Appalachian History

Doctors once prescribed a tonic.
Sulfur and molasses was the dose.
Didn't help one bit.
My condition must be chronic.
Spring can really hang you up the most.

"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" (1952)
lyrics by Fran Landesman; music by Tommy Wolf

Time to shed the sluggishness of winter!

Up till the middle of the 20th century, many Appalachian residents, like Americans elsewhere, downed an annual spring tonic of sulfur and molasses. It was believed the family needed a good “spring cleaning” after a sedentary winter eating dried vegetables and salted meat. Each member of the family would have their dose of this mixture to purify their blood, thin or “cut” the blood, and make them feel better after the long winter.

This particular blood tonic was fashioned from a pure yellow crystalline form of elemental sulfur known as sublimed sulfur, or "flowers of sulfur." We now know sulfur is in the nucleus of cells and is fundamental to regeneration of strong healthy tissue. Mixes of sulfur with cream of tartar were also used and more exotic variations may include powdered pearl as well.

The name "molasses" is derived from a Portuguese word, "melaco", and means "resembling honey." The unsuphured tastes stronger but has more nutrients. Sulphur treated molasses is sweeter but has fewer nutrients.

Blackstrap molasses is the thick liquid separated from the solid granules of cane sugar during refining. It is not only a source of energy but contains iron and other minerals including a fair amount of calcium. It also has several B-Complex vitamins.

The use of spring tonics revolved around Victorian theories of high blood, low blood, thick blood, and thin blood.

High blood has very little to do with the modern concepts of high blood pressure and hypertension but instead is derived from the belief in humors and the practice of blood letting. It can be thought of as high blood volume which results in symptoms like headaches, nosebleeds, dizziness, feeling "flushed", fainting, rapid pulse and nausea.

By contrast, low blood is a low volume of blood or blood that lacks vitality. Symptoms of low blood are fatigue, dizziness, pale complexion and listlessness.

Thick blood is thought to be due to the presence of toxins and waste in the blood which makes it more viscous; this is viewed to be a source of sickness if left untreated. Heat intolerance, obesity and sluggishness are symptoms of thick blood.

A person who is cold-natured, frail, and slow to heal is thought to have thin blood, which is watery and lacks vital properties.

These four blood states express seasonal variation just like the sap in trees. During the winter, blood becomes thicker and lower because of the cold weather and a more sedentary lifestyle. A poor diet of canned and dried food in the winter also contributed to this change in blood state.

Springtime blood tonics help the sluggish blood rise like sap in trees in preparation for the hard work to be done in the growing season. Sulfur and molasses is just one of the options; there are lots of regional variations on the spring tonic formula throughout Appalachia, depending on availability of particular roots and herbs and also on local traditions and preferences.


sources: www.appvoices.org/index.php?/site/voice_stories/spring_tonics_and_appalachian_herbals/issue/151
www.otherworld-apothecary.com/articles/spring_tonics.html
www.breaman.net/ValleyFeverInfo/
www.wildcrafting.com/appalachian_healing_traditions.htm



spring+tonics sulfur+and+molasses blood+tonics appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

My mother was a great sassafras drinker. And every spring we had to have sassafras along with our poke salad (that was a wild green). The mountain people particularly gathered a lot of wild greens to supplement their diet, because most people back in those days lived mostly on cornbread and peas. My mother used to enjoy going into the mountains and picking the wild greens. They have a thing called (and I like it today—they cultivate it, by the way, in Tennessee and Virginia) highland creeces. Oldtimers called them creecy-greens.

Eula McGill
born Resaca, GA 1911
February 3, 1976 interview
Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Interview G-0040-1.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0040-1/G-0040-1.html

To some Appalachian farmers, it was simply an aggressive weed tree cluttering old fields. Others believed its wood could prevent chicken lice, and so used it to build chicken houses and chicken roosts. But sassafras’ most famous attribute has always been the healing properties of the springtime tea –a spring tonic- made from its roots.

The Cherokee people utilized sassafras tea to purify blood and for a variety of ailments, including skin diseases, rheumatism, and ague (the tree is sometimes called an ‘Ague Tree’). "The country people of Carolina crop these vines (Bigonia Crucigera) to pieces," said William Bartram in Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians food traditions, "together with china brier and sassafras roots, and boil them in their beer in the spring, for diet drink, in order to attenuate and purify the blood and juices." The Cherokee would also make a poultice to cleanse wounds and sores, while they’d steep the root bark to treatment diarrhea or for 'over-fatness.'

They emphasized that the tea should never be taken for more than a week at a time. They didn’t know about safrole, though they knew its long term effects. The bark of sassafras roots contains volatile oils, 80% of which is safrole. Commercially produced sassafras was pulled from the American market in the early 1960s after experiments showed that safrole caused liver cancer in rats and mice.

Early white mountain settlers, perhaps influenced by the vine/brier/sassafras concoction described above, made a beer by boiling young sassafras shoots in water, adding molasses and allowing the mash to ferment.

The varied leaf shapes are the Mitten Tree’s trademark—in fact, its Latin name was once Sassafras Varifolium. Today Sassafras Albidum ranges widely over the eastern United States (only two other species of sassafras exist elsewhere in the world: one in central mainland China, one in Taiwan).

‘White sassafras' grows along roadways in thick clusters, usually from three to six feet tall. It has roughly the same characteristics as ‘red sassafras,’ however the bark does not turn pink to red when the root is damaged.

The red variety is the species that is most prized. Generally found on hills and ridges, it sometimes grows in mountainous areas to a height of thirty or more feet. The American Forestry Association's National Register of Big Trees lists a 77-foot champion in Owensboro, KY.

According to H.L. Mencken's The American Language (1936), the word sassafras traces back to 1577 and is of Spanish origin, probably deriving from the Spanish term for saxifrage.

Native Americans in Virginia pointed out 'wynauk' to British settlers, and in 1603, a company was formed in Bristol, England to send two vessels to the New World, principally with the intention of bringing back cargoes of sassafras bark. Thus, sassafras was one of the first, if not the first, forest products to be exported from what is now the mid-Atlantic states.


sources: Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians food traditions, by William Bartram, 1789, From "Transaction of the American Ethnological Society," Vol. 3 Pt. 1. Extracts
everettarea.org/tales/v01/v01c30.htm
foodreference.com/html/artsassafras.html
inpaws.org/Marion%20Jackson%20Trees/Sassafras_albidum.pdf
The singular sassafras, by Henry Clepper, from "American Forests," American Forestry Assn 1989
http://ohiodnr.gov/Portals/18/publications/pdf/wild%20edible%20plants.pdf


sassafras spring+tonics Cherokee+herbs safrole mitten+tree wynauk appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history