Alumni talk, recipes and hound's tongue

The highlight of this week was the annual Argyle Central School Alumni Association banquet. Elevating it to this status was not done for the typical reasons, because few of the typical things occurred.

My perceptions remained accurate for the evening because when I went to get a glass of wine for a couple of ladies, including Dr. Wifey, instead of goblets, it was presented in water glasses, rendering my dear spouse incapable of designated driver duty. I, therefore, remained adult and responsible throughout the evening. Thus the women that were interesting in school were all still interesting and the men were all balder.

I was not accosted by any crazed horse ladies, I did not get elected to any offices, I remembered both verses of alma mater and my singing voice did not improve. No, the fact it was a highlight came the next day when someone from the class of 1961, who all gathered at the Attitude Cafe for breakfast, left me a couple of pages copied from a book. I cannot give appropriate credit because the identity of my benefactor was garbled, so if anyone can help out with that, it would be appreciated. The book was entitled the New England Farrier and Family Physician published in 1823 by Jacob Richardson in Exeter, New Hampshire. This Richardson is likely a relative of mine and his book is a compendium of what he calls “receipts,” but we would call recipes.

I am not sure just which receipt was being recommended to me, probably the one about fall ploughing, but some of the others were very enlightening. Did you know that if your butter goes rancid, you have only to toast four slices of bread, cover every exposed surface of the butter, and wait two minutes. “The butter will lose its disagreeable odour, but the bread will be found foetid.”

Similarly, if you have maggots in your bacon (I hate it when that happens) simply crush some elderberry leaves in a bit of water, apply it to the bacon, letting some run into all the crevices, and the maggots and skippers will soon quit their habitations leaving the bacon completely palatable.

Even better, I learned from the pages passed to me that a grain of flax seed would possess all the valuable properties of the eye stone. For those unfamiliar with the term, an eye stone is the operculum of a small marine snail (the hard flap that covers the hole in the shell when the snail closes up.) When you have something in your eye, this hard bit of snail shell is inserted under the lid at the inner point of the eye, then the sufferer blinks until the eye stone emerges at the outer part of the eye, supposedly bringing the offending debris along with it. I do not know what might do more damage to an eye, a hunk of snail shell or a hard, scratchy flax seed.

One of the “receipts” that might have had some efficacy had to do with driving rats and mice from barns, homes and granaries by placing a plant called dog’s tongue, smashed with a hammer, all around the building. This plant does seem to have an odor that repels rodents, for a short while when it is freshly crushed. Unfortunately for a New England publication, the dog’s tongue that has this property was native to China and the only place in the United States where it exists is in Florida and Hawaii, where it is classified as a noxious invasive.

The European dog’s tongue, more often called hound’s tongue, dog borage, or wild buckwheat, that was brought over by colonists and has spread widely in North America, seems to have none of these repellent properties. However, the European colonists were nothing if not prone to identify native plants in colonial areas with names of European species. Thus, we have over 75 species that are identified with the name “dog’s tongue” or “hound’s tongue.”

I became curious about hound’s tongue when I was fairly young. My grandmother told me it was named because the leaves looked like a dog’s tongue. It certainly did not appear thus to my eye. It was years later I discovered that putting a decoction of the leaves and stem on your shoes was supposed to keep neighborhood dogs from barking at you, i.e., giving tongue. By the way, that does not work.

The plant Gram identified as hound’s tongue got to be about 3 feet high with rough bristly leaves, reddish purple flowers, and small triangular seed pods covered with burrs. These are especially terrible in long-haired hunting dogs taking some really dramatic efforts to dislodge them from the coat. She said it was used to treat dog bites and hemorrhoids. Interestingly, it does have some interesting properties.

Hound’s tongue contains several active agents that depress central nervous system activity. It was once widely prescribed by herbalists for the treatment of tumors and cancers. Overdosing leads to a narcotic effect and hallucinations, so for a few years it was greatly touted by hippie culture herbalists. However, it has been found to also be carcinogenic, leading to some issues to those seeking a “natural high.” Guess I will leave off chasing away dogs and treating piles and go drive the worms out of my bacon.