Treatment of sickness in pioneer days

[LincolnMan]

I found this passage in Citizen of New Salem by Paul Horgan about how ills were treated during Lincoln's era:

"Medical care was largely home-made, though Doctor Allen might be at hand with his Dartmouth learning. Wives treated cold and sore-throat with a piece of peppered fat meat fastened about the neck. To break a fever they set a bag of pounded slippery elm over the eye. If an eruptive disease was slow to break out, they fed a dose of "nanny tea," which was compounded of sheep dung. Stomach ache they reduced with internal doses of Monongahela and external rubs of cayenne pepper dissolved in spirits."