Cynthia Ginn’s
coneflowers
Women would come to Cynthia Ginn for all sorts of help. Someone or some child got kicked by the cow when they was milking, Cynthia would know how to put the comfry on to draw the bruising out. She had mullen and coltsfoot to smoke if a body’s lungs was feeling poorly. Going through the change, they’d tell her things they wouldn’t tell no man doctor, Cynthia’d make up little pills of cohosh for them.
Sometimes even men would come for her ginseng. They could get it themselves in the woods all around. They might bring a few man shaped roots in their pockets. It was how she fixed it that they believed in. Sometimes a little hemp flower in it. When they needed it. Wives would bring it too. She never said nothing to nobody about nobody.
People who didn’t already know learned about plantain for stings, jewel weed for poison ivy, slippery elm for sore thoat, catnip for colicy babies.
Teas, tinctures, extracts, powders, smokes, poltices.
But the only one she took everyday herself was a moonshine tincture of coneflower root. Just a teaspoon full. All them sick people coming to her and she never got sick. She said it was the coneflowers.