Saga of the Sanpitch Volume 17, 1985 - Sanpete County

Candace had the power to make people feel better just to have her with them. When she was so sick
she couldn't go, they would plead, "Oh, Aunt Candace. If you will just come and sit with me, it'll help."
Her brother, too, was noted for his healing powers. It was said that he could stop the flow of blood. At
one time he was called on to help a man who was bleeding profusely. He couldn't go, but he told his caller,
"You go. And when you get there, he'll be all right."
He could mesmerize snakes, making them docile and harmless. Soon after Joseph's death, baby Bess
was sitting on the floor when her mother entered the room. Glancing at her baby, Candace was startled to see
a snake coiled in the infant's lap. Terrified, she grabbed her child; the snake fell to the floor„ Candace's brother
stepped out from a hiding place, chuckling. Candace, finding nothing amusing about the incident, "gave him
the very old dickens" and warned him never to do such a thing again.
Candace's daughter, May,7 also had a reputation for being a healer. Whenever May visited her sister,
Anne,8 in Mt. Pleasant, everyone they knew "had to have a treatment." Out came Anne's ironing board for the
"patient" to lie on while Nay proceeded,, Hay also made a salve, known by the family as "Aunt May's green
salve," with which she reportedly healed many. The story is told of one fellow who had been wounded during
World War I. The wounds simply wouldn't heal, regardless of what the doctors tried, and they were about to
give up. But May's green salve healed him.
And May was a spiritualist, and even attended seances. She had a little Indian spirit she called Bluebell.
Whenever May was down in the dumps, she called for Bluebell to talk with her. She gave her great-nieces and
nephews spirits to talk with when they were lonely or bored.
May liked alfalfa and barley teas. When she came to Mt. Pleasant to visit, she always went away with
her year's supply of alfalfa and barley straw. She was a great believer in health foods and kept her body trim
and firm., She was a woman born before her time, a woman who would have been right at home among the
current food faddists and physical fitness proponents.
Anne, too, was a healer of sorts, though most of her healing was done through the use of herbs and
readily available ingredients,, She relied on such old standbys as castor oil and cod liver oil. Castor oil was
given to the children when they got sick. Through bribery and cajolery they were usually won over to taking
the foul-smelling/foultasting stuff. But it often didn't do the patient much good; it came back up before it got
down. "Scott's Emulsion" was not a favorite remedy as far as Anne's children were concerned either, though
today there is a rebirth in the use of cod liver oil as a remedy for arthritis and other ailments„ It may be
purchased in a variety of flavors, not the "horrible-tasting stuff" Anne's children took.
A more appealing remedy was "onion syrup." Whenever a family member had a cold, Anne got a
large onion, sliced it into a bowl, and sprinkled a little sugar over it. When set on the warming oven for several
days, a syrup formed: juice from the onion mixed with the sugar. Though this was a remedy used by many
early settlers in Utah, there are those today who have never heard of it.
Lung colds and pneumonia had one thing in common Anne always made mustard plasters to treat
them. A little dry mustard mixed with flour and water, perhaps a bit of sugar, was spread on a cloth, topped
with another cloth, and placed either on the chest or the back of the patient. Oil was first rubbed on the skin
to keep it from blistering. When Anne's son, Willis, 9 was battling pneumonia in 1934--the year before the first
"miracle drugs" made pneumonia just a "bad cold"--Anne knew her mustard plaster would cure him. Although
she felt the doctor silently laughed at her for wanting to use a mustard plaster, she didn't feel the doctor was
any more knowledgeable than she. Anne certainly wasn't the only resident of Mt. Pleasant to believe in
mustard plasters for illnesses involving the lungs.
Perhaps the most unusual remedy used by the Wilcox family was angleworm oil. When Anne, being ~
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