Diane Young

Tried and True Remedies

As told by Feona Sawden to Diane Malchoff

Nausak is the plants we get from the marshy places. We get the roots and we use them for congested lungs if you have a bad cold.

The way I found out that it really works is, my husband had a real bad cold when we moved down here. My mother made him a tea out of the Nausak roots. She probably used about 4 or 5 of the 5” long roots and boiled them as tea. He drank that for a couple of days and his congested lung started getting better. He really thinks a lot of those roots as cold remedies.

We usually get them from up the bay. There is some around this area right in Duncan Slough but I’m not sure exactly where they are. What we do is dig maybe three inches deep or less. You just dig as far as you can. What we were told was whenever we take roots out we put a little paper there and that is a way of paying for taking something out of the ground.

The way to preserve them for winter is to dry them and keep them open after they are really dried up. Then you store them away in a dry place. Probably the best thing to do is freeze them. Then you can use them all winter long. Probably if you have enough you can use them as long as they last.

The tree sap is another one that we used to use for our colds. The tree sap that gets really thick usually gets yellow, or when it gets pinkish it tastes better. But you can use whichever one you can get off a tree. You just put it in your mouth and chew it like gum. It can last a long time. Then you swallow the juice you get out of it. It soothes the throat and makes you cough up whatever mucus you have in there.

Then there’s also another one for colds that I’ve heard about. You take the bark off of the tree. Then inside the tree you get the inner part of the bark. You scrape that off and you boil it maybe about 5 – 15 minutes. You use that as tea when you have a really badly congested lung. It’s probably good for the sinuses too.

Here’s a toothache remedy that my uncle told me about. They used to use the natural roots. They would take a root and hammer it just enough to put where the toothache is. Then put a hot pack over that and bite into it. You can also put it around the inside of the gum and the lip. Put that in and then put a hot pack there. Always have it hot, as hot as you can stand it. They used to say that cured the toothache. Whether it deadened it or drew out the pus that was giving the tooth problems, I’m not sure.

This is another one my uncle told me about. It is about earaches. They used to warm up seal oil, about a teaspoon of seal oil. Get it warm to the touch. You pour that in the ear and let it stay in for 15 minutes at the most. Then you turn the head around and let it drain out. That was the remedy for earaches. You use rendered seal oil, not the cooked seal oil.

Volume 2