Books about Ukrainians: Baba’s Kitchen Medicines
Folk Remedies of Ukrainian Settlers in Western Canada
Books about ethnobotany have always interested me, likely because I chose a career identifying plants and using the data to create large scale land management plans for community pastures. I also have a keen interest in gardening and have grown copious amounts flowers and vegetables in my lifetime. Might these “plant geek” characteristics be part of my Ukrainian heritage?
For centuries, Ukrainians relied on plant-based home remedies practised through trial and error. Experimentation plus repetition eventually created repeatable results. Many Ukrainian immigrants never saw a professionally trained doctor until they disembarked passenger boats in Canada and were inspected by doctors at the Immigration Halls. Even after they came to Canada, many could still not afford to see a real doctor since doctors and hospitals were often either unavailable or too expensive to pay for.
Michael Mucz, author, has Ukrainian family roots, he came to Canada with his parents from Galicia as a Displaced Person after World War II. Now retired, he taught university level botany and ecology at the University of Alberta, Camrose Campus, Canada. Baba’s Kitchen Medicines is the result of his many years of passionate research on Ukrainian-Canadian folk history, primarily in east central Alberta.
What makes Baba’s Kitchen Medicines special is Mucz’s recorded interviews with over 200 second generation Ukrainian Canadians. Seventy percent of the participants were women, while the average age of all participants was 81 years. All of Mucz’s interview audiotapes, most of which lasted one to two hours, were deposited in the Provincial Archives of Alberta for other researchers to use. What an ethnobotany treasure! I found the stories outlined throughout the book to be my favorite part.
Mucz interviewed many people who said that when medical doctors were unsuccessful in treating a patient, often a traditional healer could treat the person.
Canada received many immigrants from the provinces of Galicia and Bukovina. (My own family was from Galicia). Mucz writes that Ukrainians living in Bukovina, a less-developed region of Ukraine, practised a more diverse and native plant-based folk medicine, while those from Galicia, a more developed region, relied more on the use of cultivated plant materials and local household products in their remedies.
Women were the primary health care providers and their knowledge was readily shared with family and friends. Older women were the ones who typically knew the most. Midwives assisted with pregnancies and childbirth and performed most of the remedies.
Homesteading required endless physical exertion and stressful times, including isolation and homesickness. Spiritual healers might use prayer and pour wax into holy water that was held over the patient’s head. Then the pattern of the concoction would be “read” by the healer. This process was used to treat emotional problems. Herbs, prayers and invocations might be used; these spiritual healers were widely used and known.
One important specialized traditional healer was the bonesetter. They treated dislocations and broken bones in both humans and animals. They would also pull teeth. Bonesetters were often men who had completed their compulsory three years of service in the Austro-Hungarian Army before immigrating here.
Many Ukrainians, including my grandmother, produced whiskey or homebrew in their homes for use as medicine. This practise was illegal but widespread in Ukrainian communities. Often these products would be distilled twice to make a medicinal-quality alcohol.
Mucz writes that it became quickly evident in households where garlic and homebrew were regularly used, that there were fewer and less severe incidences of Spanish flu. (Incidentally, cloth masks were also widely used in Canada to help prevent spread of the disease).
To better evaluate the various home remedies and treatments, Mucz calculated a Treatment Value (or TV), which allowed him to identify the most widely used treatments and materials used. The higher the TV, the more important its use in traditional healing. A few practices with high TV’s included:
-homebrew: cold and flu, internal pain, toothaches, insomnia, tonic, muscle pain, burns, skin conditions, cuts, inflamed tonsils, nervousness, diarrhea;
-kerosene: head lice, intestinal worms, chest congestion, frozen skin, ringworm, toothache;
-cow’s milk: cold and flu, boils, infections, sore throats, cuts, puncture wounds, constipation, poisoning;
-pork fat: chapped skin, burns, open cuts, cold and flu, chicken pox;
-wormwood: internal pain, intestinal worms, diabetes, urinary problems, cancer, headache, menstrual pain, poisoning, and
-garlic: cold and flu, chest congestion, circulatory problems, lack of appetite, fatigue, headache, toothache, worms, tonic, nasal congestion.
Mucz’s book contains numerous interesting photos of immigrants and medicinal plants, it also contains useful tables outlining the TV’s and treatments. I highly recommend Baba’s Kitchen Medicines, even if only for the Ukrainian folklore it contains. “Plant geeks” and readers interested in a wide range of home remedies will find it especially interesting. Indeed, I found lots of useful information on Ukrainian immigrant culture that helped fill in the stories and scenes in my upcoming historical novel outlining my grandparent’s immigrant experience. It will be published later this year.
Baba’s Kitchen Medicines was published in 2012 by The University of Alberta Press. It is available from Amazon or independent bookstores.
