Black salve and vinegar: home remedies

Want to feel better? Try a little mutton tallow, baking soda or vinegar. Once each was an ingredient in my family’s medicine cabinet.
The baking soda, moistened with water was for bee stings. If it didn’t cure the sting at least it harmlessly stopped the tears. As the baking soda dried it caked and fell off, leaving a trail of white powder.
My family’s cure for sunburns cured me from every working on my tan. While visiting my cousins, I copied the older sisters sunbathing. When my parents came for me and saw my burn, they immediately asked to borrow my aunt’s vinegar.
By the time my mother finished baptizing me in vinegar, I was stinging all over. I looked like a cooked lobster and smelled like a pickle. I was NOT happy.
My mom used to say, “The Hibbards swore by vinegar to prevent a sunburn from blistering … the kids just swore.” I thought it was a family remedy until I met Linda Brewster in El Dorado. She knew all about the invigorating aroma and touch of vinegar on sunburns.
The ultimate healing potion of the Hibbard family, the potion to be pulled out for cuts, scrapes, infected wounds or boils was Black Salve. My grandmother made it in her kitchen. We never knew everything that was in it until after she died.
We found the recipe among her important papers, written down in a strong, old fashioned script. As I read the list of ingredients, I wondered how it cleared up infections. Black Salve requires a quarter pound of beeswax, a half pound of butter and a pound of mutton tallow. I wonder where my grandmother, wife of a dairy farmer, found that. No one in the area had sheep.
I think I could find the pint of pine tar, someplace – maybe at a building supply store. They probably scraped the chimney for the tablespoon of soot, although I could get the pour stuff from Columbian Chemical. But how would I know if I had one tablespoon of real chalk or if I just had some chap imitation?
All of the above is melted together in a granite pan with a tablespoon each of sulfur, salt and pepper. I doubt that they improved the taste, the certainly did not improve the smell.
After it melts together, the recipe says to stir until cold and pour in jars. I think it must mean when it has cooled a bit. When the salve is cool, it does not pour. It is a thick, black, sticky mess with a rich odor that leaves a slight stain around any wound it covers.
There’s nothing like black salve smeared on a pristine white Band-Aid pad to cure an infected cut. It really worked too. My aunt, a registered nurse said it was a good poultice. Although she had a jar in her cabinet, I noticed she used anti-biotic cram on my son’s cut.
After Grandma died, we sounded like we had found a lost treasure when we found the recipe, but no one fought over the last jar in her cabinet. And no one has made any.
I have the recipe now. The paper is stained with use and tearing on the creases. The ink is legible but fading and the family tradition is slowly but surely replace with modern, convenient products.