Browse:Button Willow or Button Bush (Volume 1, entries 1147)
Button Willow or Button Bush
Volume 1, entries 1147. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → FOLK MEDICINE → CURE AND PROTECTION. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 1147
Well, there's a little willow that grows about that big [demonstrates height] and it spreads all out - it's called button willow. [Cephalanthus occidentalis L. Probably button bush - unrelated to true willows.] (It grows about four or five feet tall?) That's all.
(Grows by the river? Water?)
Yes, sir, many thousands of 'em - look white - looks like a stone mountain flower when you off a distance - only this one is white. But when you get to it, ain't nothing to it - it ain't no flower. You take that and you get two or three limbs and break it up - small enough to get it into a vessel and boil it in a gallon of water down to a half gallon of water. And you kin take that and get you some grain alcohol and put you - well in that quart of water you put in about a half of a half pint and you sweeten it. You take a half of a half of a pint of grain alcohol, you understand, and you pour that into that half a gallon of button-willow water that you boil down, and then you sweeten it. And then you put you about - well, somewhere around about two tablespoonsful of sweet spirits of niter into that, and you let her take a tablespoonful of it about every three and a half hours. And them chills is going to leave her. Same thing with the typhoid fever. Hit'll sweat her and hit'll work her just the same as any other kind of medicine or purgative medicine that you kin give her - something like them - pills or calomel or something like that. Hit'll clean her system up ~ do away with those chills - yes, sir.