Sassafras and the American Slave Tradition. Our Own History

 The Wisdom of the Folk Remedy

Not To Be Disregarded.

What trace elements in the natural cure or use 

cannot be replicated in the laboratory substitute, if any

Folk remedies. FN 1

Oven in the woods.How t retrieve the past

 .
Use and pass on the lore, because the materials are at hand, no extra cost, and there are enough experience, anecdotes, recipes, to make it reasonably safe.  There is no alternative where there is no money. Who to trust?  The healer, the old ways.

Hear Slave Narratives at The Gutenberg Project, at ://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/1/4/2/11422/11422.htm.  Do a "find" for sassafras, and see this: Charlie Vaden, then age 72, lived in Green Grove, Arkansas, and was interviewed as part of the project about slave and black lore. Scroll up to the beginning of the entries related to him.  Farmer.  He remembers uses for garlic as a poultice for neuralgia, and this: "Sassafras is a good tea, a good blood purifier in the spring of the year." At another entry, from A Folk History of Slavery,  after a whipping, slaves used sassafras as medicine.  See http://www.fullbooks.com/Slave-Narratives-A-Folk-History-of-Slaveryx14332.html: "We used snake root, hohound weed, life everlastin' weed, horse mint an' sassafras as medicine."

Gumbo file and slave cooking - see Slavery in America at ://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history /hs_es_cuisine.htm/.  A stew of vegetables, crawfish, chicken, pork. "The stew is thickened with powder from sassafras leaves."  Find that section by a "find" for sassafras. The term gumbo comes from African roots, :kngombo, or ochingombo.

During the Civil War, the blockades of the southern ports, people (not just slaves) "brewed a decoction of blackberry leaves and sassafras roots to take the place of tea." See Slavery: Islamic and Christian Perspectives, a bit of lore in an overall site looking with a new eye at our interpretations of ourselves, at ://www.al-islam.org/slavery/12.htm/

A search for "slavery" and "sassafras" turns up uses for sassafras in dyes, and liquor.

Then there is Daddy Jack, from the Uncle Remus tradition, there bundling sassafras roots when the little boy comes to find Uncle Remus.  See the Gutenberg Project at ://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26429 /  Do the "find" for sassafras to get to it.  A normal part of everyday life. Sassafras.

Now maligned and its possibilities cut off.

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FN 1  Do a search for Pharma and natural remedies and see all the sites where there is no testing result available because noone will or can pay for the testing where there is no  profit to the substance in marketing.

Still, the history of sassafras and other herbs leads to the conclusion that keys are there. Not miracles, but perhaps keys to why they worked so long for so many.  The well-to-do may well continue with their modern pills, but also let the poor as well as others who prefer the natural to the pill, have the information needed to use those substances safely.