From the book. Eanes Portrait of a Community by Linda Vance and Dorothy Depew.
Like all turn of the century, country people who lived far from doctors and hospitals, the residents of Eames relied upon home remedies to ward off and treat disease and sickness. A few in Eanes even indulged in practices which smacked of black magic, but most of the remedies used by area residents consisted of such commonsense cures as a homemade salves and poultices, tonics and teas made from herbs, berries and other natural healing agents.
As in most rural areas, it was the woman who doctored, nurtured and cared for the people in the community. Viola Marshall was one such woman, as were Rosa Delana and Aunt Cindy Jackson. Viola Marshall is remembered as one of the community’s foremost healers. She was often seen riding on her horse to visit a sick neighbor equipped only with a vast knowledge of home remedies, and she would go endless hours without sleep until the patient passed the crisis stage of the illness.
In one case, especially close to her, heart and hearth was required to call upon every ounce of her healing skills. It involved her new twin baby Girl’s Mildred and Clara, who were born in 1887. They were born prematurely and weighed only a little over one pound each. General wisdom believed that the tiny babies could live no more than a few hours or days, but Viola fed them frequently with an eyedropper filled with goat’s milk. For more than a month she stayed in the ranch house close to her babies, keeping them warm and nourishing them with the rich goat’s milk in the dropper. Because of her great determination and refusal to abandon them. The two girls survived and lived long, healthy lives.
For years, Aunt Cindy Jackson, who lived in the black settlement underneath Belle Hill, served as midwife to both white and black families in the area aided by her daughter Nancy, she delivered all of the Tucker and the Short children, all eight of Jess and Lizzie Plumley Teague’s children and eight of Edna and Lytton Pierce’s nine children.
For most of the births, Mrs Jackson charged $15. After the baby was born, a doctor would arrive with an infant scale to weigh the baby and check on the mother and child. He charged $30. For all of her births, Mrs. Pierce recalls that she never was in a hospital, never had anesthesia or drugs for the pain, during most of the births, she had help from relatives and the midwife.
Mrs Pierce remembers her last child. He weighed only 2 1/2 pounds. The doctor told her that if she could keep him alive three days, he would live. ”So I put his head downhill in an apple box and used whiskey toddy, a mixture of whiskey, sugar and water in an eye dropper. To revive him during fainting spells. He was then fed powdered milk for three months before graduating to the breast. Today he is a big, healthy man.”
Rosa Delana. Was another Eames woman who doctored the sick. She was also the local dentist for those who couldn’t afford to seek care in Austin, and she was a creative healer in many other ways. To treat a badly inflamed and rotten tooth, she would do the following. First she would rub oak ashes, which were rich in tannic acid, onto the sore gums around the infected tooth. Then she would tie Mccord’s heavy gage thread around the infected tooth and let the string hang out of the patient’s mouth. The patient would be sent home with a packet of oak ashes and instructions to periodically rub the gums and tooth with the ashes. Followed by a gentle tug on the string. After several days of rubbing and tugging the tooth would usually come out or at least would be very loose and then Rosa would take a special pair of needlenosed pliers and pull the infected tooth.
