Category Archives: Folk medicine

Iranian Flu Medicine

Nationality: Iranian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, California
Performance Date: February 18, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

Main Piece

Heat up one whole lemon and 3 garlic cloves until soft and mash with a fork. Strain the mixture and take one spoonful every morning to prevent sickness. 

Background

My informant was born and raised in Iran. She remembers the flu, and how it ravaged through her elementary school. Her mother, to protect her, made a blended concoction consisting of one whole lemon, including the peel and pulp, and three or four cloves of garlic. Because she did not have any kitchen equipment that could properly blend the ingredients together, she resorted to heating up the lemon and garlic until it was soft enough to mash with a fork. After mashing, she would strain the mixture to get rid of any extra-large pieces, and fed one teaspoon-full to my informant every morning before school. My informant adds that she hated the taste but took this “medicine” every morning nonetheless because her mother insisted it would keep her safe. My informant concludes that the medicine must have worked, as she was the only child in her class that did not fall sick with the flu. 

Context

This medicine is made when someone is sick or in danger of falling sick. The purpose is to prevent or cure illnesses. 

My Thoughts

Being born and raised in America and going through the American school system, I never paid much attention to medicinal practices that were not Westernized. When my informant told me about this medicine, I was skeptical and doubted that it would actually be effective. But further upon further research, I discovered that the ingredients used in this recipe contain many natural antibiotics and vitamin C. Therefore, the workings of this folk medicine are completely logical and valid. In America, Western medicine is the widely accepted practice, and most ethnic home remedies are frowned upon. But there is logic to these home remedies, or they would not be so widely used in other countries. Using ingredients such as garlic in folk medicine is an ancient practice. For further information about garlic’s role in folk medicine, see the cited article under the subheading titled “Medicinal History.”

Sources:

Kilham, Chris. “Garlic.” MEDICINE HUNTER | Medicine Hunter, www.medicinehunter.com/Garlic#:~:text=As%20a%20folk%20remedy%2C%20garlic,gastroenteritis%2C%20and%20to%20expel%20worms.&text=The%20father%20of%20medicine%2C%20Hippocrates,and%20for%20healing%20abdominal%20growths. Accessed 18 Feb. 2021.

“Cạo Gió”: Vietnamese Cold Remedy

Nationality: Vietnamese-American
Age: 49
Occupation: Nail Technician
Residence: Iowa
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: Vietnamese
Language: English

Main Piece:

A: Cạo gió là hồi xưa ở Quê, không có biết là– đi bác sĩ, chừng nào nguời ta bị cảm, hay là bị bịnh chút chút… mệt mỏi, chừng thay nhức mỏi, thì lúc đó cạo gió, ngời ta feel better. Nguời ta cảm thấy khỏe lên, đỡ lên. Giống như cào gió cho cái chất dộc ra ngaòi. Cái hơi dộc trong mình nó ra ngaòi. 

  • “Cạo gió” = traditional Vietnamese practice of bruising the skin with some sort of round or hard object by scraping it on the body with medium pressure.
  • “Cạo gió is back then at Quê (city in southern Vietnam), we didn’t know– when someone goes to the doctor, when they have a cold, or when they’re a little sick… tired and sore, when your body is sore and aching, then that’s when you do cạo gió, the person will feel better. People experience that they get better, feel better. It’s like you do cạo gió to remove the harmful properties out of your body. The harmful elements in your body go out.”

Me: How do you do cạo gió?

A: Just xức dầu lên, dầu nóng lên, xong rồi dùng cái penny, cào nó tôi.

  • “Just apply menthol oil on your body, warm menthol oil, then get a penny, and just scrape it.”

Me: Do you have to do a specific shape?

A: (emphatically) Yeah. (gesturing) cào hai đường thẩng xuống, rồi hai bên– cào lên hai bên hông. Xong. Rồi xủc dầu lên. 

  • “Yeah. scrape two vertical lanes down the spine, then on two sides– scrape either side of the lanes. Done. Then apply more menthol oil.”

Background:

My mother is the one telling me this story. She first learned about this practice through her great-grandmother, who performed this on her father and her uncles when they were sick, back when she was a child in Vietnam. Since then, she has performed this on my sibling and me, as well as my father. She believes this to work, and also scrapes her shoulders when they feel sore.

Context:

This is a transcript of our live conversation. My mother was in the process of making dinner (which was phở: Vietnamese rice noodle dish in beef broth) when I asked her about this practice. It has been on my mind since the first day of the lecture when we discussed folk methods of curing colds.

Thoughts:

This practice of scraping the back with menthol oil and a penny is something my mother has done for my sibling and me, and my father whenever we were sick. She mostly did this when my sibling and I were much younger, and I remember not understanding then, what the purpose of this practice was or how it helped. Now, it could be related to a more mainstream practice of cupping, which involves the same method of bruising the body to remove toxins. While this technique is folk medicine and folk practice, it can also be thought of as homeopathic magic. My mother specifically describes how the paths being scraped into the body mimic the body’s toxins’ passageway out of the body.

Haunted House in Indiana- The Funny Man and the Woman with the Red Eyes: Sleep Paralysis and Two Traveling Ghosts, Cured by a Witchdoctor

Nationality: African-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student at FIDM studying fashion design
Residence: 2715 Portland St Los Angeles CA 90007
Performance Date: 2/8/21
Primary Language: English

I first heard this story when I asked the speaker if she had ever seen a ghost, but when she began telling her story I remembered that I had heard parts of this tale before. The speaker told her story in a very matter-of-fact tone and spoke first about her experiences with friendly and unfriendly ghosts. For another example of a ghost legend by this same speaker, search “Haunted Theaters and Ghost Lights” in the USC folklore archive.

*

When the speaker and her twin brother were three years old, they shared a room in Gary, Indiana in a house completely made of brick. “My mom came in [to the children’s bedroom], she had just put us to bed. And then she heard me and my brother laughing. And so she like came back into the room and she’s like, What’s going on here? She’s like, what’s happening? And we’re like, ‘The man, the man. He’s making a funny face.’ And there was nobody there.”

“Was I scared? No, because he was one of the friendly ones of the house,” the speaker said. “He was kind of just there for jokes and like to make children laugh, because apparently, um, his grandchildren died in the house. And he like, died out of grief. And he loved kids. So he would just play with my brother and I [sic] occasionally.”

The speaker said that there were also unfriendly ghosts, and that she had recently gotten rid of one of these malicious specters. ” “They moved with us to Florida. And at first, I didn’t notice because they didn’t approach me. At first, they would just stay in the corner. And I didn’t realize it would always be a really scary woman with two red eyes. And I didn’t know what she was. I thought she was just like, a spirit… But no, she turned out to be worse than I thought.”

The speaker said that she began to experience sleep paralysis and that “I would be screaming, and she’d be attacking me. And I couldn’t move. And I’d wake up with bruises on my arms and my legs because she was sitting on top of me.” She slept with her mother at age 17 because of these nightly attacks. When she returned to her bedroom, she said, ” “I was screaming to save my mom and my brother. But they couldn’t hear me. And then just the woman was just taking my family away from me. And I didn’t like I couldn’t do anything. I was just sitting there. And then again, my mom woke me up screaming, crying in real life. “

The speaker’s Puerto Rican grandfather, Julio, was a witch doctor. “We had to pin a square piece of black cloth underneath my pillow. I don’t know what it was to catch her something like that.” Soon after that she moved to Southern California to attend school, and she hasn’t seen either ghost since.

*

This story was told at night in the kitchen, and three college-age females were present. The speaker said that she was relieved to be rid of the ghosts, and that after her parents’ divorce, she rarely visited the Gary House. She also said that the house was torn apart after the divorce, and that her father would start projects that he wouldn’t complete (for example, fixing the bathroom tub). I think these ghosts may have something to do with the divorce, but I believe that this experience was very frightening for the speaker.

This speaker later scoffed at my mentioning that a friend received therapy when recovering from his parent’s divorce. Her response suggested that children do not need therapy for this life change.

For another example of ghosts stories indicating changes in property ownership or status quo, see the scholarly article “Ghostly Possession of Real Estate: The Dead in Contemporary Estonian Folklore” by Ulo Valk (2006).

The concept of traveling ghosts is certainly frightening, and this story was welcome after a long day’s work.

Pizzica-the original Tarantella

Nationality: Italian
Age: 57
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Bologna
Performance Date: 04/13/2021
Primary Language: Italian

Main piece:

S.C: Pizzica is a dance which draws its origins from our country…from our Southern regions specifically, and it was said that, when women worked in fields, there was the possibility of being bitten by these spiders, these tarantulas, so yeah to alleviate and take the pain of the moment away, these women would start to frenetically dance. 

And it’s a dance which is still performed and it represents a big tradition of our country.

There is also a festival, a really famous festival, which is held in Melpignano every year in late August, called La Notte della Taranta, and it’s a festival which summons various people, who…gather to live all together this moment of joy and freedom…of liberation I would say. 

V.S: Have you ever learnt the steps?

S.C: I tried to learned it many times [laughs], but unfortunately I was never able to. It’s quite complicated, full of little jumps and a…a difficult rhythm to follow. 

Background:

My informant is a 57 years old woman, born in Bologna from Italian parents. However, while her mother was born in Bologna as well, her father came from Apulia, and, for this reason, she spent much of her summer vacations in that particular region, getting to know many of its traditions and folk-pieces. Despite her inability of permitting it, she has always had a sort of sentimental attachment with this practice. 

Context:

I myself knew this folk-dance , and we were in the informants’s house when she mentioned and explained it.   

Thoughts:

Pizzica is one of the various names given to what is most commonly known as Tarantella. The word Pizzica can be translated into the verb “bite”, while the Tarantella or Taranta are terms related to the tarantula, a family of spiders. Other hypothesis claim that the terminology could also derive from the city of Taranto, which is one of the main cities in Apulia, the region in Southern Italy where the dance and ritualist phenomenon is said to have been originated -to be then diffused in all the rest of the Italian South. 

Pizzica fundamentally is a ritual folk dance performed to liberate those who were bitten by spiders while working in fields and in the countryside. It is, indeed, said that the music on which the dancing takes place, which is principally made up of lamenting songs and tambourine’s rhythms, miraculously helped those affected with the bite to free their body from the venom of the animal, which, in the mean time, provoked spasms and agitated movements. As a matter of fact, the dance which is still nowadays performed, presents spasmodic and frantic steps and movements, which are made up of jumps and twirls. In this way, music gained curative and healing properties, and the dance was represented both the effects of the bite and the method through which expelling venom from the organism. 

One of the most interesting aspects is that, especially in historical sources, the majority of the involved parties were women of all ages, which somehow relates this ecstatic performance to the rituals and behaviors adopted by the Bacchantes in ancient Greece. This relation makes more sense if it is considered that Apulia was one of the Greek colonies in ancient Italy, and it wouldn’t be strange for this divinatory practices to having been diffused through …

In present times, pizzica still is one of the main folkloristic traditions of Apulia, which was also translated, since 1998, into an actual festival, which attracts every year hundredth of thousands of spectators and performers. Yes, performers. because, with the live show that professional dancers, musicians and singers provide, everyone in the audience is invited to directly participate, being urged to dance and sing at the rhythm of tambourines!

[Maria Grazia Chiuri, art director of Dior, has made pizzica one of the principal components of 2021 Dior Cruise shows, which took place in Lecce, one of the most important cities in Apulia]

–https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpVCzLQ56yM

–https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5pBRKED0Bc

Potato to cure burns

Nationality: Italian
Age: 89
Occupation: --
Residence: Bologna
Performance Date: 04/07/2021
Primary Language: Italian

Main piece:

L.S.: I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this , but if you have some kind of burn you have to cut a potato and place one half on the injury and….with that the burning sensation goes away and you do not feel the pain anymore. My mother taught me this, and I myself taught it to my friends.

V.S.: Do you know what could be the origin of this practice?

L.S.: No I don’t. I don’t even know where my mother learnt this from. But I am pretty sure it’s something quite ancient. Also, my mother, after applying the potato on the burn used to draw on it with her hands the sign of the cross and recite a sort of prayer. And I remember saying to her “Mum teach me it, so that when I get burned or when my children will get burned, I will know how to do this myself”. And she used to tell me ”No, I cannot tell you it. There is only one day in which I can tell you this….this prayer is taught only one day a year”.

Once she finally told me it, but I do not remember it anymore [laughs].

Background:

My informant was born in the Tosco-Emilian Apennines (Italy) in 1931. While she spent the majority of her childhood there, she moved to Bologna, Italy, when she was about 13, and she has been living there ever since. She told me of practicing this folk-medical remedy still nowadays and she told me of having taught it to her children as well.

Context:

The informant recounted me this while having a tea in her living room.

Thoughts:

Countless are those practices that could be vernacularly defined in Italy as rimedio della nonna, grandmother’s remedy, which match the border genre of folk-medicine and, to a certain degree, folk-magic. 

As my informant points out, these are, in the majority of cases, procedures and costumes which are passed on from generation to generation, and which are difficulty attributable to a single and unique creator. In this way, they perfectly reflect folklore’s definition, them becoming part of what could be described as common knowledge, and distancing themselves from scientific knowledge, which is often characterized by the singularity concerting an individual genius -either of a research group or of a single scientist. 

The reason why this particular folk-medical practice can also be seen as overlapping with contagious magic is due to the fact that, as the informant recounts, the usage of a potato in order to cure a burn was often associated with a prayer and ‘religious touch’(cross sign), involving some sort of spiritual power acting on the wound. This tells a lot about the identity Italians used to share, particularly in the past, which saw a quite strong attachment to religion, and, especially, Catholicism. Furthermore, the emphasis my informant put on the secrecy of the prayer’s words, makes another aspect emerge, which is the one of generational division and shamanic authority adults were invested with in those sorts of small rituals. 

This practice is still, nowadays, performed, but, as many of the other grandmother’s remedies, is slowly losing adherence and utilization, leaving more space to ‘proved’ science.