Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachian Fiction. Catherine Benson Strain East Tennessee State University
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East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University Electronic Theses and Dissertations Student Works 12-2002 Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachian Fiction. Catherine Benson Strain East Tennessee State University Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.etsu.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Strain, Catherine Benson, "Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachian Fiction." (2002). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 720. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/720 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachian Fiction A thesis presented to the faculty of the Department of English East Tennessee State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master in English by Catherine B. Strain December 2002 Dr. Theresa Lloyd, Chair Dr. Anthony Cavender Dr. Roberta Herrin Keywords: Folk Medicine, Official Medicine, Appalachian Fiction, Lucy Furman, Mildren Haun, Emma Bell Miles, Catherine Marshall, Hariette Arnow, Lee Smith, Charles Frazier ABSTRACT Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachian Fiction by Catherine B. Strain The region of Southern Appalachia, long known for its colorful storytellers, is also rich in folk medical lore and practice. In their Appalachian novels, Lucy Furman, Emma Bell Miles, Mildred Haun, Catherine Marshall, Harriette Arnow, Lee Smith, and Charles Frazier, feature folk medicine prominently in their narratives. The novels studied, set against the backdrop of the rise of official medicine, are divided into three major time periods that correspond to important chapters in the history of American medicine: the 1890s through the 1930s; the 1940s through the 1960s; and the 1970s through the present. The study of folk medicine, a sub-specialty of the academic discipline of folklore, gains significance with the current rise in distrust of official medicine and a return to medical folkways of our past. The authors studied here have performed an ethnological role in collecting and preserving with great care and authenticity many of the Appalachian region’s folk medical beliefs and practices. 2 Copyright 2002 by Catherine B. Strain All Rights Reserved 3 DEDICATION I wish to dedicate this manuscript to my mother, whose loving encouragement perpetually convinces me that I can indeed accomplish what I set out to do; and to the memory of my father, who I am only now discovering was an ardent folklorist. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to give my sincerest thanks to my committee chair and members for their patience and guidance in helping me with this project. My initial choice for a topic had its inception in Dr. Theresa Lloyd’s folklore class, and her suggestions for literary texts, plus her willingness to allow me to work out some aggression on her fenceposts, were timely and welcome. Dr. Anthony Cavender provided a wealth of sources for folk remedies, and his speedy and in- depth answers to my multitudinous questions enabled me to complete this project in a timelier and more scholarly manner than if I had been left to my own devices. Dr. Roberta Herrin was invaluable in her careful reading, re-reading, and editing of this manuscript; this thesis is far less “wordy” than it ever could have been without her aid. My especial thanks to my family and friends, who listened to me whine, fed me, took me for walks, and put up with my lengthy absences, distraction, and general decline in housekeeping abilities. I love you all and couldn’t have done it without you. 5 CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ 2 DEDICATION....................................................................................................................... 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 7 The Region................................................................................................................. 8 The Novelists............................................................................................................. 10 Folk Medicine and the Rise of Official Medicine ..................................................... 11 Historical Overview of the Fiction ............................................................................ 19 2. THE 1890s THROUGH THE 1930s ............................................................................. 26 3. THE 1940s THROUGH THE 1960s ............................................................................ 67 4. THE 1970S THROUGH THE PRESENT .................................................................... 101 5. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 130 WORKS CITED .................................................................................................................... 136 SUGGESTED READING ..................................................................................................... 147 VITA…………...................................................................................................................... 148 6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Rural Southern Appalachia boasts a rich tradition in its fiction, particularly in chronicling the lives of a people whose folkways and lore still influence not only a region but also a nation. An investigation of some of these works of fiction reveals a wealth of folk medical lore, documenting American folk medicine in its many forms. Our culture is currently experiencing a resurgence in the practice of non-traditional, alternative medicine, which includes centuries-old practices rooted in folk medicine. Thus, it is useful to note the full circle folk medicine has traveled and to give credit to the writers of fiction who have meticulously described and corroborated the practice of folk medicine. The categories of folk medicine to be highlighted in a sample of the fiction from this region are magico-religious healing and fatalism, labor and childbirth customs, botanical (herbal) medicine, and epidemiology. There is a certain amount of overlap among all of these categories, and some of the novels to be studied have different combinations of the above-mentioned categories. Folk medicine, especially in the United States, has for some time now attracted considerable interest and research in both official medicine (also referred to as scientific medicine, biomedicine, orthodox medicine, professional medicine, formal medicine, and conventional medicine) and in folklore, particularly the subspecialty of medical folklore. Medical folklorists, anxious to preserve cultural knowledge that might otherwise be lost, gather descriptive data largely composed of anecdotal histories, reminiscences, and compilations of folk remedies and customs based on superstition and magic (Cavender 170). Practitioners of 7 biomedicine, recognizing the persistence and increasing popularity of nonbiomedical systems rooted in folk medicine, are beginning to seek out knowledge of alternative health practices, such knowledge having become crucial in treating their patients who use both forms (O’Connor and Hufford 16). What has not been examined is the role fiction plays in chronicling the struggles of concurrent folk and formal medical practice and in mirroring and preserving medical folklore and folkways. Michael Jones’s definition of a folklorist describes with great accuracy the role of novelists writing about the folk customs of Southern Appalachia: “In their work, folklorists consciously seek evidence of continuities in what people do and think. [. .] Viewing folklore as an index of historical processes, some researchers use examples of folklore to reconstruct the past or to examine historical events and movements” (3). Professor Clarence Gohdes, in his foreword to the Americans in Fiction series, which is dedicated to preserving the works of important American writers who had fallen out of fashion (often local colorists and/or minorities), claims: “[. .] during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the novel has usurped the chief place in holding the mirror up to the homely face of society” (preface). Rural Southern Appalachia provides just such a “homely face,” and its novelists mirror the folk medical practices of a people as in a clear mountain stream, images often refracted, but brilliant in color and depth. The Region While the area known as Appalachia officially extends from Mississippi to New York, according to Marion Pearsall, noted Appalachian scholar, the Southern Appalachian region comprises three discrete regions: “the Blue Ridge and Smoky mountains on the east, the Appalachian plateaus on the west, and the great Appalachian valleys in the middle” (27). This 8 Southern Appalachian area, about 110,000 square miles, including northeastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, western North Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama (Pearsall 27), has inspired a collection of fiction particularly rich in medical folk lore. Frank