Emily Weber
Topic 1
Older Remedies
Your head is burning up as your mother goes to fetch the thermometer. The flu medicine appears to be lowering the temperature of your forehead as the bubbles from the ginger ale soothes your stomach. These cures haven’t been around here forever in fact people who lived before all the many verities of medicine had different ways to solve their sickness problems.
Before any of us were born in about the 1800’s they had some treatments that people now a days might consider gross. If you had a sore throat doctor’s would put a frog in your mouth. The pee from the frogs would soothe your sore lungs. One sickness you would not want to have is whooping cough. Their remedy for that disease was to bring the ill to a hole at night. They would stick the sick persons in the hole to help the illness go away. One more olden day solution is when ever you were sick the doctors would either cut your skin or a have a leech suck out your “bad blood”. Aren't you glad you do have a frog in you thoart?
Now zooming in to only about 70 years ago my grandfather shared some information with me about his child hood experiences. Starting off easy he first explained “There were no vitamins at that time. However there were some old wives tales that Cod Liver Oil would ward off almost any ailment that might befall you. Every day after lunch I would walk a mile home from school and my mother would give me a large tablespoon of this Cod Liver Oil. I would smell like fish all day.”
Apart from receiving vitamins there were far more dangerous virus traveling through towns and homes. My grandfather ended up catching whooping cough, the measles, the chicken pox, scarlet fever, and others that he has claimed to have forgotten. “ Having no vaccinations we ended up catching what ever came along,” explained my grandfather. Why my grandmother had a severe bronchitis attack when she was little. She had to stay home for a month with a vaporizer in her room to recover.
Some of these diseases were very contagious such as whooping cough and scarlet fever. The health department would come to the house and place a sign reading “QUARINTINED” on both the front and back door to warn that someone in the house was suffering from a dangerous disease.
Now returning to my Grandfather he explained, “My mother had a very simple solution to general illnesses. If the ailment was in the upper body region, which resulted to coughs, wheezes, and other respiratory afflictions then a thick layer of “VICKS VAPORUB” was applied just before bedtime. Whenever the lower region of the body were affected such as stomachaches or other miscellaneous pains then the treatment would result to an injection.
So now aren’t you grateful about the technology in our treatments that we have today. So next time you are sick, be happy when your mother comes over and takes you’re temperature.
Special thanks to my Grandfather, who was the source of my information!
Update: 2003/01/25 04:47:59
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