Field First-Aid to Folk Remedies
Before Geisinger and the Lehigh Valley Health Network, Northeastern Pennsylvanians received healthcare from miners’ hospitals, midwives, over-the-counter medicines, and even subterranean clinics located hundreds of feet underground in mine tunnels. Anthracite mining was perilous and accident-prone, leading our region’s medical caregivers to pioneer the use of field first-aid kits, herbal remedies, and X-rays in treating broken bones.
A Tour of Medical Practices in Coal Mining Towns
At 2 p.m. on Saturday, August 3, Susquehanna University historian Dr. Karol Weaver will offer a walking tour of Eckley Miners’ Village that dives deep into NEPA’s medical history. New and returning visitors alike will gain a unique perspective on Eckley as they see it through the lens of a nineteenth-century miner deciding where to seek healthcare.
“Mining towns were complex medical landscapes where people had several options for receiving care,” says Weaver. The tour will interpret Eckley’s Catholic Church as a hub of faith healing, its company store as a source for patent medicines, a midwife’s kitchen as a home pharmacy, and the company doctor’s office.
Not all medical caregivers were recognized as authorities by mining companies or mainstream healthcare providers. Weaver is particularly interested in how female healthcare workers have often been dismissed. “When women were practicing in the early 20th century, they wouldn’t have been perceived positively by outsiders,” Weaver reflects. “The characterization of women would’ve used terms like ‘witches’ or other derogatory terms.”
Yet midwives and folk healers remained popular in their own communities. Many mining families trusted these local practitioners, who were often their neighbors and who spoke the same language and shared the same ethnic customs, more than they trusted formally trained company doctors.
Weaver’s interest in Coal Region caregiving is personal. She grew up in Strong, a patchtown much like Eckley located near Mt. Carmel and Shamokin. Her grandmother was an herbalist who passed down to Weaver an invaluable record of folk healing.
“I have a book that has a chart of plants and herbal remedies, written in Italian in her own handwriting,” marvels Weaver. Much of Weaver’s research and writing amplifies the voices of women like her grandmother: female healthcare providers who are often left out of mainstream histories of our region’s medical systems.
Energize Eckley Promotes NEPA’s Heritage
Weaver’s walking tour is the fourth installment in Energize Eckley, a six-part speaker series running on most Saturdays from late June through August. Tickets to Energize Eckley must be purchased in advance and are $12/event or $60 for a season pass to all six events.
Proceeds will be matched by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to rehabilitate several historic structures at Eckley as an interdisciplinary learning center and overnight lodging, part of a long-term effort to preserve the village and fuel curiosity about NEPA’s singular past. Energize Eckley is sponsored by PNC Bank and Mauch Chunk Trust.
