
ABLEnews Extra

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                         Taste of Tradition                           

"Glenwood, WV--Catfish Gray's days are filled with shaving slippery elm
roots, mixing sassafras and ginseng, tucking in his hernias, and meeting
people from miles around who ask him about herbs.

His one-room cabin may be hard to reach high above the Ohio River, but
it's not hard to spot. It's the one with the cardboard-box facade.

"Give me five minutes!" he said to a recent knock on his door.

Clarence "Catfish" Gray, 76, is a purveyor of folkloric medicine passed
down orally from generation to generation. 

Gray's cabin, rawboned frame, nasal country accent reminiscent of Walter
Brennan, and a belief in tradition dating back to the Cherokees, makes
him a throwback to a time when pioneers settled the Appalachian
Mountains. 

Until well into the 20th century, herbal medicine was preferred by
millions of rural people who had no doctor or remained suspicious of
doctors because of their cupping bleeding past, according to Appalachian
folklorist Barbara Duncan of Franklin, NC.

"It's a way of living closer to nature that appeals to many people. It's
part of traditional cultural values. People use it as an alternative to
Western scientific medicine," she said.

"The point is to stay well and feel good. Western medicine is really good
at dealing with traumas and drastic intervention," she said. 

Penn State University medical folklorist David Hufford said Appalachian
medicine men aren't a dying breed, "but they are changing."

"Traditions always having been changing," Hufford said. "There are more
people using herbal medicine today than 75 years ago. The health food
stores today are, in many respects, a modern popular equivalent of the
herbal traditionalists." 

Many drugs on pharmacy shelves come from herbal derivatives or
synthetics, including aspirin, digitalis, quinine, and bloodroot, the
latter of which is used as a plaque remover in toothpaste, Duncan said.

"Over 50% of our prescription drugs come from plant sources," she said.
'It's easier to control the dosage when it's synthesized."

Gray isn't shy. But Duncan said many herbalists are.

"They keep an extremely low profile. One of the reasons is because of the
fear of practicing medicine without a license," she said.

Folk medicine is not an easy way to make a living, but then Gray has been
interviewed by Johnny Carson and the morning network news shows. 

"I failed the second year of fourth grade with 14 F's. Teacher told me to
quit school 'cause I couldn't learn anything, so I had to learn the hard
way," he said.

Gray, true to his self-treating ways, manipulates his hernia back into
place whenever it slips.

"It's like somebody cutting open your belly with a sword," he said. "And
the next day they cut it open again, and the next day. Pretty soon you
get used to it."

Gray's mother, a child of three generations of Appalachian herb
practitioners, taught him that certain herbs have certain medicinal
powers.

But he gave herbs little though as he grew up along the Ohio River.
Instead, he worked in glass and chemical plants that line the river
between Huntington and Wheeling. 

During the 1950s, a disabling injury at a construction site left him to
sell wildflowers at a farmers' market in Huntington. That's when his
customers began asking for medicinal herbs. God played a part, too.

"I mind God, and He knows everybody, and He makes me know everybody. And
He's the one who makes me to know all about these herbs. He also makes me
know how to keep out of trouble, too," he said.

The 12- by 20-foot room in his cabin is part workshop, part gallery. His
walls are covered with letters of thanks and testimonials, some of which
he recites from memory at an auctioneer's clip.

[Herbalist Offers Taste of Appalachian Tradition, Martinsburg Journal,
5/2/94] 

CURE Comment: As an Appalachian--folk NOT folklorist--who appreciates the
benefits of herbal remedies, practiced by my uncle in his native
Luxembourg, I think it is somewhat disingenuous to ignore the fact that
doctors are still largely unavailable to many parts of West Virginia and
other poor and remote rural communities and hamlets--and the choice that
was made was not made by country folk. 

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