The Cavendish Historical Society Newsletter
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PO Box 472 Cavendish, VT 05142
802-226-7807 margocaulfield@icloud.com
Spring 2024 Vol. 18, Issue 2
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
While there are programs the Cavendish Historical Society (CHS) offers annually, there are some new events and twists on old ones this year, particularly the annual plant sale. More events will be added throughout the year. The Museum opens Memorial Day Weekend and ends on Oct. 13. Hours are Sunday 2-4 pm with other times available by appointment. Call or e-mail to arrange other times.
May 25 (Saturday): CHS Annual Plant Sale in front of the Museum. Early bird special 5-7 on Friday.
May 26 (Sunday): Museum opens for the season 2-4 pm
May 30 (Thursday): Cavendish Memorial Day Celebration
June 6 (Thursday): Sturbridge Village Trip for CTES students in grades 5 & 6.
June 22 (Saturday): Ghost Walk Cavendish Village, meet at the CHS Museum at 8 pm. Wear comfortable shoes and bring a flashlight
July 21 (Sunday): 18th Century Village Healers in Rural Vermont 2 pm at the CHS Museum. One of the speakers will be Dr. Charis Boke https://faculty-directory.dartmouth.edu/charis-ford-morrison-boke who will talk about the herb gardens of this era, how plants and herbs were used then and now.
July 27 (Saturday): 14th Annual Cavendish Town Wide Tag Sale. The CHS booth will be at the Gazebo on the Proctorsville Green
September 15 (Sunday): Annual Phineas Gage Walk and Talk, starts with the talk 2 pm at the CHS Museum
October 13 (Sunday): Last Sunday the Museum is open for the 2024 season.
GARDENING TO ABSORB THE STORM
For many years-no one seems to remember when they started-CHS has held a plant sale. This year we have a theme “Gardening to Absorb the Storm.”
We are working with Black River Action Team (BRAT) in promoting gardening that will help to protect and restore Vermont’s rivers and lakes. Strategies to do this include “rain gardens,” plantings for wet areas of
lawns; and planting to help stabilize and protect river banks.
A rain garden is a bowl shaped garden designed to capture and absorb rainfall and snowmelt. When stormwater is captured, it helps to reduce the volume of runoff, thereby reduce flooding that can erode stream banks. It also helps to reduce excess nutrients, sediment, and pollutants from entering our water ways. To learn how to create a rain garden, check out the Vermont Rain Garden Manual.
This manual includes “The Vermont Rain Garden Plant List” for ferns, grasses, perennials, shrubs, and trees which are suitable for Vermont. This is a handy list to take when going plant shopping this spring as it provides information on what type of sun exposure a plant needs, salt tolerance, seasonal interest, what pollinators it attracts and lots more useful information. You can pick up a manual at the libraries in Cavendish and Ludlow.
While rain gardens are not recommended in a naturally wet area of a lawn, there are other trees and shrubs to plant that will absorb the water in such locations. If you have a low-lying spot that collects rain, an easy solution is to use this space to grow plants that thrive in wet areas. The right plants will absorb the moisture and prevent runoff. Use the plant list in the manual to determine what might work best for your property.
If you are wanting to know more about planting to maintain riverbanks in and around the Black River Watershed, contact Black River Action Team (BRAT) blackrivercleanup@gmail.com or +1 802-738-0456
Our goal is to secure as many plants as possible for the sale. Those items not sold will be used to help re plant gardens for property owners who lost them as a result of the July floods.
If you can help, please call 802-226-7807 or e-mail margocaulfield@icloud.com
• If you have perennials, shrubs or trees in your garden that need thinning out, we can help with pots, soil and some extra set of hands
• People who can help with the transplanting. We will be starting after the first of May.
MANDRAKE OR CHAGA: WHICH DID SOLZHENITSYN USE?
We’ve been researching for the talk on July 21 (Sunday): 18th Century Village Healers in Rural Vermont. From herbs to fungus, 18th century medicine was plant based. Once such item is chaga, which has been used for centuries by the Abenaki. The Nobel Laureate and former Cavendish resident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also wrote about chaga but believed mandrake root played a role in his cancer treatment.
In Cancer Ward, while fiction and a means to reflect on Soviet society, Solzhenitsyn relied heavily on his own experience as a cancer patient. The character, Oleg Kostoglotov, like the author was a WWII veteran, sentenced to a Gulag and internal exile for his comments about Stalin, and received treatment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Solzhenitsyn describes how a doctor notices that peasant patients don’t seem to get cancer, which he concludes is from their practice of drinking chaga tea. "He could not imagine any greater joy than to go away into the woods for months on end, to break off this chaga, crumble it, boil it up on a campfire, drink it and get well like an animal. To walk through the forest for months, to know no other care than to get better!"
Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) is a type of fungus that grows on the bark of birch trees in cold climates, including Siberia, Russia, and Vermont. It looks a bit like a clump of burnt coal, but cut open it reveals a soft orange core.
Indigenous cultures have brewed a chaga tea for centuries. Even Otzi the Iceman, the 3,400 BC mummy (more than 5,000 years old) preserved in the Italian Swiss Alps ice, was carrying chaga. Like the Abenaki, Otzi could have been using chaga for tea or for its amazing property to start fires and hold embers even in wet conditions.
Chaga does grow in Cavendish and we’d like to thank Cyrus and Ephraim Gross who have been carefully harvesting it for CHS the last several years.
Lab and animal studies suggest that chaga extract can reduce long-term inflammation thereby increasing immunity and helping to fight viruses and bacteria. It’s suggested uses include: cholesterol lowering, preventing and slowing cancer, and lowering blood sugar
Solzhenitsyn underwent surgery while in the labor camp, but his cancer returned while in internal exile. He draws on that for his character Oleg, “Although I’d been in pain for six months beforehand, the last month was agony: I couldn’t stand, sit or lie down without pain and could snatch only a few minutes’ sleep each night.”
Before entering Tashkent Hospital for treatment, Solzhenitsyn secured an infusion made from mandrake root that was supposed to be good for treating cancer. He was warned about an overdose. The allowable dose was from one to ten drops to be taken over a period of ten days, with the dose to be increased by one drop each day. Then it had to be gradually decreased to one drop with an interval of ten days allowed to elapse before starting again.
While the mandrake root initially seemed to help Solzhenitsyn, it didn’t last.
At Tashkent, he received 55 radiation sessions of half an hour each over six weeks. His character Oleg undergoes the same treatment, “This barbarous bombardment of heavy quanta, soundless and unnoticed by the assaulted tissues, had after twelve session given Kostoglotov back his desire and taste for life, his appetite, even his good spirits. After the second and third bombardments, he was free of the pain that had made his existence intolerable.”
However, Solzhenitsyn continued to use the mandrake infusion, along with radiation, when no one was looking. Upon discharge, he was told he would need to return for more treatment. While the tumor, was considerably smaller, it was still there. In short, he was not cured and so planned to continue the mandrake.
‘When I get back to Ush-Terek [his place of exile], I'll give my tumor another pummeling with that mandrake root... just to make sure it doesn't start throwing secondaries about. There's something noble about treating oneself with a strong poison. Poison doesn't pretend to be a harmless medicine, it tells you straight out, ’‘I'm poison! Watch out! Or else!’‘ So we know what we're in for.’ Cancer Ward
Like chaga, mandrake has been widely used for centuries. The mandrake is a perennial herb with thick, often forked, roots which may resemble the legs of the human body. Known for both its medicinal and psychoactive properties, a wide range of legends and myths have been associated with it over the centuries. During the Middle Ages mandrake was Europe’s most significant medicinal and magical plant, capable of curing practically everything, from infertility and insomnia, foretelling the future, to shielding a soldier in battle. It was used as a soporific (sleep inducing) and pain-killing plant for many hundreds of years. Mandrake is a powerful narcotic, emetic, sedative, and hallucinogen; its poisons can easily lead to death.
There are six species of mandrake, mostly distributed throughout southern Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa. The most well known species are Mandragara officinarum and M. autumnalis, the former blooming in springtime and the latter during the fall. Mandrakes are stemless, perennial herbs with large taproots that can grow up to two feet in length. The flowers emerge in a cluster from the center of the plant, and depending on the species, range in color from a yellow-green to bluish-purple. The sweet-smelling fruits resemble small yellow apples. U.S. Forest Service
Note, American mandrake (Podophyllum peltatum) is an entirely different plant belonging to the barberry family and should not be confused with the poisonous European mandrake which is a member of the Solanaceae family.
Dr. Vincent Devita, the Director of the Yale Cancer Center from 1993 to 2003 and at one time head of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Solid Tumor Service, wrote an interesting article about testing the formula recommended by Solzhenitsyn. Eight grams of mandrake was soaked for two weeks in a bottle of 80 proof vodka, resulting in a dark brown liquid.
Devita had it tested and the results showed that the formula contained two cancer drugs VP-16 and alpha peltatin. The latter was too toxic for humans, but VP-16 had been very active in advanced testicular cancer in early trials without excessive toxicity and would eventually be approved by the FDA for use in testicular cancer. Interestingly, the exact concentration of alcohol needed to extract the alkaloids from the roots was the concentration in 80 proof vodka.
Devita writes, “In other words, Solzhenitsyn’s root-and-vodka recipe had neatly created a version of the medication strong enough to treat cancer…our own lab results suggested that Solzhenitsyn had probably, indeed, successfully cured his own testicular cancer.
If you have an interest in being part of a “Cancer Ward” reading group, please contact CHS at the numbers above.
References
• Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Oak and the Calf Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Solzhenitsyn A Biography Michael Scammell
• Solzhenitsyn Reader Edward E. Ericson, Jr and Daniel J. Mahoney
• Devita, Vincent T as told to Elizabeth Devita Raeburn, “The Root From Issyk-Kul Revisited: Did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Cure his Own Testicular Cance,,” Undark.org 03.31.2016
THE LOVELL SISTERS
At the end of the 19th century, three sisters from Cavendish were attending and graduating from medical school. Lucinda, and her sisters achievements would be remarkable even today. The following is from a talk given by Sandra Stearns “Beyond Cooking and Cleaning,” which focused on women who worked “beyond housekeeping,”
At the turn of the century, three Cavendish sisters, the daughters of Cyrus and Lydia Lovell of Cavendish Center, all became medical doctors. Lucinda Sarah, the oldest, was born in Boston in 1863 but her family moved to Cavendish when she was a child. She attended Black River Academy in Ludlow, as did her two sisters. She graduated from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1900. [Today part of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.] She is listed in the 1900 census of Cavendish as a physician. She came home to what is now Bud Johnson’s farm in Cavendish Center to help care for her elderly parents. Her father, Cyrus, died in 1915 and her mother in 1926. Her father’s obituary states that she had cared for her father the previous seven years-that would make her living in Cavendish again from 1908 on. A local news items in 1916 says she was raising hogs and had bought a pure-bred boar. She was Town agent during the First World War and school director for a term in the early 1920s. She seems never to have practiced medicine in Cavendish. Muriel Kinsbury and Gertrude knew her well and say loved to visit with the neighbors and was a great story-teller. She died in Cavendish in September 1945 at age 82.
Her next younger sister, Martha. E. Lovell, also attended the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia and graduated in 1899 (a year before her older sister). She spent the rest of her life in Boston, serving 34 years as staff physician for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. [She was listed as the “Examining Physician.”] At that time, she was one of the best known physicians in the field of social work. She died in April, 1940.
We don’t have as much information about the youngest Dr. Lovell, Hattie. We know she was a physician and that she lived in Boston with her sister, Dr. Martha until her death in November, 1933. All three sisters are buried in the Center Rd Cemetery.
CHS recently received a donation of Dr. Lucinda Lovell’s books, among which are diaries. We are hoping that these will provide a lot more information about she and her sisters.
BECOME A MEMBER, RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP, DONATE
If you have not joined the Cavendish Historical Society, need to renew your membership, and/or would like to be a volunteer, please complete the form below and sending a check, payable to CHS, to CHS, PO Box 472, Cavendish, VT 05142. All contributions are tax deductible.
Name: _______________________________________
Address: _______________________________________________
Phone Number: _____________________ E-Mail: ____________________________
Membership Level
__ Individual Member $10 __ Senior Member 65+ $5 __ Sustaining Member $500
__ Household Member $15 ___ Contributing Member $250
Volunteer
___ I would be interested in serving, as a volunteer .I would be interested in serving on the following committee(s):__ Program Planning __ Fundraising __ Building (Museum)
__Archives _ Budget –– Cemetery __ Carmine Guica Young Historians
Donations are always welcome and can be designated as follows:
__ For general purposes __ Young Historians __Publications
__ Archaeological Activities _ Museum & Archival __ Special Events
__ Rankin Fund __ Williams Fund __ Solzhenitsyn Project
__ Other (please specify) __ Cemetery Restoration __ Preservation Projects
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