Looking at the past is not always a pleasant activity. Some people prefer selective sideswipes with history through disconnected factoids or self-indulgent atmospheres. It's too easy to deny witnessing the head-on crash that comes from understanding things in a broader context.

My wife once bought some old patent medicine bottles. The paper labels, still glued on, had orange sunrays bursting across at an angle to highlight the word “laudanum.” These bottles, the auctioneer said, were part of a much larger amount stashed long ago in a Coburn addict's attic. Cheaper, off-beat items, such as these bottles, can give a more realistic and relevant appreciation of the everyday past than the “warm fuzzies” that envelop us while “antiquing” for quilts and furniture.

Media images of old-time medical practitioners often conjure up memories of Gunsmoke’s Doc. He was always peddling something. It was usually an unwanted snippet of conscience or some medicine to save Our Her’'s body and soul. But what was actually in Doc’s little black bag?

Humans have always shared ways to treat their physical aches and psychic pains. Materia Medica handbooks from China to Arabia spread the latest botanical knowledge. Everything - from mustard to mushrooms - was said to help. Relief sometimes came from drinking brewed or distilled alcohol. Promoters of spiritual comfort also hitchhiked along history's highway by invoking supernatural powers.

The original people in this hemisphere had a relatively higher standard of medical practice than their European contemporaries. Native American willow bark soup, for example, contained salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin. Another common cure-all was to smear hot animal fats and aromatic herbs over the body.

The humid confines of the Native American sweat lodge worked well for most afflictions, but this treatment was disastrous for smallpox victims. This disease cleared the Susquehanna’s watershed of its first inhabitants shortly before Penn founded his “peaceable kingdom.”

Trained medical doctors in the early days, though rare, were just that in name only. John Blair Linn reports that Penns Valley's first physician, William Westhoven, was convicted in 1802, paid a dollar fine, and spent two days in jail....for robbing graves in Penn Hall. Was Westhoven”s motive for financial gain? Professional development? Linn doesn”t say.

True to the spirit of unregulated commerce, open wallets rationalize a lot. Although there was little outrage over killing Indians, Americans had no problem attributing superior medical powers to these people. Bogus “snake oils” and “Indian compounds” flooded the market. Pennsylvania Germans borrowed the Algonquin word “pow-wow” to give their treatments legitimacy. “Pow-wow”, or “braucherei,” was a form of faith healing. (“Hexerei,” in contrast, was the devil’s work.) Until the late 1950s, a pow-wow just west of Spring Mills was still “laying on hands” to remove skin warts.

But pow-wows used to promise much more. In the early 1800s, Johann Georg Hohman published Der Lang-Verborgene Freund, an all-purpose digest of ancient remedies and folk beliefs.

Want to stop hair growth? Burn a frog and apply a paste made from the ashes.

Kids have whooping cough? Push them through a blackberry bush three times.

Suffering from hysteria and the sniffles? Run your fingers through your toes, hold them up to your nose, and take a good whiff. (Lest one doubts its effectiveness, Hohman reassured his readers, “Es wird gewiss helfen - It's sure to help.”)

Alcohol, cocaine, and morphine became the drugs of choice after the Civil War. The Millheim Journal splashed testimonials all over its front pages to push the latest tonics and bitters.

Historian Norman Clark notes that from 1840 until 1890, average American per capita intake of opiates had quadrupled. Much of it came from drinking laudanum, a potent, over-the-counter mixture of alcohol and opium. Prescriptions didn’t exist. Grandmothers, war amputees, and teething babies all had to have their “little nip” before bedtime.

Overwhelmed and undertrained doctors faced a universal barrage of diseases. Infant mortality rates were so high that newspaper editors didn't bother noting blessed events until well after the First World War Unmanaged horse manure, human sewage, and dead animals contaminated springs, wells, and creeks to set off typhoid and cholera epidemics. Diphtheria killed half a dozen children in Millheim alone during the nineteenth century's final summer. Public sanitation, education, and accessible facilities became more effective long-term solutions than quarantines.

One of the finest chapters in Penns Valley's history came through the estate of Norman and Velda Rice. These retired Penn State janitors were part of a generation that knew first-hand the importance of regional medical care. Their substantial bequest helped pay for our medical center's recent expansion. This legacy is one of the brightest jewels in our community's crown.

Too much of our present is taken for granted when we place the past on a shaky pedestal. Objects, lives and events are meaningless if we can't pull out and pass on their stories, warts and all.

Bruce Teeple is a free-lance writer, speaker and local historian and is writing a book about Prince Farrington. He lives in Aaronsburg, Centre County and can be reached at mongopawn44@hotmail.com