Seated above a tub filled with very hot water you are covered with blankets. The bush bath is perhaps the most interesting. Jamaican folk medicine consists of baths, salves, and teas. One of the traditions that are extremely strong is the knowledge of so-called folk medicine. Scotts Hall was a farming community in 1899 and it still is today. Many of their traditions go directly back to Africa. Maroons are descendants of Africans who fought plantation owners and escaped the British sugar plantation system.

Her knowledge came from the town of Scotts Hall in central Jamaica. Whenever anyone got ill, or felt under the weather, my grandmother, known as DearMa had a remedy. For my grandmother, who was Maude Rainford, her suspicions were confirmed when just five years later, her eldest daughter, Alma, was killed by an accidental overdose at Kingston Public Hospital because they gave Alma an injection meant for the patient in the bed next to hers. In general, Jamaicans look upon the medical establishment with suspicion. Maude Rainford did not trust western medicine. In one week, Robert’s eyes had opened up. Each morning she washed the baby’s eyes with this green tinted wash. Then after straining it, she let it cool off. She added the oil to a quarter pound of green marijuana with water in a pot and slow simmered the concoction for hours. You really have to know what you are doing because ricin is found in the castor bean and you have to know how to draw it off. Maude went out to the Castor Bush growing outside and picked some beans and made castor oil by cooking it. She walked home, knowing just what she was going to do. While at the hospital a nurse nearly dropped the infant, causing Maude to lose what little faith she had in her decision to bring her infant son to the hospital.

Two days later she took Robert to the hospital.įifteen minutes later, Maude Rainford was headed home with fire in her eyes, cradling her precious cargo. It took hours of persuasion until she relented. What did they have at Kingston Public Hospital that she didn’t have? She did not trust their medicine.

Maude immediately wanted to use a country remedy, but her older sister talked her into taking the boy to the doctor. There was joy in the house, but it was short lived. Robert was born as the darkness descended upon Beeston Street in Kingston where they lived. The contractions came quickly as the sun was setting. “I had my first in 1918 an’ now is 1929 an is done me ahhh––” The pain would take her breath away, stopping her in mid-syllable. She was muttering about this being her last child. Smoke from mosquito coils curled up from the four corners of the room, creating a pall of smoke that hung over Maude Rainford, laying in bed, covered with sweat and surrounded by people. Lloyd stops by on his book tour with CTC Virtual Tours. Francis, author of the novel From Rum to Roots.

From Rum to Roots by Lloyd G. Francis