Until the day she died a year and a half ago, my dear mother was as modern as tomorrow. She kept abreast of current politics, science, literature, religion, and was one of the smartest dressers that I have ever met. Yet in one way she was very old-fashioned. My mother had very little use for drug stores and their contents. She was patent medicines worst enemy. She wasn't a naturalist, but she didn't believe in natures oldest remedies. For example, until the day she died she could disappear into the basement and come up with a can of mutton tallow for chapped hands. I never cease to be amazed at this. You tell me where would a person get mutton tallow in this day and age. My mother claimed there was nothing better for chapped hands, that horrible smell notwithstanding. Goose grease was another favorite remedy she was always ready with and strange as it may seem, it was always fresh. Where would she get goose grease? There was another pip she brought out every spring time. It was either to “cool” your blood, or "thin" your blood. I can't remember which. It was called sulfur and molasses. Now molasses you can buy in the store, but it isn't that black tar stuff my mother used to mix with that dried yellow sulfur. This had to be the foulest tasting mixture I ever ate in my life. I tried to assure my mother for years that there wasn't a disease in the world I wouldn’t rather have, than her concoction of sulfur and molasses. On the shelf in the pantry there was always a bag of what appeared to be dried willow leaves. They weren't. They were senna leaves and from these my mother made senna tea. She brought up a pot of this every now and then, though for what purpose I fail to remember. Those are just a few of my mothers secret weapons against disease. Though her medicines were from the dark ages, she was a woman of her time, undoubtedly the sweetest most wonderful person I'll ever know. I miss her very much.
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