Imagine it is 1870. You are a Norwegian immigrant with a wife, two small children and a third nearly due. The journey from Norway was long and hard but you made it. You took a homestead in Tumuli Township and are ready to fulfill the American dream. Nothing can stand in your way.

One cold rainy March night one of the children becomes ill with a hacking cough and fever. You turn to your wife who knows what to do when the kids get sick, but realize she doesn’t look very well either. And then it dawns on you that the newest member of the family is about to be born! You are miles from the nearest neighbor or doctor. What do you do?

Scenes like this were common as pioneers had to develop their own means of survival. Most families had a working knowledge of home remedies but for cases they could not handle they called upon a healer who was skilled in folk medicine.

Tumuli pioneer Olava Wick was one of those healers. In addition to being a mid-wife she specialized in concocting salves and lotions to heal cuts, abrasions and other serious wounds.

When Civil War veteran Mathias Halvorson became caught in the great blizzard of January 1873, he walked for two days and a night until finally reaching his home. Several days later a doctor from Fergus Falls made it to the cabin where he said Mathias legs were too damaged, they would have to be amputated. Unwilling to accept this, Mathias and his wife sought out Olava Wick. Using her homemade remedies, Olava treated Mathias for days. The treatments worked as his legs improved. The only problem was Olava could not save the toes of one foot, they had to come off. She made a homemade saw by chiseling teeth into a piece of wire from a hoop skirt. With no anesthetic or even liquor to dull the pain, Olava proceeded to insult Mathias to the point that he became so mad he forgot about his foot. At that point she took the homemade saw to his toes. A few weeks later he was back at work on the farm.