Laurel outlook., 1950-03-08
Witch Doctors,
0|dRemediesGef
Scientists OK

yCienf!SfS UK
Tomorrow a scientist may an
nounce that those ancient Chinese
doctors had something when they
prescribed the ashes of earth
worms to grow retreads on bald
heads. If he does, you may be sure
n group won't be at all surprised
that is, other scientists who are
probing excitedly into the secrets
Of primitive medicine. No matter
how bizarre, nothing would sur
prise them now after the discov-
cries they have already made.
In a hundred laboratories from
the Royal College of Physicians in
Edinburgh, to Western Reserve
university at Cleveland, and the
California institute Of Technology,
scientists are brewing remedies
from the recipes Of Indian medi-
cine men of the Southwest, Chinese
herb doctors, wild tribesmen of
Ecuador and Brazil, and the witch
doctors of interior Africa. Too, they
aren't forgetting the folk remedies
long in use in the Cumberlands,
the Ozarks, rural areas of Quebec,
and other backwaters of our own
civilization.
Discoveries Important
From these researchers, a num-
Der Of important discoveries have
already been made and science be-
lieves itself on the threshold Of
others just as important.
For instance, the Indians were
right when they prescribed sumac
for fu-it does attack that virus.
Those Australian buShmen, Ameri-
can Indians, and court physicians
Of feudal France who put such
strong reliance on mandrake root
may merely have been a few GEN.
turtles ahead of their time. At least,
men at microscopes in the austere
halls of the national cancer insti-
tute at Washington find the root eff
fectively checks canoe in mice
and look ahead hopefully to the
unpredictable findings that may
foreshadoW. And balSam bark, that
perennial cure-all among primitive
people, is chalking up such battling
cures for a variety of diseases that
it is fast becoming the darling of
the test tube set.
Although current scientific ex-
element is new-spurred by the
miracles wrought by penicillin, the
mold used for centuries by Euro
pean peasants to treat wounds
the history of civilized mans adop-
ton of primitive remedies is not
new.
Possibly, the greatest of all the
discoveries of the Spanish colonists
in South America 300 and more
years ago a cinchona bark. 1t is
from this bark that we get q%uinine,
the specific which has aided us to
control malaria, the greatest killer
of all.
However, the Peruvian natives
and even grandparents didn't
limit their use of quinine and the
bark from which it is made to
treatment of malaria. They used it
for muscle cramps, as a tonic, to
break up colds, to treat %iritis, and
for almost any ailment affecting
them for which they had 10 specific
remedy. To all of this the doctors
of a generation ago offered a not
too polite "Pooh-pooh."
Blooms With Tributes
But in recent months and years,
the dignified medical journals have
bloomed with tributes to the drug
and agree that those wild Peruvian
tribesmen knew their medicine.
In the American Heart Journal,
Drs. Moss and Herman assure us
that quinine stimulates the heart
to carry away wastes and thus re-
Iieves muscle cramps. In Clinical
DR.. l.. A. Curley reports
success in treating iritis with
and aspirin but admits baf-
1ement at how it works.
AS to colds, no one yet has found
an explanation as to what it does
or how but quinine has been an in
zredient of the more popular cold
cures for decades and many a mod
I'm mother follows her grand
Mothers lead in administering it
1t the first sign of a sniffle.
So if you believe it helps you1
to carry a buckeye in
left hip pocket, don't let the
;neers of your friends deter you.
t may be that you are right-at
my rate there is a growing legion
# scientists who have quit sheer
ng at any folk remedy no matter
low far fetched.