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Lee Pitts: Alternative medicine

If you want to live a long time I have some good advice for you. Stay away from doctors. Before health insurance was invented most people did just fine living on prunes and proverbs. No prescriptions. With this in mind I have collected the following cowboy cures and home remedies.

Stomach Ailments – Cinnamon is said to cure vomiting, baking soda will aid indigestion and the singed hair of a black dog in mother’s milk will cure cramps.

Rheumatism – Mix vinegar and live fire ants in an empty whiskey bottle and apply lavishly to the skin. If this doesn’t work take a swig of the mixture. Drinking vinegar also is said to work for hiccups, only leave the fire ants out.



Toothache – Remove the skin off the frog of a horse’s front foot (it must be a front foot). Char the skin over an open flame and apply it to the tooth.

Rattlesnake Bite – If you get bit by a rattler on an arm or leg, kill a cow and slit open its gut and stick the bitten appendage into the middle of the cow’s guts and leave it there for awhile. This draws the poison out of your system. However, when you consider that a good cow may be worth more than you are, you may want to just try crushing a Texas milkweed plant and applying the milk to the bite. You still might die but your heirs will at least have the live cow to fight over.



Corns – This sounds a little drastic but I was told by my friend Nita Lowry one time about a friend of hers who actually chopped off his toe afflicted with a bad corn with a ball peen hammer and a chisel. If you follow this advice refer to the following treatment.

Gangrene – If you contract gangrene obtain a rubber inner tube and and pack it with fresh cow manure. Wrap the inner tube around the skin as a poultice.

Whooping Cough – Drink mare’s milk.

Pneumonia – Apply a poultice to the chest of hot cabbage leaves and vinegar.

Apply a big fat juicy beefsteak and pick on somebody your own size.

Hair Loss – Rub the leaves of the sotol plant vigorously on your scalp. It’s a lot cheaper than Rogaine and any hair that grows will be all natural and organic.

Hay Fever – If you are having wheezing fits and don’t have enough air to blow out a candle put some coffee grounds in a pipe and smoke them.

Insect Bite – Hold a chaw of freshly chewed tobacco on the sting area. The sting of the tobacco will supposedly take your mind off the other sting.

External Parasites – This trick comes from watching a fox get rid of fleas. Put a wood chip in your mouth and slowly walk naked into a lake. As you get deeper in the water the bugs will keep crawling up your body to avoid the water. When only your mouth is above water all the bugs will hop on to the wood chip. Just drop the chip into the water and get out of the lake. Remembering you are naked, of course.

Coma – Bury the foot of a badger under the patient’s bed. Hey, it can’t hurt and it probably works just as good as what they do for you in hospitals. And it’s a LOT cheaper!

Everything Else – Whiskey. It must be strong whiskey, strong enough to kill any germs. You wouldn’t want to just antagonize them now, would you?

These cures are said to work for man or beast. But I don’t recommend this last tetanus cure for humans. The instructions are to drive two dozen nails through a board in three rows so that their sharp points stick out about a half inch. Then lay the board on the horses forehead and hit the board with a hammer. The air holes thus created by the sharp nails are said to relieve the intense heat created by tetanus.

Sometimes don’t you wonder just how these cures were ever invented in the first place?

Lee Pitts