Category Archives: Folk medicine

Armenian Coffee Readings/ Ritual

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 20, 2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Informant- “So when you are done drinking your Armenian Coffee you want to flip the cup away from your body and place it down into the saucer. You wait for the grounds to fall from the bottom of the cup. This is why it is important to use the Armenian style espresso cup which is not rounded on the sides. The grounds fall down the sides of the espresso cup and dry at the bottom. 

So you should never read your own fortune. Thats what my friend, who is a professional Armenian coffee cup reader, tells me. 

Waiting for the coffee to dry is important because it is time to have a conversation with your friends or family. 

So when its ready.. you take a look at your cup. So there are a few things to look out for when you are reading someones cup. 

If you cup sticks to the bottom and is hard to take off, then someone is in love with you! This is what some people believe and it is what my Armenian grandmother told me. I have had many Armenian grandmothers teach me how to read cup and what to look out for. 

So, when you look in your cup the coffee grind will settle at the bottom. You look and interpret what you see. So for example you could see a bird, and that may mean you are about to travel or freedom. You can see an egg or something.

So it is very important to read your cup during the day. You get bad luck if it is read at night. You shouldn’t read you own cup because then you will just see what you want to see. If the cup is very dark and filled with ground then your mind is full. If the cup has clear spots then your mind is at ease. 

Lastly you should hold your cup and think of an intention or wish and then mark the bottom of the cup with your finger.”

Background: The informant learned about the practice of reading the coffee cup from her mother and grandmother. She says it is a fun way to keep traditions. Reading cups is a good bonding experience and has connected her to her parents and grandparents. 

Context: This piece was collected from a video tutorial sent by the informant. Here is the audio transcription describing her experience with coffee readings. In the video she shows the espresso cup used and the different shapes of dried coffee grounds. 

Thoughts: This is a very interesting tradition and fun activity that brings family and friends together. This is an interesting folk practice and belief that is widely believed. She explains her friend who is a professional coffee reader. You can read more about the history of cup reading or  Tasseography in many blogs or academic sources. There are many professions or products distributed surrounding this folk belief. 

A variation of the Armenian coffee reading can be read about here;

Giorgi, Carina Karapetian. “Intuitive Knowledge: The Queer Phenomenology of Armenian Matrilineal Rituals of Tasseography.(Essay).” Armenian Review, vol. 56 -2, no. 1, Armenian Review, Mar. 2018.

Onions to Cure Fevers

Nationality: American
Age: 70
Occupation: Health Care Worker
Residence: Alton, Illinois
Performance Date: 4/28/2020
Primary Language: English

Main piece:

(The following is transcribed from a conversation between the informant and interviewer.)

Interviewer: Do you know any old remedies for- did your mother impart any useful cures onto you?

Informant: Their cure back then for things were like, if you had a high fever… I would get onions, and she’d [informant’s mother] put onions on my wrists and the bottom of my feet and wrap a white cloth around them. T – because the onion would draw out the fever.

Interviewer: That was the belief?

Informant: Uh-huh.

Interviewer: But it – it worked? Would you try that again today?

Informant: No because it never ended up working.

Interviewer: (laughs)

Informant: I had to go to the doctor anyway and get a penicillin shot. But no I had to lay there for a week with onions until they found out the fever wouldn’t break so she would call the doctor and I’d go get a penicillin shot and then I’d feel better.

Interviewer: So how long would you go between changing the onions?

Informant: (laughs) Oh you get em changed every day. You get new onions.

Interviewer: Why do you think that was a thing?

Informant: Because they just had a belief that the onion, you know – you know how onions are stingent? And stuff like that? That that would pull – I don’t know why it had to be on your wrists and the bottoms of your feet. I was just a kid, don’t ask me! I just did what I was told! (laughs)

Interviewer: (laughs) True, true.

Background: My informant was born and raised in southern Illinois to very strict Catholic parents. She has strong Irish and Italian heritage. She grew up quite poor, as a family of farm workers with many siblings.

Context: The informant is my grandmother, and has always had a proclivity for telling stories, jokes, and wives tales. This piece was selected out of many from a recording of a long night of telling stories in a comfortable environment.

Thoughts: Though it apparently was not an effective folk belief, this folk remedy for fevers is quite interesting. It was repeatedly ineffective but the informant’s mother continued to try it, possibly to avoid the costs of medicine even if it meant wasting onions. Given that they were poor, I find that to be a very likely reason, along with the possibility that the informant’s mother was just stubborn – or that her ability to believe in things was strong as is reflected in her devout religiousness. The informant said onions are “stingent” which is not a word but which I believe means to have a strong odor. It is possible that the informant said stringent meaning strict, but that wouldn’t make much sense.

Folk Medicine: Chopped Onions Heal

Nationality: Chinese/Vietnamese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Diamond Bar, CA
Performance Date: 4/26/20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Okay so recently my grandma has started putting bowls of onion around the house, especially with, like, all the new coronavirus stuff. And she’s done this before, but it’s, like, a pretty common thing for, like, Asian people to do when someone is sick because the idea is that, like, the onion is supposed to suck up all the, like, bad stuff in the air.

Interviewer: Okay. So, and this is something that like your grandma does? Um, is it something that your mom does as well? 

Informant: It’s just my grandma.

Interviewer: You think this is like an East Asian thing or like Vietnamese specifically?

Informant: I’m not sure, I just know it’s supposed to “cancel out the virus” or something like that. Chopped onions specifically.

Interviewer: Nice. Yeah, is it in strategic locations or is it just like generally around the house?

Informant: That’s a good question, they’re just around the house. She leaves a bowl in my room when I’m coughing.

Interviewer: That’s funny.

Informant: Yeah, it is. I smelt like onions for like a long time.

Background:

My informant is a friend and fellow student at USC. She was raised in the LA area but her family is ethnically Chinese and immigrated from Vietnam so she has multiple East Asian influences in her life. She saw this exhibited by her grandmother and it’s simply been something that’s part of life when her grandmother stays with her.

Context:

I had set up a Zoom call with my friend because she said she had some examples of folklore that she could share with me. This sample was shared during that call

Analysis:

Some research shows that this is a relatively well known Chinese folk remedy. It finds its origins in ancient Chinese foot reflexology. While modern science does not corroborate the effectiveness of foot reflexology, it was believed that the nerves in the feet were access points to the internal organs and foot nerves have been a large part of Eastern medicine for millennia. Where this links to onions in a bowl is that in the 1500s it was apparently believed that placing chopped onion around the house could help protect from the bubonic plague. Some people, drawing from Eastern foot reflexology, would even put chopped onion in their socks. It seems that my informant’s grandmother is practicing a folk remedy that takes inspiration from both ancient Eastern medicine as well as European, plague-time beliefs.

To read more about this belief, see the following website:

Cafasso, Jacquelyn. “Will Putting Onions in Your Socks Cure the Flu?” Healthline, 17 May 2017, www.healthline.com/health/cold-flu/onion-in-sock.

Folk Belief: Don’t Eat Cold Food while Menstruating

Nationality: Chinese/Vietnamese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Diamond Bar, CA
Performance Date: 4/26/20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Informant: I’m not supposed to eat cold stuff when I’m one my period. Cause it, like, freezes or whatever. I’m not sure, but like apparently it freezes the flow and it makes you be in pain.

Interviewer: And that’s something your mom tells you.

Informer: Yeah that’s right, my mom tells me that.

Interviewer:  Do you know, independently, if that’s, like, true? If there’s scientific merit to that?

Informant: I’m not sure. I’ve never looked it up. Maybe I should have but I didn’t. I just do it. I mean in college, I’ll eat ice cream and stuff and I haven’t felt anything that different because of it but that’s something that my mom would tell me. I’ve asked her why and she just told me that if something was cold it would stop the flow or “freeze” it and that would be bad.

Background:

My informant is a friend and fellow student at USC. She was raised in the LA area but her family is ethnically Chinese and immigrated from Vietnam so she has multiple East Asian influences in her life.

Context:

I had set up a Zoom call with my friend because she said she had some examples of folklore that she could share with me. This sample was shared during that call

Analysis:

Apparently, this is similar to a Chinese old wives’ tale wherein you can eat all the cold things you want for three months but in the next three months you have to intake only warm things. Doing some research, this is a commonly held belief with some sources debunking it, some speaking in favor of it. Personal accounts speak to the accuracy on both sides.

Interestingly, browsing forums such as Quora, the respondents commonly say that the idea is a Chinese one and that they would hear it all the time in China. I suppose it makes sense in a certain way and if it’s been a belief that’s been held for a decently long amount of time before we had a better understanding of how the body works (any cold drink will become body temperature in your stomach very quickly), then I can see how it would continue to be propagated. What Chinese influence is present in this belief I can not say.

Folk Remedy: Ginger Ale, Saltines, and Chicken Noodle Soup

Nationality: African American
Age: 60
Performance Date: April 21, 2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

“Whenever anyone in our household would get sick, it didn’t really matter what kind of sickness you had, or at least that’s what I remember, but whenever you got sick you were immediately put on a diet of chicken noodle soup, saltine crackers, and ginger ale.”

Context:

I collected this piece of folklore during an interview at the informant’s house. My informant is an African American who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. My informant also said that this remedy was used for anything from a fever and a stomach ache to chicken pox and the measles.

My Thoughts:

It is not uncommon in American folklore for chicken soup to be the go-to meal when someone, in particular a child, is sick. Ginger ale is also common to use to help with stomach issues like indigestion. So, both of these foods are widespread in their use as a folk remedy for illnesses. Saltine crackers are also a folk remedy to deal with an upset stomach. All of these foods are meant to help with common illnesses by using food easily accessible instead of buying western medicine which in the case of children, especially young children, these foods may be preferable to giving them over-the-counter drugs. It also may just be less expensive to give them these comfort foods when they are ill.