Jitterbugging for Jesus

(For all those brown-skinned children and their nurturers suffering in America.)

In researching my book about the healing (and potentially destructive) power of touch, it occurred to me that Vicks® pharmaceuticals are as iconic as the great American products invented by Henry Ford or Steve Jobs.

Yet chances are you don’t know the name of the Greensboro, N.C. druggist who, in 1890, concocted Vicks® VapoRub in his pharmacy–it and a lot of other healing Vicks products marketed today by Procter & Gamble.

That Greensboro pharmacist was named Lunsford Richardson. His name wouldn’t fit on his famous menthol balm, so he named it after a brother-in-law — Dr. Joshua Vick.

Chances are that when you were a child, your mom or grandma or primary nurturer gave you fast-acting relief from your cold and cough by laying some of that wonderfully gooey Rub on you.

Chances are good that you have it in your medicine cabinet to rub on your children or grandchildren or your spouse or significant other even now.

I don’t know much about the science of how the aromatic, menthol goop works to promote relief of the sinuses and respiratory system. I just know that, to this day, when anybody rubs it on me when I’m laid low with congestion and coughing, the rubbing motion of the hands full of Vicks VapoRub is just as relieving as the menthol aroma.

I’m sure you’d agree that rubbing it on your own chest and neck and facial areas when you’re struggling to breathe just doesn’t have nearly the same relieving effect as someone laying those menthol-cool hands on you.

I moved to Belize six years ago this month. I lived at that time in the ancient Mayan village of Succutz, home of the world famous Xunantunich temple. The temple compound is a full mountain mile above the mighty Mopan River and only five miles from where I live now.

That oil-and-herb concoction in the cosmic-blue jar is so perfect that Mayan healers in Mexico and Central American keep it on hand.

On my first day in old Succutz, I was walking down a trail in the bush and passed by a typical clapboard house with kids and dogs running around a yard that sloped down to a stream.

Beneath a shady mango tree just outside the house, a boy about age 8 was lying flat on his back in his underwear on a blanket. His mother, clad in Mayan threads, was bent over him on her knees and rubbing him. Being the incurably curious creature I am, I strolled up the slope and said hello to the woman, curious about what she was doing.

It turned out she was slowly and methodically massaging the child’s chest, neck and head with that not-so-ancient Mayan salve called Vicks VapoRub.

Mind you, this was a Mayan bush woman who had all kinds of healing herbs and ancient remedies at her disposal to relieve a child’s deep cough and congestion.

And yet she had a jar of the same Vicks VapoRub, with its simple but perfect mix of oils and herbs, that has given me and you and people around the world healing relief since we were babies.

I see the blue Vicks jars in even the most remote villages everywhere south of the U.S. border for three reasons: 1) it’s so effective and 2) it’s oh-so-affordable for even the poorest people I meet and 3) it has a long shelf life.

Such is the power of that great American balm that the nerdy pharmacist Lunsford Richardson stuffed into a now iconic jar that was and is and always will be a soothing cosmic blue in color.

And such is the divine, healing power of touch in a body rub, appropriately rendered.

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Read more about the nerdy pharmacist who invented the world’s most famous healing ointment in Greensboro, N.C.

This is also a good overview if you’re a fellow history buff.