Tag Archives: cold medicine

Drinking Whiskey Cold Medicine

Text: Remedy for a cold or tickle in the throat. They say, you mix really boiling water with whiskey and you’ll get cleared out in a day or two. 

Context: Informant is from a part of South India. Where she says they are well known for drinking whiskey. She says there isn’t really an age range, and was served alcohol at a bit of a young age, though with kids there is definitely more water than whiskey. 

Analysis: This is an example of folk medicine. Where they use a substance that is known to be an assault on the senses to clear those senses. K said the whiskey is usually strong, which makes me think that the burn of the alcohol is important and quite likely part of the point since this remedy seems to be for sicknesses relating to the throat, almost like how rubbing alcohol is used for wounds. By adding the hot water it connects to other forms of folk medicine like tea or inhaling steam. Temperature is usually important when caring for the sick, a cold is quite literally called a cold, thus hot water is the opposite.

Fideo

Text: Recipe for a soup made when your sick.

Ingredients: 

  • Noodles; Traditionally you use Fideo noodles but they can be any noodles
  • Oil, usually like vegetable oil
  • Tomato sauce – Informant’s family specifically swears by Del Monte tomato sauce, the mini ones, which you can get at smart and final for 99 cents.
  • Chicken broth
  • Optional: Bouillon cube
  • Large amount of garlic salt – informant’s family usually uses McCormick
  • Pepper
  • Worcestershire sauce
  • Optional Lemon juice and Tapatillo

Recipe: Traditionally you use fideo noodles but they can be any noodles. You put noodles in a pan with oil and fry the noodles a little bit, so they’re a little bit browned, and then you add tomato sauce enough of that to cover the noodles. You stir it, to make sure all the noodles are coated, and then after that, you eyeball an amount of chicken broth to add. It’s like vaguely double the amount of noodles that you have, like it has to cover noodles, but however much broth you want, you add the chicken broth. If you want, you can add a Bouillon cube that makes it taste really good. And then you add an eyeballed large amount of garlic salt. The Informant’s usual rule of thumb is to put in a decent amount and then when they think that it’s enough, then they add a little bit more and then they’re done. And then also pepper, and you stir it all together. You wait until it boils, and then once it boils, you shut off the heat, you cover it, and you leave it for 15 minutes. After that, it’s ready to serve. Their family traditionally serves it with worcestershire sauce in it. The Informant also thinks it’s really, really good with lemon juice and tapatio. That’s usually what they make if I’m sick and then it clears out my sinuses. 

Context: The Informant, 21, white with Mexican heritage, lives in Southern California, learned this recipe from their mom and grandmother. Though they’re pretty sure people in their family have been making it longer than that and assume it came from their great grandmother, their grandmother’s grandmother, who was the matriarch of the family and and from Mexico, where the informant assumes she learned it. The informant remembers “making it as a kid. My grandmother used to pick me up from preschool and she would take me back to her house and I would help her make Fideo, and then I would go, and I would sit, and I would watch Sesame Street, and then when it was done, she would bring me a bowl of, uh, a Fideo when I would sit there and watch PBS kids. So like Sesame Street and Zoboomafoo and Bob the Builder and all of the like. All the, all the old uh, things. And so, yeah, and then anytime I was sick, my grandma or my mom would make it for me. My grandma calls it Mexican penicillin. Um, cause it makes you feel better whenever you’re sick.”

Analysis: This soup is folk medicine and the process of making it can be thought of as a low context ritual. Rituals, especially in regards to folk healing rituals often include a narrative, I believe part of the narrative that gives this medicine it’s power is the process of someone lovingly making it for you, it is the heartwarming memory that the informant has of their grandmother or mother making this soup by that gives it its power. Even if they make it by themselves it still has that memory association, to the process and the taste. As Kaptchuk says, it has a ‘could be’ dimension to the healing through this tradition and memory.

Taking a closer look at the ingredients of this recipe the base ingredient is chicken broth which has its relation to the to chicken noodle soup, a very common recipe to bring when someone is sick. The addition of garlic salt is also interesting given garlic’s preestablished presence in folklore. We repeat these ingredients in folklore because they are familiar. We also see bricolage in the optional ingredients, lemon juice and tapatio, that the informant adds in at the end, this is a traditional recipe but it also gets personalized.

Citations: Kaptchuk, Ted J. “Placebo Studies and Ritual Theory: A Comparative Analysis of Navajo, Acupuncture and Biomedical Healing.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 366, no. 1572, June 2011, pp. 1849–58. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0385.