Tag Archives: folk medicine

Steam Inhalation in Asian Medicinal Practices

Main Piece:

Informant: Essentially, it’s where you take a pot of water, and you put some herbs… Herbs mainly found in a lot of Asian stores or Asian medicinal stores, and you would boil it… And then you would take the pot, you set it on the ground, and then you either sit on the floor or take a stool…

Me: And, I think I know where you’re going with this: You take a blanket or some type of sheet, you put it over the pot and your own head, and you kinda lean your face down over the pot, right?

Informant: Mhm, yeah. And you just sit there for as long as you want. Usually like ten minutes. And just like steam with the herbs… I personally never used it before… but whenever I see our parents use it, they usually do this when they feel sick. So, it’s like an at home remedy.

Me: I would assume for sinuses, congestion… I have engaged in this type of facial steaming.

Context:

This was performed over FaceTime call with my older sister, a junior majoring in Kinesiology at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her and I are both in our respective bedrooms, and it is late at night. I asked her to speak about this steaming practice we had in our family.

Analysis:

This is very similar to other folk medicine practices, especially sauna rooms. Perhaps, this evolved from other steaming practices in America, Europe, and/or Japan. As opposed to a full body steaming, this is really just for the face. This concept may seem “foreign” to others outside of Asian countries, but this was actually a practice I was very familiar with. Therefore, I didn’t recognize it as folklore because I thought everybody did it. I started asking my roommates and my friends and was absolutely dumbfounded! This at home remedy for sinuses and congestion has become cross-generational amongst me and my family, and I can’t wait to share it with others.

Hot and Cold Foods In Persian Culture

Background

Informant is a friend of mine from high school. She is a current student at UCLA and former student at The Madeira School (the high school we both attended). She is a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Iran. She does not have any specific religious affiliations. I chose to interview several people from my high school to compare their versions of our school stories. She is referred to as “SF”.

Context

I asked the informant about any homeopathic medicines or remedies she has learned from her family/culture. She provided multiple examples – this example is of the concept of hot and cold foods.

Content

In Persian culture, there’s this really interesting concept. It’s foods that are used that is like kind of used for specific, like, things that you’re feeling. So basically the words are like there’s two different categories, like a food can be either “garm” or “sard” and garm and sard mean hot and cold. So like certain foods like fit into those categories and based on like this thing that you like, like if you have a headache or whatever, like either someone will tell you, oh, you have to eat foods that are in the hot category or like you have to eat foods that are in the cold category. And like, I don’t necessarily know, like what goes in each category cause there’s no, there’s kind of like an intuitive like thinking that you think so like ginger is like a hot food or whatever because like, you know, kind of warms you up. But like, there are certain ones that you can’t, I can’t really like distinguish. Like you have to know. Like, I feel like elders, like just know what are like hot and cold foods. And so like that’s a pretty interesting concept that I feel is very specific to like Persian culture is like if you say, Oh, I like feeling ill or whatever, it’s like this certain way, that way I tell you to eat also gets either like hot or cold.

Analysis

While my informant believed the concept of hot and cold foods to be specific to Persian culture, the concept is actually prevalent in a lot of cultures, especially those native to East Asia. In Korea and China, the concept of hot and cold foods is especially prevalent in postpartum care. The correlation of hot and cold is not necessarily the specific temperature of the food, but the effect the food has on the body – if it is warming or cooling. I especially appreciated SF’s comment “I feel like elders, like just know what are hot and cold foods.” It’s a perfect summarization of the mechanisms of folklore: that it is knowledge passed down through generations, so currently, the elder generations have the knowledge, and will pass it along to their descendants.

Translation: Garm and sard are Farsi words. Garm = hot, and sard = cold.

Annotation

For additional versions of hot and cold foods, see: Song, Yuanqing. “坐月子：Postpartum Confinement”. May 20, 2019. USC Folklore Archive. http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/%E5%9D%90%E6%9C%88%E5%AD%90%EF%BC%9Apostpartum-confinement/

Persian Herbal Remedies

Background

Informant is a friend of mine from high school. She is a current student at UCLA and former student at The Madeira School (the high school we both attended). She is a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Iran. She does not have any specific religious affiliations. I chose to interview several people from my high school to compare their versions of our school stories. She is referred to as “SF”.

Context

I asked the informant about any homeopathic remedies that she learned from her family and culture. She provided multiple examples; these remedies are based in herbal treatments.

Content

SF: So there are quite a few, honestly, and some of them are pretty weird. Um, but there’s one that I always did because my grandma was like, every time you get congestion or whatever, you’re like, Oh, these people do like vapor, like steaming or whatever, like their faces or like they do neti pots to like clear your sinuses. And so it’s kind of something similar to that, but it’s like a specific kind of herb blend that you like boil in a pot and you basically get a towel and you like put your face like near the pot and you’re like cover the rest of your face with the towel. So like the steam from the herbs like clears your sinuses. I don’t know specifically what kinds of herbs they were. I think oregano was definitely one of them, cause I remember it having a very specific oregano scent. Yeah. And so it’s just like a bunch of boiled herbs, like, in this thing.

Interviewer: And then where did your grandma get the herb pot recipe. Like, where’d she get that?

SF: That’s a good question. I think that it just like it’s a special kind of like herb, one that they use for food in Iran and like, they definitely sell it, like, prepackaged stores nowadays because they’re like. Like Persian supermarkets and stuff like back home and even in L.A. But yeah, they sell them like pot, like package, a lot of packaged like Persian, like spices and stuff like that. So it’s, it’s more like commercialized nowadays. But I think like she probably got it like from back in Iran, like with her family too. But I feel like it’s one of those things that just like, like people know, like they just know about it, you know?

And then I think one which is pretty much just like a universal like thing that everyone will tell you, we like also kind of like it’s just funny to me is is like, is you to feel like, oh, I have a stomachache or if I’m like nauseous or whatever, they’ll always tell you to drink like Persian black tea with like sugar, like saffron, like sugar. And it’s just like, it’s really stupid to me because you drink that, like, every day anyway, if you, like, live in Iran or if you’re Persian. So like, it’s really funny to me that they’re like, Oh yeah, if you feel sick, you need to drink this. But it’s like, I be drinking it every day anyway. But I don’t know. It’s funny because, like, whenever you’re nauseous, we have, like, something they always tell you to like to drink chai nabat, that’s like what you’re supposed to do.

Analysis

It’s interesting how these remedies are essentially identical to others in other cultures – nasal steaming and drinking tea – but they are specifically engaging with herbs and tea commonly used in Persian culture. Both the herbs for the steaming and the type of tea are just common, everyday combinations used in food and drinks, but in the context of being sick, they have healing qualities. SF had the wonderful comment that her grandmother got the herb combination from her family back in Iran, and that now, the mixture is “one of those things that just, like, like people know.” – That is exactly what folklore is. Both methods are likely fairly effective, as they are standard treatment, but I wonder if the specific combinations of herbs in Persian remedies have a different level of effectiveness compared to herbs from other cultures. For example, in my family, we are told to drink ginger tea, as my mother believes it is most effective.

Translation: Chai nabat is a specific Persian tea. Chai nabat is pronounced “cha-ee nah-bot”.

Chicken Soup has Healing Properties

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 56
Occupation: Microbiologist
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/25/2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

What is so special about chicken soup?

“All Jewish grandmas think that chicken soup will cure most of the things that are wrong with you. It’s called Jewish penicillin. And then I’ve heard that there’s some scientific support for this, in a paper I cannot find… supposedly if the chicken soup contains at least these four ingredients, it has anti-inflammatory properties, so your Bubby [Jewish grandma] might actually be right. The four ingredients are chicken, onions, carrots, and celery.”

Do you have a parent/grandparent that held this belief?

“I have a parent and a grandparent who would make me chicken soup, and now I make chicken soup, and I fed my daughter who got her covid vaccine chicken soup last night because she wasn’t feeling so great. She felt better after the soup (laughs).” 

Background/Context:

My informant is my father. He was raised culturally Jewish, and his career is within the science field. This information was collected during a family Zoom call after my sister got the first dose of her coronavirus vaccine. Chicken soup is considered an iconic Jewish food. Variations include chicken noodle soup and matzoh ball soup.

Analysis: 

I have been eating chicken soup as a cure for illness my entire life, and I had known that it was called “Jewish Penicillin,” but I had never heard that there might be actual scientific proof that it worked! My father’s statements about the ingredients line up with claims in an article by Alan Hopkins titled “Chicken Soup Cure may Not be a Myth.” Instances of folk medicine being investigates scientifically and then incorporated into Western medicine are common, and these instances highlight that just because a group doesn’t have access to “science” and “technology,” it doesn’t mean that their cures and treatments are necessarily less valid. 

Hopkins, Alan B. “Chicken Soup Cure may Not be a Myth.” Nurse Practitioner, vol. 28, no. 6, 2003, pp. 16. ProQuest, http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/chicken-soup-cure-may-not-be-myth/docview/222356779/se-2?accountid=14749.

Paiute Indian Cure for Warts

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Nationality: American
Age: 47
Occupation: Trader Joe's Manager
Residence: Healdsburg, California
Performance Date: April 30, 2021
Primary Language: English

Background:

As the main text of this piece describes, my informant learned this cure from a friend whose Grandfather was a Paiute Indian. Although he lived in a rural area between Cloverdale and Boonville, California, the man probably brought his knowledge of the treatment from somewhere in the Great Basin area that the Paiutes inhabited before genocide was committed upon them by white settlers.

Context:

This remedy was introduced to my informant by a childhood friend of hers who, upon seeing the wart on her thumb, asked to show her how to treat it.

Main Piece:

“So I had a wart on my bone of my thumb knuckle, and it would go away– I would get like the wart remover at the store, and I’d put it on and it would go away but it would come back. And my friend G who’s grandfather was Paiute Indian had these fish bones that he had saved when he was alive for just this process. Um–He had stored this fish-bone-jar in his pantry and he was long past but the fish was caught at the creek on their property and I believe it was a steelhead. And–uhhh–she told me that her grandfather told her if you take these fish bones and you put them in your wart, going in one side and coming out the other side in as many different angles as you could, the wart would fall off and never return. And so I did that and it looked like I had a little porcupine on my thumb and I had to put a Bandaid over it so it didn’t catch on things, but it eventually fell off with the fishbone spikes and it never came back!”

Analysis:

Because this treatment worked for my informant, it’s a perfect example of the effectiveness of folk medicine. While many people of Western society disregard the potential benefits of folk medicine, much of it promises value. Even though modern medicine is thought to be much more precise and successful than its folk counterpart, many folk remedies have undergone hundreds or thousands of years of trial and error. This has allowed their tradition-bearers to understand which natural compounds are good for use in medicine along with their specific applications, and which are not. Illustrating the idea I’ve just presented is the fact that many cures which we consider to be modern medicine are compounds synthesized from plants that are commonly used in folk medicine.