Old Time Folk Medicine

[nowplayingEDRN]

These are some folk cures for what ails you, according to the UCLA's online folk medicine archive. Obviously, do not try these at home.....Enjoy!

FOR HEADACHES:

-put handful of salt on top of your head

-to cure headache, take a live frog and bind it to your head. let it stay there until it dies.

FOR FEVER:

-to keep baby from getting fever, wipe baby's tongue with soiled diaper

-patient mixes nail parings with a little tobacco in a cigarette, which the patient must drop at a cross roads without looking up. The person who picks up the cigarette and smokes it, will aquire the fever.

FOR CONSITIPATION:

-put feathers in a pot and place hot coal down in it so the feathers will smolder. If you sit on this, it will make your bowels move.

FOR EARACHES:

-hold light bulb close to ear

-insert oil from the ears of a weasel of the same sex as the sufferer

FOR BALDNESS:

-to prevent baldness and make hair grow in thicker, have hair cut by a woman pregnant with first child in the month of March

-(one of my favorites...lol lol lol) massage goose dung into scalp

FOR WHOOPING COUGH:

-eat roasted mouse

-take a small amount of hair from the nape of the child's neck, roll up in a piece of meat and feed to the dog, thus "transferring" the illness to the dog

-tie a house spider up in a piece of muslin and pin over the mantel piece. When the spider dies, the cough will go away

-hold child over the mouth of a coal pit for a change of air.

FOR TEETHING:

-(another favorite....lol lol lol) rub gums with squirrel brains while warm; child will cut teeth without trouble

-mom should bite off the head of a live mouse to keep baby from having trouble while teething

-use Texas six-shooter cartridges as a teething necklace

-have child wear a mole's paw around neck

-sew some red ants in a sack for baby to chew on

-put baby in pig's trough while mother recites the Lord's Prayer backwards.

[sbic56, BSN, RN]

-hold child over the mouth of a coal pit for a change of air.

So that's it. He was just carrying out an old Jackson family tradition. Sorry...I know....I'm BAD. (You know I'm bad

I'm bad - you know it.)

[Dixen81]

Oh, my gosh! Did people really do any of this stuff? Poor babies who had no say in their treatments!

[Glycogen]

:eek:

For real??? I can't believe people actually did this

[AlaskanRN]

Warm Squirrel Brains?!?!?!

Can you say Creutzfeldt-Jakob?!?!?!?

:eek:

[Rapheal]

Originally posted by UntamedSpirit

FOR CONSITIPATION:

-put feathers in a pot and place hot coal down in it so the feathers will smolder. If you sit on this, it will make your bowels move

This would make my hold body move- and real fast too.

[Vsummer1]

My thoughts: HOW DID THEY ACTUALLY THINK OF THESE THINGS?

Gosh thar honey, kid is teething poor mite. How 'bout you try some of them thar brains from that squirrel I just shot?

[nowplayingEDRN]

I dunno if they actually did these things....but all I know is if they did............the child that got their tounge wiped with a dirty diaper has my sympathy. :roll :roll :roll