Cabbage medicine

Informant: TF was born and raised in Villa Park, California. His father works in commercial real estate and his mother working as a manager for Choc Hospital. He has one older brother, a twin sister, and one younger brother. TF is half Lebanese and strongly connected to his Lebanese background. He is a first year student at USC. The informant heard this type of medicine from his grandmother who used this kind of medicine all the time when she was a child.

In the beginning of this semester a friend injured his knee. He fell on it while carrying heavy weight. The next day he came to practice and his knee was all swollen. He told us what happened and than my informant TF suggested to put cabbage on it. Both my friend and I were confused thinking he must be messing with us, but then he explained:

“Cabbage is used to reduce the swelling. If you hit or injure yourself, you can remove the swelling and bruises with the help of this old folk medicine. Just wrap around two cabbage leaves onto the beaten spot.”

This folk medicine sounded really strange. Putting a vegetable on your swollen knee will make the swelling go away sounds ridiculous at first, but if the cabbage leaves are able to absorb the fluids it would reduce the swelling and in that case it makes perfect sense. Of course our friend didn’t try this method, but it is an interesting method and if it happens again I would like to try it and see if it works.