People come from miles around to sample "Sander's Medicine".
Celeste's grandfather, Tom Sanders was known as the old Indian Herb Doctor and he created the herbal tonic. His father taught him the use of medicinal herbs. He lost nine of his fifteen children in infancy and this spurred him on to learn more about medicine. He never claimed to be a doctor but his reputation grew swiftly as an herbalist.

He had a clinic on the hill above me and Celeste told me that the paying customers went to the front door and the non paying customers came in the back door.

According to written accounts, his first healing was an infant in a wagon train in l904. At that time, doctors and drugstores were few and far between. When people became sick they depended on herbs and other home remedies.

Celeste tells me that Granpa Sanders could tell you what was wrong with you by looking at you and in the beginning there was no charge for the diagnosis or the medicine. Eventually his reputation spread and it became a full job.
He then began to charge a dollar a dose. He has been dead for years but the business goes on. It is now approved by the Food and Drug Administration and has been converted to a powder.

It has the reputation of being extremely vile tasting and has sort of become a last resort for cancer patients. My friend, Celeste takes it faithfully and insists that her relatives do so also. This was sort of like the first health food store. A friend of mine who went to M. D. Anderson cancer center in Houston was told about it as a good dietary supplement. It is still sold locally in Richards Drug Store and at the Sander's Lab. You hear about it a lot in this part of rural Oklahoma and there are some miraculous cures attributed to it.