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.

#25 Faith – In God

Faith – In God

This image came from Mary Drum’s Bible
given to her by her husband, Nathan A. Drum on Christmas 1895.[1]

In our previous Faith-related posts, we looked at the Drums and their choices of theological systems through which to worship God, German Reformed or Methodist. It is somewhat curious to note that, to my knowledge, and I may be wrong about this, only those of “us” who lived in Conyngham chose the Lutheran system. I am actually only aware of George W. Drum being Lutheran [for further discussion on this point see note 2 below]. He is listed as a Lutheran in the Valley Vigilant tribute published in 1913.[3] I have even less information for the other “Conyngham Drums”. As for the rest of “us”, I don’t believe any of the Drums of the past aligned with any theological system other than Reformed or Methodist in order to practice “our” religion.

Faith, however, is something different. It comes in many forms. Faith, religious faith, that is, does not always have to have the walls of a structure, such as a church, to exist. It does not even require the parameters and protocols set down by a specific theology. Faith is something that is a much deeper part of the human experience.

This is the hat box that holds the odd collection of receipts,
newspaper clippings, recipes, account books, and so forth
collected over time that I am often referring to.
“Reio” is a brand of cigar and that cigar box holds
a pocket watch, bankbook, and a few other, similar, items.

Hidden among the statements, bills, deeds, receipts, letters, newspaper clippings, and so forth saved in a hat box over the years by various Drums and their extended-family members, a collection that goes as far back as 1800, was one document that made little sense to most who looked at it in these “modern” times. However, upon closer examination, this little document turned out to be perhaps the most intriguing and telling of them all - a testament of sorts to faith!

It is an 8” x 10” piece of lined paper folded in half. Embossed in the upper left-hand corner, beside the fold, hardly visible, is what appears to be the U.S. Capitol in the 1850’s, although I have no idea what this has to do with it, if anything at all! Two passages are written on the page in quill or metal dip-pen. It is not signed. A receipt found in this same “collection” is written on similar lined paper, minus the embossed image and much lighter in color. Here is, first, the receipt.

The receipt is dated June 12, 1862 and written to Thomas Santee by (what looks like) Conrad Uplinger. Although the handwriting is similar on both documents, there is no way of knowing if they were both written by the same hand. Is the fact that they are similar, however, a way of dating the Powwow document?

Here is the Powwow. The passages seem to be written in a German dialect as follows.

Powow for Swinny

                      German

Swinny eck schware dech

aus. aus dam mark in den

knochan. aus dan knochan

ins flaesch. aus dam flaesch

ins blud. aus dam blud in

dea hand. aus dar hand in

dea hohr. aus dan hohr

seban und sebandsech glafder

deaf in den ard.

Powow for a wound

Unsar Har Easus Chrestus

hat fela wundan. sol necht

haetarn. sol necht schwaran.

sol dan Haeland ^hileu bes auf dan

grund.

Using language translation technology available in today’s world (Google Translate, etc.), I tried to translate these passages. Unfortunately, those technologies failed me! Unable to translate them on my own, I contacted a university professor of German and asked her if she would translate the passages for me. She too found them to be challenging! She, in turn, sent them on to a colleague who ALSO had trouble fully translating them but came closer than either of us had gotten. She was the first to identify the passages as spiritual healing devices! She felt that they were “cures” perhaps written for an individual named Swinny German, “Swinny” probably being a nickname or term of endearment and “German”, a common last name in eastern Pennsylvania, being the person’s last name. The question then became, “Who was Swinny German?”  

A “cure”! So, these passages are prayers one recites, or someone says for you, that will cure or heal a person, or, as at least one of these turned out to be for, an animal. The prayer, alone, doesn’t do the trick, however. The prayer is just one step, 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. It is a tradition that is centuries old called Powwowing, or, in the language of the Pennsylvania Germans, Braucherei[4]. The process combines religious elements with ritual elements to produce a desired result such as healing or providing protection.[5]

It is a very secretive practice whose traditions are usually passed orally rather than in writing.[6] I believe this may partly be due to its sometimes being seen NOT as the work of God but as that of the Devil. With ignorance comes fear and with fear comes violence so it is often best to keep such things to oneself. This feeling can be seen in a story one life-long Drums resident, Linda Fuehrer Yanac, shared with me of her being powwowed as a child. Her story is somewhat unusual because it does not include reciting prayers or some of the other ritual elements that are usually part of powwow experiences.

A typical powwow experience unfolds something like the following, described in the book Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Braucherei and the Ritual of Everyday Life by Patrick J. Donmoyer. [7]

Under the light of the full moon, my great-grandfather took his knife and cut a potato in half. The cross-section shone in the moonlight, as he whispered a prayer in Pennsylvania Dutch, and began to rub a wart on my grandmother’s hand with the potato. He repeated this three times, before putting the halves back together, and burying them under the downspout at the eaves of the farm house. My grandmother was just a little girl, but she recalled that within a few days, her wart had vanished.

Here is the powwow experience my friend, Linda, shared with me. [8] 

Linda Fuehrer Yanac

I was six or seven years old at the time. I got a wart on my little finger of my right hand, last joint, on the top, just before the nail. And it was annoying because there was a lump. So, I showed it to my mother (Carrie Fuehrer) and she said we would have to go see old Mr. Boock. He lived in Sugarloaf, just across the line with Butler Township, on Foothills Drive. My mother said “I don’t know that I agree with this stuff, it’s the work of the Devil, but it works.” So, we went to his house and went in. Mr. Boock looked at my finger and then went and got a potato. He cut the potato in half, took my hand, and rubbed the wart with the potato. As he did this he was saying to me, “As I’m rubbing this potato, you have to believe. I’m going to bury this potato and when it rots in the ground the wart will be gone. You have to believe this. Do you believe it?” Well I was just a little girl! When an older person tells you something and you’re just a little girl, well, you believe it! So, I said, “yes, I believe.” And that was it. On the way home, my mother sternly told me, “Don’t you tell anybody I took you there or what we did.” And it worked! In a month the wart was gone!

During a conversation I had on July 9, 2018 with Linda’s mother, Carrie Fuehrer, then 91 years old[9], Mrs. Fuehrer said she remembered the incident and confirmed she still believed this work to be “that of the Devil.” According to Mrs. Fuehrer, Mr. Boock was not the spiritual healer, that he was “filling in” on this occasion. His mother was the one who usually performed these Healings. This may account for why the session was not conducted in the usual traditional manner.

I was stunned such devices, “healing Powwow prayers”, would be found among papers collected by my ancestors. Nothing like this was ever discussed, that I can remember, when I was growing up. This “Powwow” thing was all new to me! To my knowledge, I was never “Powwowed”; the word was never used. Yet, as I learned more about this tradition, I realized how much of this tradition was a part of my life. My dad did plant certain things only at certain times of the year. One was to follow a specific procedure for drinking water in order to stop a case of hiccups (seven gulps repeated three times). A letter “from God” was found among the collection of Drums’ papers that prescribed being copied and carried on your person as a protection from harm.

.

Mom’s Horseshoe, prongs up.
Note the sleigh Bells hung over the door as well

I remember a long discussion that verged on being “heated”, over how a horseshoe should be hung over a door. My father and grandmother argued it needed to be hung with the prongs pointing down so the “luck would pour out over everyone who entered or left” via that door. My mom, whose father was of German descent, but whose very superstitious mother was of Hungarian descent, argued it needed to be hung prongs up “so the luck does not pour out and be lost”! Of course, as usually goes with moms, Mom won and the shoe has hung prongs up ever since, there yet today. Every time Ella looked at it she’d shake her head and say, “No wonder we don’t have any luck.” Dad just chuckled.

My mom wrote a book about her mom’s life and her own childhood and life. In discussing my dad after they were married, she doesn’t mention horseshoes, but she does mention his making sauerkraut. Her notes included, “The old people would always say sauerkraut can be made any time of year, under any Zodiac Sign, except not the fish or the waterman. Also, it has to be made in the sign of the moon turned up.” I thought it was a joke when I first read it and she may have been skeptical, herself. However, now I sense it had a foundation in the Pennsylvania German Powwow traditions!

Wanting to learn more about my “Powow for Swinny German” document, I contacted Patrick Donmoyer at the Pennsylvania German Cultural Center of Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. He corrected several errors; such as it was not for a person named “Swinny German”; and filled in the gaps. In a note he sent to me on January 13, 2017, he said,

I am very familiar with the material that is written here …The cure that you have at the top of the page is for “sweeny”, which is an atrophy of the shoulder, usually in draft horses, causing them to be unable to work. This was believed to be a spiritual entity that lived deep within the marrow of the animal, and your manuscript (commands it) to come “out of the marrow and into the bone, out of the bone and into the flesh, out of the flesh and into the blood, out of the blood and into the skin, out of the skin and into the hair, out of the hair and into the earth, 77 fathoms deep.” This progression is actually a variation of one of the earliest known verbal blessings used for healing horses, dating back as early as the 10^th century, entitled “Merseberger incantation.” Over time, this incantation changed and was adapted to a Christian culture and used widely throughout Europe. Presumably, the 18^th century immigrants from central Europe that came to Pennsylvania brought a variation with them that was widely circulated in Pennsylvania.

The second one is also familiar to me, and spelling in this document indicates that these powwow prayers were passed through oral tradition before being written down. It is also possible that the writer did not speak or read any German, which is why the instructions have the word “German” as a subtitle for the previous entry on sweeny (spelled Swinny in the document). The second prayer is based on the old idea that the wounds of Christ are invoked for healing. The prayer essentially says, “Our Lord Jesus Christ had many wounds. They shall not fester, they shall not putrefy. They shall (depart) from our savior into the ground.” …The word “Haetern” is spelled in other documents “eitern” – which means to fester, to ulcerate, to suppurate. This word may have been challenging to the other translators you contacted.

Thanks again for sharing your powwow manuscript with us – it’s a gem!

The only questions left now are how old the document really is, and which member of the ancestry acquired it (or wrote it, perhaps?)? The collection of papers it was found in came from various family‑tree sources – Drum’s, Santee’s, Balliett’s, Schaffer’s – we cannot be sure which one contributed this document. It is, however, a testament to a faith in God that is far deeper than even that which one finds in church. It is a faith so deep, it helps to explain how these people were able to leave their homeland, overcome the odds, prosper, and carry us forward into the world we know today.

For our next post, we go back in time again to have a look at the Drums at war! On June 3, 2019, return to the Drums of Drums, PA to begin the war discussion with: Revolutionary to Civil, Its WAR!

---

[1] Citation for Mary Drum’s Bible:

Williams, Prof. S. W., The Pronouncing Edition of the Holy Bible Containing the Authorized and Revised Versions of the Old and New Testaments, arranged in Parallel Columns, Giving the Correct Pronunciation of Every Proper Name Contained in the Bible. (Phila.: A.J. Holman and Co., LTD, 1895)

[2] Although I’ve misplaced the source for this information, I did learn that George W. Drum served as a trustee for the German Lutheran Church in Conyngham.

[3] “Conyngham’s Grand Old Man Dead, Honorable George W. Drum is no more – was the town’s oldest native citizen” Valley Vigilant, November 14, 1913. P 23

[4] 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.

[5] 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.

[6] Donmoyer, p 14

[7] Donmoyer, p 13

[8] Linda Fuehrer Yanac interview conducted April 9, 2018.

[9] Carrie E. Fuehrer passed away on January 13, 2019, having lived 92 years, most of which were lived in Drums.