NOTE: THIS WEBSITE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. RESOURCES AND DATA ARE ADDED DAILY.
IMPORTANT: We are in urgent need of funding to keep this project alive and ensure its future. If you’re enjoying the site and see our vision for the project, please consider joining as a paid member or contributing to our crowdfunding campaign today. It is only with your help that we can continue this work.
Thanks so much for your support!  –  Jes
Classic Household Guide to Appalachian Folk Healing: A Collection of Old-Time Remedies, Charms, and Spells
share:
Some buttons on this page link to external websites. If you visit one of our affiliate sites and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. More info
- UPDATED: 6.29.2025
- Folk Medicine, Regional
- native plants, plant medicine
editor:
n/a
publisher:
date:
8.1.2022
ISBN:
9781578637539
pages:
152
notes:
contents:
description:
Ossman & Steel's Guide to Health or Household Instructor (its original title) is a collection of spells, remedies, and charms. The book draws from the old Pennsylvania Dutch and German powwow healing practices that in turn helped shape Appalachian folk healing, conjure, rootwork, and many folk healing traditions in America. Jake Richards, author of Backwoods Witchcraft and Doctoring the Devil, puts these remedies in context, with practical advice for modern-day "backwoods" healers interested to use them today.
The first part contains spells and charms for healing wounds, styes, broken bones, maladies, and illnesses of all sorts. The second part includes other folk remedies using ingredients based on sympathetic reasoning, including sulfuric acid, gunpowder, or other substances for swelling, toothache, headache, and so on. These remedies are presented here for historic interest, to help better understand how folk medicine evolved in America.
It is Jake Richard's hope that reintroducing this work will reestablish its position as a useful household helper in the library of every witch or country healer.
places:
CMOS:
Jake Richards. Ossman and Steel’s Classic Household Guide to Appalachian Folk Healing: A Collection of Old-Time Remedies, Charms, and Spells. Newburyport, MA: Weiser Books, 2022.