Apocalyptic Apothecary

by Ron Foster

  Zack didn’t bother to tell him just yet that he was working diligently on a snakebite formula and that he was going to base it on his historic herbal knowledge of studying traditional Native American and folklore medicinal plant remedies to actually make something that was close to what was used successfully during the Civil War and other times for rattlesnake bites. He was working in his lab with what he had to try and make a stock of exactly that type of product. Combining roots and herbs, tinctures and essential oils, etc. is an art and he wanted to study the process that he was going to use to mix together what were already well-known ingredients to him.

  “So let me get this straight, Zack, what you are saying is you want to sell this stuff as a cure all for pretty much anything and everything up to and including snake bite and gunshot? I ain’t doubting your extensive herbal knowledge a bit, Zack, but you got yourself balls like a big brass monkey if you think you can pull that off!” Sloan said with a wide grin.

  “I ain’t trying to pull any kind of crooked scam shit off. Lord knows me and a lot of the folks that know me have been using my formula for general ailments for years. You got anything better medicine wise or more researched herb to try, go right ahead! What I am saying is folks need some medicines available now, not later, and I ain’t got the time or resources to make up a special batch for everybody’s specific individual ailments. I also don’t need them worrying if they are still taking commercial made meds that my stuff has any big chance of interacting negatively with their prescriptions. This is about all can offer them now as a stock medicine to generally treat stuff from A-Z.” Zack said quite proud of his mixture and himself.

  “Boy, I think you’re on to something here! That’s not foolishness at all to think about. You are trying to make up a kind of do all medical mixture like those medicine bag things the 18th-century long hunters carried while exploring and hunting on expeditions into the American frontier wilderness for as much as six months at a time.” Sloan said, catching on.

  “Yea, something like that. You have got to anticipate you’re going to get sick and pack medicine with your gear accordingly. Nobody these days has the physical constitution or knowledge those old woodsmen had, let alone understand what goes in an herbal bundle. The survivalists out here also ain’t prepping no pocket portable field expedient medicine. Especially one good for most ailments or recurring conditions with them, either. That fact, in my opinion, reduces their chances about to zero and puts them in pretty bad shape.” Zack said before carrying on and explaining to Sloan he had done his best to study at various times, how masses of people came and went under adverse or emergency conditions and had learned a lot. History held the best examples of what to expect grid down-medicine poor and he had formulated accordingly as he worked on his now “Prepper Medicine” approach. The lessons learned observing the Gold Rush were quite relevant now in these close camp confines as well as every waterhole people had fled to when the municipal water companies failed.

  Diseases in the gold rush were painful and oftentimes deadly because there weren’t many doctors to help the miners when they were ill. Some were lucky they would be able to get a doctor but others died. Cholera: Cholera is an infection caused by bacterium. The main side effects are vomiting and diarrhea. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking water or eating food that has been contaminated by feces (waste product) of an infected person. This disease is highly dangerous that can lead to death. Fact: The most common medical problem was gastrointestinal illness, ranging from chronic bowel complaints to unspecified diarrheas and dysenteries, and diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever." "The most terrifying disease was cholera. Its sudden onset, rapid course and high mortality rate were fearsome. Cholera's appearance on the trails coincided with its epidemic years in the United States. It was particularly prevalent on the Oregon-California Trail in 1849 and 1850 and on the first third of the trip from the Missouri River to Fort Laramie.

  People will be on the move and congregating near waterways now that the grid was down. An outbreak of cholera was inevitable, Zack had advised, and told everyone to try to get as much ginger as they could for him to add to an herbal home cure he was working on. Drinking lots of purified water effectively helps to get rid of cholera. Add some pieces of clove in approximately three liters of water and boil it. Drink this mixture every few hours, is recommended in India. This is said to be one of the best home remedies for cholera on the National Health Portal of India. They also recommend drinking a mixture of water and basil leaves, also claimed to effectively help to cure cholera.

  Cholera requires immediate treatment because the disease can cause death within hours.

  Symptoms of the disease may range from none, to mild, to severe, in a case-to-case basis. The classical symptoms include large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days, vomiting, muscle cramps and generalized weakness. It can be so severe that it leads, within hours, to severe dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. This may result in sunken eyes, cold skin, decreased skin elasticity, and wrinkling of the hands and feet. The dehydration may result in the skin turning bluish. Symptoms of the disease start two hours to five days after exposure.

  In other words, it is characterized initially by restlessness, excessive thirst, cold sweating, muscular cramps followed by severe vomiting and diarrhea.

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  One of the more interesting facts Zack told Sloan was about his research into the Lewis and Clark expeditions medical stores. Without a doctor, Lewis and Clark took care of the injuries and illnesses of their party and lost only one man.

  When Meriwether Lewis was preparing for the expedition into the Louisiana Territory, he studied under one Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia. Jefferson thought Rush perhaps the best physician in the nation and wanted the doctor to train Lewis in some rudimentary lessons in medicine. After a few weeks of such training, Lewis gathered a number of standard medicines for any number of ailments, as well as a concoction of Rush’s own, known as “Rush’s Pills", but were generally referred to as “Thunder-clappers” for the laxative’s sudden effect. The pills were a sort of “cure-all” and were liberally given. Lancets, forceps, syringes, were also present. Besides Rush’s pills, over thirty different drugs were brought. Some of these included laudanum, opium, calomel, and mercury– then the standard medicine used in the treatment of syphilis. Other medicines were used especially for blistering, a constant problem among the Corps. Besides his short training with Benjamin Rush, Lewis doubtless depended upon his own knowledge of healing herbs. This sort of “frontier medicine” was to serve the expedition well during its trip to and from the west coast.

  Sloan took in all the background evidence and years of study Zack brought to the table with his herbal trade offering before querying him on what he thought the dosage was for so many ailments. Surely it would be somewhat different in each case, he conjectured.

  “People self-prescribe, as you probably know already, way too much. A lot of these folks, in my opinion, suffer from the doctors having happily made them hypochondriacs already. Mark my words, a lot of that old leftover medication that’s sitting out of date in people’s medicines cabinets right now is going to lead to their demise sooner, rather than later, the worse this shit gets. Folks will take it if nothing else is there, I guarantee you! If they had as an option my pure unadulterated “Heal All” or “Self Heal” instead to depend on and believe in, that would go a long way to saving lives and reducing fears versus a dependence on out of date commercially processed drugs. Plus, this stuff is an immune booster and body regulator made to inhibit certain adverse reactions to diseases, like producing too many white cells in your lungs and drowning yourself after a bad bout of flu or pneumonia. As well it has beneficial properties, like the herb Motherwort does, that somehow the herb just seems to know to go directly to the affected part of the body to do her magic.” Zack said at first rather hotly, still a bit miffed because of Sloan’s comparison to him being a medicine show drummer and then with a smile,
lightened up as he saw Sloan become more aware of the psychological as well as the medical benefits of his proposed medicine cabinet do-it-all mainstay.

  “Now, Zack, I know you’re a smart educated man and all that. I already said I know you have a hell of a lot of backwoods southern savvy ditch weed first aid knowledge when it comes to rooting around in the ground, but I know people! They ain’t going to take too kindly to not being cured of some ailment if they get a bottle of your miracle drug, and times being what they are, they might even want to burn you at the stake for being a witch or something if it made them sick or somebody, lord forbid, was thought to have died from drinking one of your potions. You better be damn careful how you offer this shit, Zack.” Sloan advised.

  “I know, me and you had some of the same classes on field medicine psychology when we were in the service, but it has always has been the mainstay of American Military forces to win over hearts and minds by offering free medical care and help to oppressed people. Yes, a lot of folks dang sure need to be in a hospital. But we can’t do anything for them now but offer simple shit and advise good hygiene improves health and mental wellbeing. I ain’t here to argue if this shit does any good or not for everything I am claiming. I am saying it does better than a lot of formerly commercially made products and this stuff often times does it better! There is nothing else for us to offer anyone medicinal wise that I know of offhand that I can deliver a quantity of. This Heal All, I know for a fact, is a panacea generally good for you and most people will be grateful to have anything right now, I bet. Hey, frigging Iodine with skull and crossbones on the label to remind you not to drink it is a God-send to warding off a small cut killing you in the jungle! Look at the conditions we are all living in now? Why can’t we use our nurses as medics without commercial supplies to help folks? Why can’t we prevent as much local strife as we can by using my best herbal lore and locally produced goods we can come up with to ward off scurvy, cold sores, ulcers and a whole bunch of other shit to keep them towing our leadership line and maybe getting some trading going?” Zack asked.

  Zack was a prepper and he had already reminded folks previously when selling his wares at the camp out. “If you are hours away from a “professional" treatment option, the bottles of quality herbal tincture that he had offered were better and more flexible medicine than what most had in their first aid kits. Did they have treatments for flu, diarrhea, antibiotic, antimalarial, antifungal etc. in theirs? How about for a bad tooth, for that matter? One little bottle of his tincture blends, if you keep stashed where you could reach them in a hurry, could be better than all the approved modern treatments later you would need without it.

  “Zack, my friend, I am just telling you my objections because you want to sell it, brother…. Folks can’t even find or afford food now, let alone think about buying your not-so-skeptical medicine. You know what will happen if anyone tags you with selling bad medicine: the whole village will rise up to take you out. You know that. See, when we used to go to impoverished nations in the military offering aid, people were suspicious and skeptical. Now admittedly, most people in our modern world over here know a lot of drugs that they are taking are based on plants. But that doesn’t mean you got the buy-in necessary from this current lot of survivors we got that are going to just take your word for it on this home brew shit you got here. Besides that, nobody has got any money Zack!” Sloan said sagely.

  “Nah man, they ain’t going to bother me none. I got me some highly herbal educated folks to judge me once I am done with my sales pitch and they will see the proof is in the pudding when they see how well the stuff works on everyday crap. Hear me out, buddy, this stuff sells itself and there ain’t much I can’t prescribe it for.” Zack said, getting ready to do his spiel once again.

  “Ok, Zack, I am listening, lay it on me.” Sloan said relaxing and wanting to learn even more about this fascinating plant that Zack claimed he could extract the green magic out of.

  “Look man, the herb is called “Heal All.” I didn’t coin that word, nor did I make it up. That is its NAME! That is what scientists call it, that is what herbalists and botanists have called it for over a century and I can show it to you listed that way in my books. It’s got a Latin name but that’s unimportant for now. You and I will be honest, upfront and make no claims we can’t support about it. I am selling a tincture, a supplement. Folks decide for themselves if they want to take it or not. I could sell them a hundred bottles of different herbs for a hundred different ailments and I can make special potions for specific ailments like urinary tract infections, or simple but life threatening, taking you out of the action “I got the shits from eating this new apocalyptic diet” that was forced on me. But that dog ain’t going to hunt. Given time and an in-depth study of each and every person’s medical complaints maybe I could help them out better than this simple fix, but I have neither time nor inclination to do so. I can’t afford to spend any more time than I do now in the lab because feeding myself and Ann is my first priority. I don’t want to set up a clinic and hope to get paid in food or start a traveling doctors show, so then what? You in or you out, Man? We got us a deal? Will you do your best to help me get paid and get food for this stuff?” Zack said thinking he didn’t need to have his bubble burst today on the new business, nor did he need to think about a hanging party coming after him for prescribing the wrong cure to various ailments that would most likely affect everybody soon enough. The body quickly loses its immunity as normal vitamin and dietary intakes were greatly reduced. Common sense would tell you that no vitamin C, you get scurvy, lack of vitamins causes their own diseases or symptoms like vison problems or brittle bones etc., and cold and flu season was coming around the corner.

  “Now, Zack, I done told you that I got no problem at all with you pushing your remedies! I was just telling you they could backfire on you if you weren’t careful. Now, I don’t see either for you to be running around all over town with a red cross on your hat or sleeve like a dang fool trying to help all these folks failing. I commend you for your idea of trying to sort of get a leg up on the scourge your predicting and vaccinate everyone in your own way. Having a bottle of your societal midnight medicine makes a lot of sense to help ward off some of the ills that will assail us all eventually, but you need some OPSEC, boy! (Operational Security). Folks don’t need to know that you are the sole manufacturer of this drug you want me to help you to push. No boy, you need to duck your head and play turtle. Stick your marketing head back in your shell and listen to me for few minutes. Now every town around here, just like we learned in our Army days and every overseas village we jumped into playing paratrooper, has their own highly regarded dispenser of medical information besides doctors and we need to find them! Get them to help you sell your product and back it up!” Sloan said wisely as Zack took in all the old war horses’ advisements.

  “Man, I see a lot of merit in that line of thinking, but it ain’t like we can go find the local medicine man here by his dress or arguing with the headman telling folks not to use what’s offered over his traditional medicine shit.” Zack said.

  “Well, I went and got me some yellow pages, Zack, and in my own way I have been working on the same preparedness crap as you have! I have just been doing it with a different approach. Herbal supplements we know work, but they don’t get you high and get robbed like a drug store so I was studying who owns an herbal shop nearby… We got one small one here close by and there are two big health food franchises in Montgomery. I have been sort of trying to figure out if the millennials and the health nuts would try to loot any of those big stores or not and I am undecided in the outcome. Now, I am quite sure those regular supplement-taking folks have already considered that when cleaning out the grocery stores previously but there might be some sort of organic energy bars out there they need to grab for food also. However, I don’t think they considered any Billy Bad asses like my little militia doing the same thing and stocking up on herbs. Always think outside the box, man, like I
know you do already. Zack, choose your own battles and your own timing and that will help you rule the day.” Sloan advised before explaining that Zack could show off his herb knowledge slowly by selling and help advising on what those commercially made products were good for, if they could score a bunch.