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By DAVE WARNER Staff WritarWord of the salve had reached all the way to the White House Calvin Coolidge Jr., the son of the president, had set out for the Wakefield doctor” who offered the last hope for a cure. The salve, derived from the U.P. woods, had worked before on serious infections But the younger Coolidge never made it. He died in Chicago, enroute to the mifacle cure.At least that’s how they tell it in Gogebic County. But history books offer a slightly different version of the story.The president s son, who had been playing tennis in sneakers without socks, developed a blister on his right toe It was a fatal quirk that the blister developed into an infection that shot up his leg.Four days later, he died at the White House. At 10:30 p m. on a July night in 1924, he closed his eyes for the last time, telling his parents not to worry anymore. A barrage of medical doctors couldn’t save the 16-year-old.Yet, the story connected with David Bullen, the Wakefield man who concocted the salve, still lingers today, as firmly rooted in the region's folklore as the recipe passed down to his granddaughter That salve saved a lot of lives,” explained Bernice Bullen, including my own When I was a little girl I wore a party dress once where the dye came out on my skin. It developed into a rash that the doctor couldn’t cure When my skin started to bleed, I went to my grandpa He put some salve on a bandage and applied it to the sores. After two or three treatments, I was cured ”“Grandpa used to have a lot of men working for him, hauling truckloads of tree pitch out of the woods.” sheadded The recipe has been passeddown to me, but I haven’t used the salve for a while. The ingredients are too hard to gather.”In its day, the Bullen salve was a standard for people in the western end of the Upper Peninsula. Rose Haukkala, a .staff nurse with the Gogebic County Health Department, still runs into folks who swear by it.People still use it for skin lesions or sores chi their feet, but not as much as when I was a little girl,” she said. “Everybody used it then.”
Newspaper Details
Escanaba Upper Peninsula Sunday Times
Escanaba, Michigan, US
Sun, Jul 30, 1978
Page 55
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MI, USA 23 Aug 2021
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