From "The Book Escalante Story", Medical Services, 1875 - 1964 p 223.

Every pioneer wife and mother had her supply of home medicines and her favorite remedies. The most universal of these was doubtless olive oil, called sweet oil, sacred for use in anointing and also used as an ointment and an internal medicine, either alone or in combination with other ingredients. Bruises and sprains were bathed in hot salt water and sagebrush tea.

The antiseptic qualities of table salt were employed for infections and in fresh cuts as a preventative of infection. Other antiseptics used on both man and beast were turpentine and coal-oil.

Among spring tonics was the dominant sulfur and molasses and also such bitters as teas made of peach-tree leaves, quaking-aspen bark, hops, and even sage brush. Then there was tea made from larb or urva-ursa, catnip, spearmint, and peppermint. These last were considered good for sick stomachs, as were black and green tea.

Poultices were made from bread and milk, crushed onion, crushed burdock leaves and sugar, and soft pine gum.

Cough remedies were made from honey and horehound. Ginger tea or cayenne in cream with hot foot baths were standard for colds.

Lobelia was considered a good stimulant and also, strangely, as a relaxing agent for tense muscles as in child-birth.

For stimulating the kidneys, Harlem oil was widely used. Milder diuretics were teas made from parsley, pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, dandelion, and juniper berries.

Salves largely used mutton tallow as a base. Probably the most famous salve made in Escalante was Elizabeth Griffin's salve made from secret formula given her by Patriarch John Smith, son of Hyrum Smith, the Prophet's brother. Among its ingredients were butter and pine gum. It had cured a chronic infection in Elizabeth's foot and was remarkably effective in drawing out all sorts of infectious poisons.

Indian women recommended some of these wild herbs and barks to the pioneers. One of their favorites, pennroyal, used as a tea for women's ailments, was commonly called "squaw medicine."