Tag Archives: general

Folk Medicine

A common household fix for back pain.

When my mother was little my grandmother and the same for my father, would take a regular drinking glass, heat it with a match, then slam it down on the part of the back that was in pain. This was said to suck the pain out of the area for immediate relief. This is something I had never heard of until discussing folklore with both of my parents in which they both agreed that this is what their mothers would do because someone somewhere had told them it would work and take away back pain. I’m sure this method could be used other places than just the back but this is where it was usually used.

Folk Medicine

Since my grandmother has been a nurse all her life, she somehow managed to learn numerous home remedies and folk medicine that she swears by to this day that she also learned from her mother which seem to work better than modern medicine for some.

One of the more interesting remedies she seems to go by involves earaches. She believes that if you have an earache what you need to do is blow cigarette smoke into the infected ear and it is supposed to help the ear heal quicker. This is one of the craziest folk remedies I’ve ever heard of to date, it seems that cigarette smoke would hurt the ear because of the chemicals but maybe there is some ingredient that helps ears.

Folk Medicine

My grandmother explained to me that when you get a bee sting, to soothe the area and to stop the itching and swelling, you must put mud on it. She learned this from her mother who used to put this on the children whenever they had itchy areas and bee stings. It is also supposed to draw the stinger out .

 

Folk Medicine

An old way of getting rid of a cough, cold, or congestion is something my mother used to do for me when I was little. You make a mustard plaster from dry mustard, water and flour. You are supposed to rub it on your chest and it makes you sweat so you can get better faster.

I had also never heard of this before my grandmother telling me about it but after looking it up online I found that it is a commonly known folk medicine belief. There are many websites that explain what happens and how this remedy works.

Superstition

An old superstition.

My mother always warned me that if I ever spilt salt on the table I had to pick some up with my right hand and throw it over my left shoulder or else I would be getting in a fight with someone soon.

Although this is a common superstition and I always make sure to throw the salt over a crossed shoulder, I always thought it was because it was bad luck not to. Nobody had ever really explained to me why people in my family did it other than that is what we were supposed to do. After speaking with my grandma about learning it from my great grandma, it makes much more sense why people believe in it so wholeheartedly. Also, after learning why some people did it, I thought that this was an interesting twist on people’s reasoning for acting on this specific superstition.