “It Takes a Village Part 2: Village Remedies”. There I discuss handwritten remedies found in “The Hatbox Collection” (see the post Faith – In God for information about; and a look into; this box of family papers reaching back to 1800).

These recipes included an “Rx” for a sore cleansing mixture of Iodine and Benzene; flaxseed and raisins for a cough syrup recipe; and a mixture of vinegar, egg yolks, and turpentine for sore backs (this one was not for internal use, thank goodness!). I found it interesting that the flannel color called for by the remedy was specific (red). I wonder if that helped; if “red flannel” was somehow different, warmer perhaps, than, say, plaid flannel or green flannel. I mean, why red?

There is even a recipe in the collection for use when your cow is “off her feed” that includes Juniper berries, Antimony, and Calamus. For this one, I had to turn to Google as well as look in a medical book published in 1822 for what all this might be.  I explain it in the post entitled “It Takes a Village Part 2: Village Remedies”.  But this all brings me to the 1822 Medical book. This is not a book that was owned by any of the Drums, by the way. However, I’m sure they’d have enjoyed it had they HAD owned it!

Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, first president of the American Medical Association, published a series of volumes entitled Elements of Therapeutics and Materia Medica. The book I have is Vol. 2 of the second edition that was published in 1822. It covers some interesting and concerning things; most of which make me glad I wasn’t exposed to the world of medicine in 1822!

For example, He mentions what he calls “Antimonium Tartarizatum”. He says that some doctors use this “salt” as a blister to pull the sickness out of the body. He listed maladies such as Chronic Rheumatism, Asthma, and Consumption (Tuberculosis), to name a few, for which practitioners claimed to have found this procedure useful. However, he says the application of the medicine to the skin produces an irritation that is permanent and “most distressingly painful.”[1] "Permanent and most distressingly painful"!?! Why would you even THINK of using something like that!?

I have not read through this book cover to cover, but it appears to be a compendium of treatments derived from various plants, sometimes mixed with such ingredients as mercury or turpentine or vinegar, etcetera, and so forth. On pages 238 through 242 Chapman discusses the use of spider webs (cobwebs) for alleviating various symptoms, but mostly for the reduction of fevers.

George Washington’s death as depicted in:
 Devens, R. M., Our First Century: being a Popular
Discriptive Portraiture of the
One Hundred Great and Memorable Events
of perpetual interest in the History of our country,
Political, Military, Mechanical, Social, Scientific and
Commercial: embracing also delineations of all
the great historic characters celebrated
in the annuals of the Republic;
men of Heroism, Statesmanship, Genius, Oratory,
Adventure and Philanthropy.
(Springfield, MA: C. A. Nichols & Co.;
Easton, PA: J. W. Lyon, 1876).

One of his quoted sources says the cobweb is not to be used until the patient has been properly “prepared by bleeding, emetics, or purgatives”. Emetics make you vomit. Purgatives move your bowels. Bleeding is literally allowing blood to flow from the body. These medical procedures were used to remove the bad “humours” from the body. Some historians suggest bleeding was a contributing cause, if not the true cause, of President George Washington’s death in 1799.  

Even as late as 1860, the practice of bleeding was still in use. It may have been used to try to cure the four Hart sisters whose story is told by the post It Takes a Village Part 3: The Story of the Hart Children. This is the sad story of the deaths; all in the month of July, 1860; of the four little daughters of Anna Margaret Rosina Drum Hart^{(Jacob, George, Jacob, Philip)} and her husband, John Hart.

Returning to the cobwebs, however, Chapman does not specifically identify the spider in question. He simply says “cobwebs”. At one point he does concede that there may be differences in medicinal properties from the webs of different kinds of spiders. However, by “Cobwebs”, I’m guessing the most likely genus being referred to is Achaearanea (or, Parasteatoda; I’m not sure why there appear to be two Genus names for the same species). Anyway, this is the genus under which the Common House Spider (Achaearanea - Parasteatoda tepidariorum) is classified and they are the ones who make the best cobwebs, those big ones you find in buildings basements and barns.

Of course, we are most likely talking about spiders one would usually find indoors (a basement or in a barn), but I was having a difficult time finding a good photo of one of those so I chose this nice "outdoorsy" photo. I believe the tunnel spider whose web is seen at the top of this photo is a cousin to the variety Chapman is referring to. Certainly, he isn’t talking orb web weavers, such as the one seen in the lower half of this photo. 
And can you imagine the conversation about obtaining the cobwebs? 
“Go get me a few spider webs, Quick!”
“What!? Spiderwebs!? NO! No way! YOU go get the spiderwebs!”

That’s me with my dad in 1965.
I surely can’t be on my way to help him with
his hives, although that’s what the fancy
headgear and gloves are for. I’m in shorts
(and only one sock, apparently!).
No way was I going to open honeybee
 hives in SHORTS! The hives
in the wheelbarrow behind Dad
(white boxes to the right) do not have bees in
them yet. He must have been setting up new
hives that day and I probably pestered him
until he dressed me up like he was
(and Mom, of course, had to take a photo).

Medicine, however, is not, limited just to arachnids and their webs. Insects[2] can play a roll too! My dad was a beekeeper, as was his father before him. I don’t know how far back “our” relationship goes with Honey Bees. I do know the relationship between man and honey goes back to Biblical times and probably earlier, back even to the earliest days of humankind. It turns out honey and beeswax have long been used in the cure of a long list of human and animal conditions and afflictions.

At one time it was believed that people who ate large quantities of Honey became more congenial and affectionate![3] Move over chocolate! Valentine’s Day has a new sweet to celebrate with!!

Honey is mentioned in the Bible, the Talmud, and the Koran. It was used as a medicine in ancient China, India, Persia, Arabia, Assyria, and Greece. It was used for wounds, burns, and boils. Mixed with vinegar and wintergreen it became a useful poultice. Mixed with beeswax it was used as a rectal suppository. Mixed with oil (I assume vegetable oil, but maybe not) it became a popular enema. There were various types of Honey ointments for wounds and Honey solutions were used in the ears and the eyes.[4]

So, Honey and beekeeping knowledge, crossed the ocean with the Europeans (Can we say that they really knew their beeswax? sorry. Again.), the Honeybee first arriving on this continent in 1622.[5] The Germans, especially, strongly believed in the medicinal virtues of Honey. One of the many remedies they used was to mix Honey with cod liver oil to create an ointment for wounds.[6]

A “Bee Skep”.
Image from: Devens, R. M., Our First Century

Once here, Honey quickly became part of the culture. In New England, they mix Honey with apple cider vinegar, heat it up, sniff the fumes, and cure a headache. Now you apparently have to sniff 50 to 70 times for the cure to work. I’m thinking by then the headache better be gone or I’m fainting!  I’m thinking that the sniffing alone would GIVE me a headache but what do I know? By the way, since honey is a relaxant, just eating it should help resolve tension headaches.[7]

In Pennsylvania, we also mix Honey with apple cider vinegar, except we don’t sniff it, we DRINK it!! It makes a wonderful energizing tonic called “Honigar”. There are lots of recipes online for Honey and vinegar drinks, some include cinnamon.

And then there are the herbs. I mean, who knew that Rhubarb had medicinal uses? I thought it was just good as a pie filling! Wait, is Rhubarb an herb? Let’s say “herbs and other plants”. There, now I feel better. Tree moss, grasses, certain barks, sassafras, various mints, cattails, hemp, the list just keeps going!

Mary Dupuis, my mother-in-law, was “into” herbs, but she was more interested in their aromas and flavors for cooking as opposed to their medicinal purposes, not that she couldn’t brew up a most soothing Lemon Balm and Honey tea when you needed some! Her cookbook was published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society in 1981.

A booklet entitled The Forgotten Arts includes a chapter entitled “Herbal Medicines: The Garden Apothecary” [8]. It says plants and herbs such as Wild Cherry and Horehound are both good for relieving coughs; teas made from Chamomile, Fennel, Dill, Catnip, or Lemon Verbena were once prescribed for their calming and relaxing effect (sweetened with honey?). Hops (used as a pillow) induces sleep, they say. Teas made from Hyssop, Peppermint, or Spearmint are supposed to be good stimulants. Peppermint was also recommended for a queasy stomach, as was both Sage and Anise. Teas are made by steeping the leaves in hot water. A decoction is made by boiling the prescribed plant materials. Decoctions of Anise seed, Fennel, Coriander or Sweet Marjoram were each used to cure colic.

Have a headache but you ran out of honey? Sniff Lavender. Really, what could it hurt?

It is said that Rosemary will help your headache too. However, some say it should be given as a tea (sweetened with honey, I wonder?) while others want it applied as a compress. Pennyroyal is said to repel insects. Sage tea and honey aids a sore throat. Jewelweed or Sweet Fern is recommended for Poison Ivy, although there seems to be some disagreement over which is the better application of the Sweet Fern, drinking it or bathing in it!

The list goes on, but the author quite correctly points out that many of conditions these remedies are suggested to help, are rarely seen today, probably because we call them something else or have eradicated the problem that was once so common. Examples include tetters[9], chilblains, scurvy, ague[10], erysipelas, and summer diseases[11]. They then caution that if one is suffering from one of these many maladies, extinct or not; a tea, decoction, bath, compress or whatever, might help, but for gosh sakes (my words, not theirs) see a Doctor! These remedies most likely won’t hurt you and may even help a tad, but they can’t hold a candle stick, sassafras stick, or even a cinnamon stick, to what an actual doctor practicing modern medicine can do for you! Go see a DOCTOR.

I’m guessing that the above was the extent of medicine that was available to most of us Drums prior to the Civil War (The families of Philip, Jacob, George, Philip, and into John’s life). These “folk remedies” (herbs and such) were used even thereafter, albeit in a continuously diminishing capacity at least into the Second World War years, and a some few years thereafter, as “Modern Medicine” replaced these remedies as the primary “go-to” option for the families of Nathan, Elmer, and Harry. The use of these remedies only disappeared in general society use as those who had been taught their use died and the modern pill or the over-the-counter commercially produced concoction replaced the home-brewed tea or self-mixed salve. The closest I think I’ve ever come to the use of such remedies was putting honey and lemon in my tea for a sore throat or applying Aloe for a burn.

And Stypic Pencils; I've used Stypic Pencils. These little sticks of Aluminum Sulfate are used to stop bleeding. Those of us who shave; anything: checks, necks, legs, etc.; know about these pencils. Give yourself a nick with the razor and these pencils will stop the flow of blood fast. They are for external use only, of course. However, true to form, I know what they taste like. I found them rather soothing as a kid when I bit my cheek or lip accidentally while chewing. They have an interesting, sour-like flavor. I think use and time have caused this one to be somewhat diminished. They are usually bigger.

That is not to say that these old-time remedies just went away and were forgotten. As we shall soon see, many of these remedies were captured and used in those modern, commercially produced concoctions like throat lozenges and cough syrups.

However, before we leave the “earlier times”, there was a “remedy source” that we Drums apparently turned to that was passed along to us by our European ancestors. It was probably knowledge carried by Philip on his original Atlantic voyage; if not how to do it, certainly he was aware of it and saw it practiced by the German community he left in Europe, as well as the German community he joined in southeastern Pennsylvania. It is a centuries-old tradition that most people today refer to as “Powwowing”. In the Pennsylvania German, it is called Braucherei[12].

This tradition involves prayers one recites, or someone says for you, or in some cases, for an animal, that will cure or heal a condition. As I explained in more detail in the post “Faith – In God”, the prayer, alone, doesn’t do the trick. The prayer is just one element in a process that usually involves gestures, actions (such as burying a lock of hair), procedures (such as repeating the prayer three times), timed according to moon phases or similar natural occurrences, and so forth. The process combines religious elements with ritual elements to produce the desired result such as healing or providing protection.[13]

I know we Drums at lease knew of this practice because found among the various other notes, news clippings, receipts and such saved in “The Hat Box” collection, was the following Powwow. I go into much greater detail about this in the post “Faith – In God”. For our discussion here, it is sufficient to note that the document holds two prayers. The top prayer is for a condition that afflicts horses called “Sweeny” (it is spelled “swinny” in this document). The second prayer is for healing wounds. I am unable to determine the age of this document. It may be as old as 1862 or perhaps was produced as late as the 1920’s. That it exists, however, opens a whole line of insight into this family that I had not been exposed to previously.

And with that, it begins to feel like we need to turn now to the years after the Civil War on into today. Join us again on June 9, 2020 for #42: Getting Well, Part 2: Now they got a pill for that!

---

[1] Chapman, N. M.D., Elements of Therapeutics and Materia Medica, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: H. C. Carey and I. Lea, 1822) p 118.

[2] Although both are Arthropods, they fall into different classes. Arachnids (spiders) have two body parts and eight legs while members of the class Insecta (Insects) have three body parts and six legs. There are other dividing points as well but these are the biggies.

[3] Perlman, Dorothy, The Magic of Honey (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1971) p. 77

[4] Perlman, Dorothy, pp. 77-79

[5] https://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/honey/honey-history.asp accessed 2/17/20

[6] Perlman, Dorothy, pp. 77-79

[7] Perlman, Dorothy, p. 79

[8] Rogers, Barbara R., Chapter 10: “Herbal Medicines: The Garden Apothecary”, pp57-62 in: The Forgotten Arts, Edie Clark, Ed., Book Four, (Dublin, N.H., Yankee Inc., 1979)

[9] Tetters: any of various vesicular skin diseases (such as ringworm, eczema, and herpes)

[10] Experiencing shivers with a fever, such as happens when suffering from Malaria.

[11] I was not able to find a good, clean description of what this term may have been describing. It probably involved the common summer afflictions of sun burn, heat stroke, rashes, insect bites, and such, but may also have included such things as malaria, yellow fever, chicken pox and measles.

[12] pronunciation of the word is "BROW-khe-RYE" with a primary stress on BROW and a secondary stress on RYE. The "khe" is a phoneme that does not exist in most English dialects (it is most often heard in parts of Scotland). This is a guttural sound formed in the back of your mouth, top of your throat, that is similar to the sound that is made by trying to clear your throat.

[13] Donmoyer, Patrick J., Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Braucherei and the Ritual of Everyday Life (Kutztown, PA: The Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2018) p 23.