Every once in a while I get these things in my email – I’m sure you get them, too – blaring headlines announcing new medical discoveries that will change your life. The discovery usually involves something like “drinking water” in a therapeutic manner, which they’ll be glad to share with you for a low monthly fee…
Sometimes, though, one such notice will catch my eye, because Granny, Auntie Lillie, The Other Nonna and many other of my elder female relatives were well-versed in folk medicine and “old wives tales” and they passed some of their ways on to me. Over the years I have found that yes, these “old cures” often work.
I’ll share a few of them with you, with the qualifier that I am not recommending these treatments to anyone, I’m not saying you should use them or try them, and would probably recommend that you do not try them, unless the tradition also exist within your own family. Folk medicine is not for everyone! 
1) The Toddy: To sweat out a fever, lace a cup of tea liberally with honey and whiskey. If a kid won’t drink it, try #2:
2) Smother the bottoms of the feet with Vicks Vap-O-Rub and put heavy socks on them. Believe me, you’ll sweat.
3) For “swollen glands”: Smear Vicks Vap-O-Rub on the throat and wrap a clean white sock around the neck.
(For some reason Vicks Vap-O-Rub and white socks played a large part in our family’s health in early-mid 20th century. Must have been a hell of a marketing campaign.)
4) For toenails renedered ugly by fungal infection: Smear toenails with (yes, you guessed it) VVOR, twice a day, morning and evening. It will not kill the fungus, which lives under the nail bed, but it will make the toenails very presentable and pretty. This really works.
5) To prevent infection on a minor scrape or wound, first cleanse the wound thoroughly with soap and water, pat dry and then cover the wound with honey (or a honey and light-garlic mix) and cover with a bandage. Bacteria does not grow in honey and garlic is also an antibacterial.
Getting back to the “wellness” emails, I got one today espousing the efficacy of olive oil in fighting inflammation, and it rang a bell. When my kids were little they were very prone to ear infections and I was leery of them living their earliest years on constant antibiotics, so I went to the well of my ancestors and found a remedy involving olive oil in which a tiny bit of garlic juice has been warmed. It works almost like a “mustard plaster” but on a very small scale…I would put a few drops of the unction onto a bit of cotton and do the “cotton in the ear” thing, replacing with a fresh “plaster” every few hours.
I remember trying this on a weekend when my choices were an uncomfortable kid or a midnight emergency room visit. The warmth immediately soothed (and probably helped dilate the Eustachian tube), garlic is a natural infection fighter, and oil is an ancient healing “delivery system”. When I followed-up that Monday and took my son to the pediatrician she pronounced his ears quite fine. She of course doubted he’d ever had an infection, but I was familiar enough with the signs, (fever, misery, tugging the ear) that I was and remain pretty confident that there was an infection and that the folk remedy worked.
I used this treatment with some frequency on my Elder Son, less so with Buster, who had strenuous objections to putting things in his ear. Buster, however, always responded well to the “antiseptic” baths I would put together for him when he seemed a little “chesty” – basically a warm bath in which I mixed a few drops of pure (not synthetic) essential oils: lavender oil, a drop or two of eucalyptus or pine and perhaps a drop of bergamot.
Clearly this stuff is not for everyone – and you have to be really, really careful anytime you’re using essential oils because they can be toxic in some amounts (and they can lead to dehydration) – but I’m willing to learn and do some research, and I’m open to the idea that Olive Oil can help inflammation…and wondering how it might help my arthritis. Perhaps the oil mixed with a bit of yarrow oil and massaged in….hmmmm…
What folk remedies does your family rely on?
I’ve heard Windex works great on pimples.
Vinegar. Usually apple cider vinegar. It works on sunburns– it stings, but after that, it doesn’t have that hot ache and it doesn’t peal as badly. It’s also good for a monthly hair rinse– make sure you keep it out of your eyes and rinse it very well!– and for foot funk.
Oh, and mom used it to boost her system when she was going through chemo– she’d have a 1/4 cup in a big cup of water. She claimed it helped.
I have used clove oil for ear aches before. And I have also used a piece of raw potato to draw out a splinter or anything else buried in the skin.
Have you tried magnets for your arthritis? I had very bad pain in my wrist a couple of years ago – couldn’t even use a stapler, for example – and I was having lunch with a relative. She noticed the bandage around my wrist and I noticed what looked like a really attractive bracelet around hers. She gave me her bracelet (turned out it was a necklace) made up of tiny magnets and pretty stones and twisted it around my wrist – honestly, I had no belief that it would do any good, yet within days the pain was reduced by some 80% and within a few months, I was forgetting to put on the bracelet because my wrist no longer hurt and my strength had pretty much returned. I don’t know why, but it definitely did work for me. If the pain is in an area that can be covered with magnets, but not a necklace or bracelet, there are sites on the web were you can buy magnetic pads.
Good luck.
p.s. I love your point of view and greatly appreciate the honor you give our President. You are generally original and compassionate.
p.p.s. I was just ecstatic to discover that you, too, are enamored with Georgette Heyer. I just bought two of her books from Amazon through your website.
God Bless you.
My mom is 84 now, but she remembers her grandmother’s method of treating infected cuts: a small piece of bread(probably homemade)was moistened, placed on the cut, and wrapped completely in a bandage. Ta-Da! Infection gone in a day or two. Irish-American penicillin?
Look out, Claire Fraser!
I always say that rubbing alcohol that solve any (external) problem.
Pregnant Italian-American ladies should take a tablespoon of olive oil daily to ensure that Baby will be healthy and have clear skin and good hair.
If you’re feeling tired and weak, eat only bananas, rice and beef for a week. (This is a Latin American cure-all.)
If you’ve got a cold in your head or chest, go sit in the sauna for an hour. Keep adding water to the rocks until you want to sink to the floor. And don’t forget to bring a handkerchief. (This is from the Finnish side of my family.)
Use diaper rash ointment (the kind with zinc oxide) on pimples that are red. It will dry them out and not leave a scar.
Rub warts with alcohol spirits or disinfectant. Then rub them with half a potato. Bury the potato by moonlight and your warts will go away. Or, even better, get Grandpa O’Rourke to buy your warts for a dollar. By your next birthday, they will be gone. (These actually work – except on plantars warts.)
Good to see you extolling the benefits of olive oil. Please emaphasize that on no accouns should readers substiture canola oil, which is poisonous in large amounts and has deleterious effects.
I use Melaleuca Oil to cure a variety of ailements. After giving birth to all 4 of my children, I used 2 drops of melaleuca oil in my episiotomy bottle which healed that very nicely and quickly. Also, when I cut my fingertip in my tablesaw, I put the oil on my finger. It hurt like the dickens for about 5 minutes but then I couldn’t feel any pain and it had been throbbing before then. Dr. had said I probably wouldn’t have feeling in that finger again but I do! The oil also works great for yeast infections. Use about 2-3 drops mixed with water and rinse. Clears it up in about a day! Another alternative is to use acidopholus capsules…just insert one or two once or twice a day till it clears up.
For ear infections, I use Wally’s ear oil…has melaleuca oil in it! w/in 24 hours ear infection is gone! Follow directions on bottle.
For poison ivy, use jewelweed soap. Rinse off in cool water, lather with the soap and wait 30 sec. rinse and repeat. If blisters haven’t formed you won’t get the rash! IF they have, than it will take washing with the soap 2-3x a day for a few days to do the trick. If you wash with the soap before going out into the woods and than after you return you should be fine as well. Must be pure jewelweed soap though or it won’t work (at least it doesn’t for me…)
Clove is good for toothaches.
I love the smell of bergamot. Bath and Body Works used to (they still might) make a lotion with bergamot in it that smells divine.
I add a few drops of lavender to the nightly bath for the Little Guy. It helps relax him for bedtime.
Put a couple (or three or four) cups of uncooked rice in a clean sock and sew up the open end. Then microwave for a couple of minutes. This becomes a cordless, moldable, weighty, heating pad. Wonderful around the neck for neck and shoulder tension. Wonderful on the lower abdomen to alleviate gas or cramping.
a tall glass of Guinness, cures what ailes ya…
on another note, i actually believe i will have to stop reading some blogs i have visited for years, because they are vilifying this President on a more vapid level than i ever imagined today.
golly gee, isn’t that what a responsible leader does when confronting a problem?
tries to fix a mess, with some belief about how it needs mending?
and continues to try, even when all hope is lost?
the vicious expression from those so-called sane forces of responsibility, have posted pictures of GW as a Vampire, sucking the blood from Lady Liberty.
that surely will solve the illegal immigration troubles!
some of these types, deserve a Hillary Presidency…
Vitamin E, for warts. When I was a kid, I suddenly developed large warts all over my hands. We tried freezing them off, wart removers, etc, nothing worked without hurting like crazy, and the warts always came back. My mom got a bottle of Vitamin E capsules; just before bed, she’d prick a capsule with a pin, and cover my warts with the oil. Then I’d put on rubber kitchen gloves and go to sleep. In about a week, all the warts were gone, with no side effects whatsoever!
Be careful with those magnets. If you tend to have reverse side-effects (like me; anything that has the side effect of raising the blood sugar actually LOWERS mine), they may not work. I tried a friend’s magnets, and they actdually made my arthritis pain WORSE!
As for my own remedy – I won’t call it a folk remedy, because I don’t know if it has any history. It’s one I discovered myself last year. I suffer from acid reflux (major heartburn). I also happen to LOVE cinnamon. I’ll eat the stuff straight from the jar. One afternoon, several hours after doing this, I had what should have been a heartburn-inducing reflux, and all that happened was that I got a very pleasant cinnamon taste. So now I routinely eat a spoonful three or four times a day – And the spoon I use is a demitasse spoon, which is about a quarter to a half a teaspoon.