Remedies We'd Rather Forget

Check Cures at the Door

MY FATHER was born in County Sligo, Ireland, and his grandmother was a kind of herbal healer for their village. So when my sister came down with a very bad cold, he hung a necklace of garlic on her and sent her off to school with me. Naturally, we were not the most popular students waiting in line outside school.

The nuns at St. Paul’s Catholic School in New York City were all from Ireland. Mother Superior always checked us all out before we entered, and she didn’t bat an eye upon seeing my sister. She very nicely removed the necklace and told my sister that she’d return it to her after school with a note for my father. Mother Superior knew where Dad was born and respected the old beliefs; she just didn’t want them practiced in her school.

I never did find out what Mother Superior wrote, but evidently it was fine with my dad, for my poor sister didn’t have to wear that garlic necklace again.

—Helen Gallucci, Titusville, Florida

Getting Your Worms Out

SOMETIMES when I’d get out of hand as a child in the late 1940s, Mom would take me to Grandma’s to “take the meanness out of me.”

Grandma would smear a paste made from flour and water onto my upper right arm with a circular motion. In the meantime, Mom sharpened the straight razor on Grandpa’s strap.

Grandma would proclaim how many worm heads she saw in the paste on my arm—of course, we could see them, too—and scrape them off with a few proficient strokes of the razor, thus removing the cause of my rowdiness.

It was unbelievable how good I became for extended periods of time. Grandma, in her own way, was a child psychologist of the era, and her wisdom was never questioned.

—Robert Stone, Helotes, Texas

Strangulation and Poisoning

ONE REMEDY for mumps was to tie a red silk cord around the neck. Supposedly, the swelling would not go below the cord.

In my husband’s school, anyone who had a cough or sore throat went to the nurse’s office, where there was a large jar of Vicks VapoRub. You took two fingers full of the compound, opened your mouth, placed it on the tongue and swallowed. Soon there would be no cough.

Another treatment for chest congestion or a cough was kerosene mixed with sugar. I think we just got better rather than be treated again.

—Doranna Maxwell, Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey

These remedies are shared for fun and are not recommended for use.