Not many years ago, some healers from the Pyrenees region would walk dozens of kilometers to bring herbs and healing products to the surrounding farmhouses.
The profession of trementinaire is already history, even if it is not written. And the fact is that these women never left any written testimony that would prove that this profession really existed. Everything we know about it and their work has come to us by oral transmission, through the memories of the people of the area, especially the daughters and granddaughters of trementinaires, and of the people from outside the valley who saw them pass by or who hosted them in their homes.
That is why I am interested in recovering them and spreading the old female trade of trementinaire from my blog, an exercise in wisdom resulting from popular tradition.
The demographic pressure of the mid-19th century caused the seasonal exodus of many men and women from these valleys to richer areas. And it was in this context of social dismemberment that many women from the valley dedicated themselves to extracting from this harsh and thankless land a means of survival. Walking and loaded with herbs and oils, they would go "healing and curing all ills" through Catalan lands. So it seems that it was in the mid-19th century when the first journeys of the trementinaires began; in fact, collective memory has no record of the existence of this occupation before 1875.
The knowledge of plants, their medicinal virtues and the processes of making ancestral remedies, acquired through oral transmission, were, among others, the factors that motivated them to practice this new profession.
This trade absorbed most of the female population of the valley for more than a hundred years.
They would travel once or twice a year and could be away for anywhere from a few days to four months. Most of the trementiaires always followed the same route, as the people of most of the farmhouses they visited were their customers year after year. They did not usually go into the big cities or frequent the markets to sell their remedies, as they used a more personal and direct relationship with the people.
Of all the remedies that the turpentine sellers sold, the most sought-after product was undoubtedly turpentine. For this reason, outside the valley, people called the street vendors turpentine sellers. (We could translate this as “turpentine sellers”, although, as it was a trade that only developed in Catalonia, there is no known official translation.)
The original process of making turpentine begins with the extraction of the resin of the Scots pine. Once purified, it is ready to use. Its appearance, when cold, is solid, crystalline and dark. The known composition is that of a turpentine reworked from raw materials purchased from drugstores —Greek glue— and from pharmacies —essence of turpentine.
Each turpentine maker thus manufactured his own turpentine, and it could be found in different textures, colors and fluidity. The most frequent use given to turpentine was in the form of a patch to be applied to the affected area. Turpentine patches were widely used against pain, bumps and sprains. It was also useful for curing spider and viper bites, ulcers and major infections, as well as against colds.
Although many of these women were illiterate, the Trementinaires had all the necessary knowledge in their heads. Emília Llorens, one of the few witnesses still living, accompanied Maria Majoral, her grandmother, on her travels from the age of seven to sixteen. Emília remembers that her grandmother always knew what to recommend in each case.
One of the most surprising aspects of this profession is its nomadic component. The trementinaires traveled on foot over vast territories, from the Lavansa valley to the flat lands of the interior and the coast, to sell their remedies. In some cases they even reached the coastal strip, and there are testimonies that indicate that they had sold herbs at the Fira de Sant Ponç in Barcelona.
Source: A drawer turned
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