Bold hives

Lore & Background

Bold hives was described as an eruptive skin disease and/or a croup-like lung disease, but could also present no symptoms at all, with death always coming during the night. A missionary nurse in western North Carolina wrote in 1907 that among diseases of early infancy was hives, to which errors of diet were attributed, including a severe form called boll-hives where no hives break out but the baby dies and turns black in spots, which she presumed was cerebro-spinal meningitis. The condition was not the same as urticaria.

To prevent death, newborns were 'hived' with tisanes of catnip, ground ivy, mullein, hive vine, deerberry, or other substances. Other treatments included bloodletting, cupping, paregoric, whiskey mixed with coal oil or asafoetida, roasted onion broth, skillet-bark tea, mashed sow bugs mixed with breast milk, and poultices of pasture manure. One method involved making slits in the shoulder and using a heated horn to draw blood, which was believed to be the cause of the hives.

The term may have been a corruption of 'bowel hives,' a disease appearing in early Scottish medical textbooks, pronounced in old Scottish dialect as 'bull hives,' which then morphed into bold hives. The novel Hunter's Horn by Harriette Arnow, set in Tennessee, depicts a theory of bold hives going back to ancient beliefs in possession by evil spirits, presuming every child is born with a potentially fatal 'something' that must be expelled by producing hives before one month of age.

Reader's Guide

Bold hives represents a significant example of folk illness in American medical history, particularly within the Appalachian South and among Black Americans. Its importance lies in how it illustrates the intersection of traditional beliefs, infant mortality, and the interpretation of unexplained deaths. Folklorists have noted that the condition likely served as a cultural explanation for sudden infant death syndrome, providing a framework for understanding and attempting to prevent infant deaths that had no obvious cause. The variety of treatments—from herbal tisanes to bloodletting and poultices—reflects the desperation and resourcefulness of communities facing high infant mortality without access to modern medicine. The persistence of these beliefs into the 20th century is documented by a 1983 account of an infant in Michigan being given multiple bottles of catnip tea daily, leading to poor caloric intake and failure to thrive, because the mother was concerned about the absence of 'little red hives.' The term's possible Scottish origins and its appearance in literature further underscore how folk illnesses can travel and evolve across cultures and generations. Bold hives thus offers insight into how communities construct medical knowledge in the absence of scientific explanations, and how such beliefs can have real consequences for health practices.