PUBLICATIONS RELATED 1964 FNS "Yarb Lore in the Kentucky Mountains"

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 18: PUBLICATIONS RELATED
Frontier Nursing Service Reprint for PMSS
Frontier Nursing Service Quarterly Bulletin
Vol. XXXIX, Winter 1964, No. 3
“Yarb Lore In The Kentucky Mountains”
Mrs. Noel Rawnsley
Miss Leila Kirtland
Mrs. Belle Morgan
Dorcas Wilson Cornett

VII 65 Life & Work. 40th Anniversary. “Mrs. Mary Breckinridge.” [65_events-visitors_010.jpg]

TAGS: Quarterly Frontier Nursing Service Bulletin, Frontier Nursing Service, Mary Breckinridge, Katherine Pettit, health issues of eastern Kentuckians, drawings by Mrs. Noel Rawnsley and Miss Leila Kirtland, yarbs, Miss Belle Morgan, Dorcas Wilson Cornett, medicinal plants

PUBLICATIONS RELATED 1964 FNS “Yarb Lore in the Kentucky Mountains”

The following is a reprint of an article in the Winter 1964, No. 3, issue of the Quarterly Frontier Nursing Service Bulletin, received by Pine Mountain Settlement School from the Frontier Nursing Service. The article. written by Mary Breckinridge, was originally published, in part, in the Summer 1941 issue of the Bulletin.

Mary Breckinridge, a long-time friend of Pine Mountain Settlement School Founder and Director, Katherine Pettit, and of many other staff members at Pine Mountain, maintained a supportive role in the early years of the School.

Both Mary Breckinridge, founder of the Frontier Nursing Service in Leslie County in Eastern Kentucky and Katherine Pettit, founder of Pine Mountain Settlement School in the adjoining county of Harlan, shared a fierce devotion to the medical health of the people in Eastern Kentucky. Katherine Pettit integrated her medical interests into the educational institution of Pine Mountain Settlement School. Mary Breckinridge, several years later, focused her energy directly on the health issues of the region in her creation of the Frontier Nursing Service in adjoining Leslie County. The combined interests of the two women in the health of the people of the region was an extraordinary endeavor. Pettit integrated medical services into the educational planning of the School at Pine Mountain and eventually in the two satellite operations they managed at nearby Line Fork Settlement and Big Laurel Medical Settlement, Breckinridge’s medical interests were more focused. She aimed to specifically address child birth practices and rampant diseases such as trachoma, and malnutrition.

Breckinridge wrote in the forward to this special offering:

“We published in the Summer 1941 issue of the Bulletin, eight of Mrs. Rawnsley’s and Miss Kirtland’s drawings, made from zinc etchings after they were reduced in size.

We intended to carry on with this series of yarbs but it was crowded out during the war years. In the Summer 1946 Bulletin, we did go back to the yarbs again. We printed the legends on eight additional yarbs with sketches by Mrs. Rawnsley and Miss Kirtland.” [Reproduced here.]

TRANSCRIPTION

P. 003

QUARTERLY BULLETIN 3

YARB LORE IN THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS

“Her qualifications . . . were . . . some skill
in yarbs, as she called her simples.”

Kingsley, Westward Ho.

In our Summer bulletin of 1941, we wrote as follows:

“For years it has been our dream to gather together the traditions of the Kentucky mountains about the medicinal uses of wild herbs or yarbs. That we have now begun this fascinating bit of exploration is due to our good fortune in having a visit this spring from an English artist, Mrs. Noel Rawnsley, who was as interested in drawing from nature the various plants as we were in collecting the legends. During the summer an American artist, Miss Leila Kirtland who has lived for many years in Japan, came to visit us and carried on with the sketches. For the local names of the yarbs and their medicinal uses we are indebted to our friend at Wendover, Mrs. Belle Morgan, who used them in raising her own family just as she had been taught by her mother before her. Mrs. Morgan’s mother, Dorcas Wilson, was born in the Kentucky mountains in 1838. She married Arch Cornett and died in 1913 at the age of seventy-five. The medicinal use of the yarbs is widespread among the Kentucky mountaineers, and the source of our yarb tradition is unimpeachable . . . .

“All of the yarbs in the collection are wild. It seems useless to us to include such tame yarbs as horehound, which are indeed used medicinally in the Kentucky mountains but which are found in every herbal. It should be noted that not all of the yarbs are plants. We are including every wild growing thing that is used medicinally whether tree, vine, shrub or plant. Our object is to preserve from extinction the Kentucky mountain name and medicinal uses of the wild things.” [Notation in bottom margin: “582 F 12956”]

P. 004

QUARTERLY BULLETIN 4

We published in the Summer 1941 issue of the Bulletin, eight of Mrs. Rawnsley’s and Miss Kirtland’s drawings, made from zinc etchings after they were reduced in size.

We intended to carry on with this series of yarbs but it was crowded out during the war years. In the Summer 1946 Bulletin, we did go back to the yarbs again. We printed the legends on eight additional yarbs with sketches by Mrs. Rawnsley and Miss Kirtland.

In this issue of the Bulletin we have republished the sixteen original sketches and legends and added to them the remaining unprinted nine of the original collection. With them is included a sketch of the Pleurisy Root by Vanda Summers, with Mrs. Morgan’s description of its medicinal uses. For Solomon’s Seal the medicinal uses are given as told us by Mr. Andy Barger of Brutus.

We did not intend to let this work drop for a long span of nearly eighteen years. But drop it we did because of many pressures from many other things. What has led us to take it up again has been inquiries from various sources about the wild yarbs native to the Kentucky mountains.

[Signed] Mary Breckinridge
Editor

Pp. 005 through 017 Drawings and legends for the following.
(Legends include Description, Date of Sketch, Where Found, Part Used, and How Used)

005 Heart Leaf and Spicewood

006 Lady Slipper and Sassafras

007 White Horsemint and Indian Arrowwood

008 Burvine and Blue John

009 Scurvy Plant, Wild Geranium and Blood Root, Pucoon

010 Golden Seal and Wild Sarsaparilla

011 Milk Weed and Wild Pepper Plant

012 Cohash, Rattle Weed and Deadly Night Shade

013 Solomon’s Seal and Pleurisy Root (Milkweed and other names)

014 Ginseng and Wild Ginger