Tag Archives: folk medicine

Wet Socks Fever Remedy

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: 4/10/2018
Primary Language: English

The informant is marked EL. I am CS. She shared with me a few forms of folk medicine practices she has learned over the years.

 

CS: “So are there any other remedies or folk medicine you can tell me about?”

EL: “Hmm yeah let me think. Oh! Ok…there is another super weird one, but I actually kind of think it works.”

CS: “Perfect, can you describe it for me?”

EL: “Yeah so it’s a remedy for when you have a fever. You basically take a pair of socks and put them under cold water, and put your feet in hot water. Then, when you go to bed, you put the wet socks on your feet and I guess it like increases circulation and blood flow? Sounds kind of weird, but the next day it supposedly relieves like congestion and your fever.”

CS: “And you’ve done this before?”

EL: “Yeah my mom always made me do it when I was younger. I got fevers all of the time.”

CS: “Did you notice any results from it?”

EL: “Honestly, yeah. I always felt better the next day. Weird how those things can sometimes really work.”

 

Context:

Met for coffee to record her different encounters with folk medicine and remedies.

Background:

EL is a first year student at The University of Southern California. She was raised in Dallas, Texas.

 

Analysis:

I find this remedy interesting because I have never heard of it before, and the method seems bizarre, yet I understand the purpose behind it. I personally remember whenever I was sick with a fever doctors would tell me to cool myself off instead of warm myself up. I never used to understand the logic because I believed if I was struck with a fever and my body wanted heat, then it makes sense to give it heat. However, warming yourself up does prolong a fever’s duration, and essentially is just another catalyst to making you sicker. So off of this medical point, this method does seem to be logical and probably soothing. Compared to many over the counter drugs and doctor’s diagnoses, I enjoy learning of other methods that could similarly take care of the problem without all of the extra legwork.

 

Spoonful of Honey Folk Medicine

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: 4/10/2018
Primary Language: English

The informant is marked EL. I am marked CS. She shared with me a few forms of folk medicine practices she has learned over the years over coffee.

 

EL: “Yeah, so…my mom is super into homeopathic remedies and there’s a couple of weird ones that like, supposedly relieve colds.”

CS: “Great, can you tell me a few?”

EL: “So the first one I’m always told is to always take a spoonful of honey in the winter time. I get really bad allergies, and I guess the spoonful of local honey allegedly has some of the pollen we breathe in during allergy season. So, when you take a spoonful of it, it kind of counteracts the allergies, like another method to getting an allergy shot. Not sure if it works, but I do it so often, I’m not sure if I’d even notice the difference. Can’t hurt though, right?”

CS: “Absolutely. How long have you been doing it for?”

EL: “God, it’s been forever. Probably since, like, elementary school I wanna say?”

CS: Is your entire family into homeopathic and folk remedies?”

EL: “Oh yeah, my grandmother is also super into it. She’s the one who hooked my mom. I swear it’s like a never ending tradition in our family.”

 

Context:

We met for coffee to record her different encounters with folk medicine and remedies.

Background:

EL is a first year student at The University of Southern California. She was raised in Dallas, Texas.

Analysis:

I found this remedy to be quite interesting because I had never heard of it, and my mom is also interested in many homeopathic remedies and folk medicine so I know quite a few. This one is also a remedy I could use myself, and I think is a remedy that many people could try without any potential harm. It seems to be one of those “it doesn’t hurt to try” forms of medicine.

One Way to Scratch an Itch

Nationality: American
Age: 61
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Southern California
Performance Date: March 24, 2018
Primary Language: English

My maternal grandpa was from the poorest part of Birmingham, Alabama. His birth father died in a dynamite factory explosion when he was two years old, and his mother remarried a few years after that. Even with a new man, their family was poorer than poor. Some winters, they’d resort to eating shoe leather out of desperate hunger. He had one pair of overalls, and later became an expert marksman out of necessity (he could hit a squirrel between the eyes from 30 yards out). He climbed out of poverty via the GI Bill which he used to get an education here at USC, and then a job as a salesman of medicinal gasses to airline companies and hospitals. He didn’t much like talking about when he was poor – it was not his proudest moment. The one thing he did enjoy talking about from back then was family. Even when you have no money, you have family. As his sister June put it, “it never felt like we were poor. We had so much love in the household.”

 

My mom imbued this same sense of family on me through different stories she’d heard as a small girl from her dad, my grandpa. I’d heard this story before, but it had slipped to the back of my mind. Driving home from lunch one sunny afternoon, I ask her and my dad if they have any stories about the inexplicable that I could use for my folklore project. My mom starts:

 

“When your great uncle – great, great uncle – had… his leg amputated, it was itching itching itching, the stump was itching.  So his family said, ‘go dig up the stump and see if there’s anything wrong with it.  And he did and it was covered with ants.  And so he properly buried it and the itching stopped.  And that was a common belief of the time, in Alabama among Christians a couple generations ago.”

 

I love this story because it plays on so many different levels. On the one hand, it’s a story of a very strange folk belief that has found its way into mainstream medicine.  Phantom pains are a common phenomenon in the paraplegic world. To stop it, many doctors put a mirror up to the intact limb, making it look like their missing limb is still there. Almost immediately, the pains stop, and even when the mirror is removed, the pains are not felt. On the other hand, this story works through the familial lens, as it provides a rather sincere snapshot into life in rural Alabama so many years ago.  In a strange way, it makes perfect sense to dig up the withered limb and clean it off to stop the itching. It’s not like there was any other information out there, they just did what they thought would work and it worked.

 

Hong Ahn (Egg Rub Remedy)

Nationality: American
Age: 27
Occupation: Mental Health Therapist
Residence: Baldwin Park, California
Performance Date: February 11, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese

Barbara is a Chinese-American who graduated with a B.S. in Psychology from the University of California, Riverside. Her parents are from Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States, before giving birth to her in Baldwin Park, Los Angeles. She recently received her Master’s in Clinical Psychology and is currently working at a clinic in downtown Los Angeles. Her hobbies are baking, exploring hipster cafes or restaurants, and reading thriller novels.

Original Script

So whenever I like fell down or had a nasty fever my mom would put this egg—she would boil an egg and she’d cut them open and then you’d have to slice it and then you take out the yolk and then you put a real silver coin in it where the yolk was and then you put the egg in a like cloth like hanky and then you twist it and then you rub it against wherever you‘re hurt like if you got a headache you put it on your forehead and then if you have like a bruise on your knee you’d put it on your knee and then you’d have to keep rubbing it and then the coin would suck out all the bad vapors from that area all the negative stuff and then the coin would turn to different colors so like it depends on what color it is. It means like different things. So if the coin turns black or blue it means you have too much like cool air and red and orange it means it’s too much hot air or like yi-hei and then that means like you’ve been eating too much fried food instead—you’ve had like too much hot air. Well that’s it, so the coin sucks out all the bad stuff that’s been making you hurt.

Background Information about the Performance from the Informant

The informant first learned of this Chinese remedy when her mother performed it on her when she was sick as a child. She felt much better laying on her mother’s lap and feeling the pleasant warmth of the boiled egg gently rubbed on her face.

Context of the Performance

I interviewed the informant in my house.

This traditional Chinese medical treatment involves continuous pressured strokes over the skin with a rounded tool. It has been practiced by practitioners, who believe the treatment releases negative elements from injured areas, stimulates blood flow, and encourages healing. Nowadays, Chinese parents often use this remedy on their children whenever they have a fever or a cold or whenever they feel depressed.

My Thoughts about the Performance

This is a remedy that my mother has also practiced on me when I was sick or unhappy. Common spots parents rub the boiled egg on are the forehead and eyes. The warm sensation of the egg, while laying on one’s parent’s lap, gives a sense of security and calm to the child. I find it fascinating how this ancient folk medicine maintains a continued presence in today’s world, passed down by generations of families. In the past, this treatment seemed to have a more respectable and legitimate status. Now, it is generally treated as a placebo effect to comfort people, specifically children.

Cabbage medicine

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 3/17/2017
Primary Language: English

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.