There weren’t any doctors in Heber. If you got sick, the closest doctor at the time was either in Holbrook or in McNary. Both places were at least an hour away by car. As a result, I didn’t go to the doctor much. Mom became the doctor in our home and she used her experience to treat us for various ailments.
If we got a sore throat, Dad would “swab our throats” with Ironite which was something like Iodine but safe to use internally. It was also used to stop bleeding like Mecurochrome or Methiolate. We had a big bottle of Ironite in the cupboard. Dad would take a long piece of kindling and wrap cotton around one end and then dip it in the Ironite and then swab it around in the back of our throats. It usually did the trick.
For colds, it was lemon juice and honey along with Vicks Vaporub and “4-way Cold Tablets” and “Aspergum.” I don’t think I’d have lived to reach my twelfth birthday without Vicks. Mom would smear it all over my chest and neck and back and then wrap a flannel cloth around my throat. Sometimes she would heat the cloth on the stove in the front room before putting it around my throat. The fumes opened the sinuses and I guess helped in some way.
I had some problems with asthma when I was little. I think most of us boys had problems with it. Vard was probably the worst but Terry and I also had it. We learned to lay in certain positions that made it easier to breathe. It was no fun and, in fact, it was pretty scary when I couldn’t take a full breath. I don’t remember being sick a lot but I suppose I was sick about as much as most school age kids. I had all of the normal childhood diseases like measles, chickenpox, mumps, etc.
One of the techniques Mom used to help us recover more rapidly was probably related to psychology more than medicine but it worked. Mom would ask us what special thing we would like to have that would help us get well. Those were golden words. I don’t remember all the things I requested but usually it was something from the store that we never got to buy under normal circumstances. I remember one time I told her that if I could only have some onion flavored potato chips, I knew I would get well. I had never tasted, much less eaten, onion flavored potato chips but Mom got me a bag. I found out I really didn’t like them very much but I had to get well anyway. Sometimes it was “store bought ice cream,” other times it was pudding or pie. Whatever the request, Mom did her best to arrange for it and I am here to tell you that I recovered in every case so it must have worked.