I've just finished reading a book for the fourth time. That's not altogether unusual for me; but, in this case the book's only been on the market for a few weeks. The truth is, I was fortunate enough to read it twice as a work in progress prior to its publication. The book I'm speaking of is Southern Folk Medicine 1750-1820 by the 6th's own Kay Moss. It's just been published by The University of South Carolina Press and retails for around $30.00.
Many of you have seen Kay's portrayal of a back country herb lady, a practitioner of folk medicine. If you have, I'm sure that you were impressed with her enthusiasm and her depth of knowledge on the subject. Much of the decades of research and an equal measure of the infectious enthusiasm that have gone into Kay's portrayal also went into this book.
While there's a treasure trove of remedies from period Southern manuscript sources, there's much more here. There's a section on common ailments of the period that's worth reading for those of us who've wondered about fluxes and quinseys and the other strange-sounding complaints of our forebears. Another section describes the state of medical knowledge and medical practice in the backcountry that will help the reader understand the widespread reliance on folk medicine. Several useful appendices cover such topics as the ingredients, obscure and common, found in the remedies, and pharmaceutical weights and measures. While Southern Folk Medicine is a scholarly work of the first order, it's both readable and understandable by the lay person.
The University of South Carolina Press
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