Butch Says Don’t Use Those Old Time Remedies!

   In an earlier column, I listed a few of the “home remedies” my folks used…placing turpentine on cuts, making me swallow a spoonful of Vicks Vapo-Rub for a sore throat, fixing chicken noodle soup for colds, rubbing kerosene on chigger bites…well, you get the idea. I survived. I’m glad they didn’t try the real “old-time” remedies from the 1800s. Some of those were very, very strange, and here are a few….

   (1) For asthma, mix one tablespoon of salt in a cup of vinegar, and swallow a spoonful every 10 seconds until gone.

   (2) If a child suffers from anemia, have them eat raw liver and drink fresh blood.

   (3) To cure a headache, cut the child’s hair and leave it under a rock, and then place the scissors under their pillow for the night.

   (4) For a bee sting, have someone who chews tobacco spit on it…or mix honey with a ground-up wasp nest and rub it on.

   (5) For earaches, have someone blow smoke into the ear 10 times and say, “Hurt, hurt, go away. Go into a bale of hay.”

   (6) For recurring nosebleeds, take a piece of string and tie nine knots in it. Then pour a bucket of cold water over their head every day for nine days.

   (7) If a child gets ringworm, find a girl with black hair and have her remove her right shoe. Then have the girl rub her big toe over the ringworm for one minute. The ringworm will disappear in a week.

   (8) For warts, mix baking soda and camphor, apply it to the wart, and cover with a bandage. The wart will disappear in three days.

   (9) For measles, brew tea from sheep manure and drink it after it has been strained.

   (10) To cure chicken pox, have the child lie down and make live chickens fly over him.

   (11) If a child stutters, hit him in the mouth with a chicken gizzard.

   (12) For whooping cough, place a container of fresh chicken droppings under the child’s bed.

   (13) If a child starts losing his hair, smear his head with fresh cow manure for several days

   (14) For boils, apply meat fat, raw potatoes, or sauerkraut to bring the boil to a head.

   (15) For an ingrown toenail, tie a lizard’s liver onto a leather string and tie this around their ankle.

   (16) If a child has a “kink” in his neck muscle, take him to the hog pen and have him rub his neck on the fence in the same spot the hog does.

   (17) For hiccups, have them hold their arms over their head and tell them to pant like a dog.

   (18) To cure mumps, tie a black sock around the child’s neck and a red cloth around his waist.

   (19) If a child has poor eyesight, you don’t have to buy glasses for them. Just pierce their ears. That will do it.

     (20) And finally, if a child keeps having nightmares, make them sleep with a Bible under their pillow.

   Suffice it to say…DO NOT TRY ANY OF THESE OLD-TIME REMEDIES….I am certainly happy that I did not grow up in the 1800s. If my parents tried those crazy treatments, I would have seriously considered running off and hitching a ride on the orphan train. If that wasn’t possible, I would have grabbed that Bible from under the pillow and prayed every night that my parents take me to a real doctor. I’m sorry, but there is no way I would eat raw liver…or drink blood and sheep manure tea!

John “Butch” Dale is a retired teacher and County Sheriff. He has also been the librarian at Darlington the past 36 years, and is a well-known artist and author of local history.