A long-treasured but forgotten classic of folk healing, with an introduction and commentary by the author ofBackwoods Witchcraft and Doctoring the Devil.
Ossman & Steel’s Guide to Health or Household Instructor(its original title) is a collection of spells, remedies, and charms. The book draws from the old Pennsylvania Dutch and German powwow healing practices that in turn helped shape Appalachian folk healing, conjure, rootwork, and many folk healing traditions in America. Jake Richards, author ofBackwoods WitchcraftandDoctoring the Devil, puts these remedies in context, with practical advice for modern-day “backwoods” healers interested to use them today.
The first part contains spells and charms for healing wounds, styes, broken bones, maladies, and illnesses of all sorts. The second part includes other folk remedies using ingredients based on sympathetic reasoning, including sulfuric acid, gunpowder, or other substances for swelling, toothache, headache, and so on. These remedies are presented here for historic interest, to help better understand how folk medicine evolved in America.
It is Jake Richard’s hope that reintroducing this work will reestablish its position as a useful household helper in the library of every witch or country healer.
holds his Appalachian-Melungeon heritage close to his blood and bones. His family heritage in Appalachia goes back generations; they have lived in southwest Virginia, east Tennessee, and the western Carolinas for a good four hundred years. He spent most of his childhood at his great-grandmother’s house on Big Ridge in North Carolina, wading the waters of the Watauga and traipsing the mountains by his ancestral home on the ridge. “My family,” Jake writes, “always spoke of the old wives’ tales and folk remedies. They were mountain peopll3¨
![Ossman Steel's Classic Household Guide to Appalachian Folk Healing: A Collection of Old-Time Remedies, Charms, and Spells [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/4/6/5/2_5369065.jpg "Ossman Steel's Classic Household Guide to Appalachian Folk Healing: A Collection of Old-Time Remedies, Charms, and Spells [Paperback]")