Tag Archives: remedy

Cure for the Hiccups

Nationality: Trinidadian
Age: 58
Occupation: Housekeeper, Nanny
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: 04/05/15
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 58-year old woman from Trinidad, who has lived in the United States for 45 years. She was raised by her parents in Trinidad and lived in a house with her parents, grandparents, and nine siblings. She attended primary school, and then began working as a housekeeper and nanny. She loves cooking, mainly without recipes or set amounts of any ingredients, having learned her recipes “from my mom and aunts and from trial and error.” The following is a cure for hiccups that she shared with me.

 

Informant: “When you have the hiccups, take a piece of cotton—you can use a cotton ball, that works well, or you can even use tissue if you don’t have any cotton—and get it wet. Not soaking, but wet enough. Then place it on your forehead, a little above your eyebrows.”

Interviewer: “And that’s all?”

Informant: “Well, you hold it there for a minute, or even a few minutes. And the hiccups should go away.”

Interviewer: “Where did you learn that?”

Informant: “My grandma told me to do it when I was younger. And it worked. It always worked. So I kept doing it. And it always works, I don’t know why but it does.”

 

Thoughts:

The power of belief is amazing! I have actually tried this remedy to alleviate the hiccups and it has worked all three times I have tried it. I doubt it is from the wet cotton but rather from my belief in its potency that stops the hiccups. This is something like the placebo test in its effective nature despite lack of “scientific” evidence.

Hiccups are a sort of naturally occurring phenomena–it makes sense that there are such a vast array of remedies for this common ailment, so to speak. While homeopathic magic often seems silly at first glance, or roundabout, it was so interesting to read about how so much modern medicine — 80% of it in fact–comes from remedies known to indigenous people; a lot of the medicines that cure ailments and illnesses, even diseases as pervasive and previously considered deadly as cancer (such as the rosie periwinkle plant native to Madagascar is known to be able to do with Leukemia), come about from bio prospecting folk remedies.

 

“Take tea with lemon and honey for a sore throat.”

Nationality: Korean
Age: 26
Occupation: International Student
Residence: Westwood
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

“Take tea with lemon and honey for a sore throat.”

This is a remedy that has been passed down from generation to generation in my informant’s family. Whenever he has a sore throat, his mother has always recommended drinking hot tea with lemon and honey; his mother had learned this from her mother, and the remedy keeps going back in generations.
Although tea with lemon and honey does not seem to have any medical reason for making sore throats better, it is probably the combination of hot, sweet, and sour tastes that alleviate the pain in the throat. Like most folk remedies, anything that seems to produce results is constantly reused and recommended, and this is probably how the tea has become a go-to solution for sore throats in my informant’s family.

“Eat seaweed soup on your birthday.”

Nationality: Korean
Age: 31
Occupation: International Student
Residence: San Francisco
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

“Eat mi-yuk-gook (seaweed soup) on our birthday.”
Korean people have a tradition of eating seaweed soup every birthday because this same soup is used as a source of rejuvenation for women who have just given birth. Seaweed contains many of the nutrients that are needed to make a body healthy and help it recuperate, so seaweed soup is commonly used to aid new mothers. Therefore, seaweed soup is eaten on birthdays in order to appreciate the suffering their mothers went through.

Flour to Stop Bleeding

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 65
Occupation: Business Owner
Residence: Fullerton, Ca
Performance Date: 4/21/2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

According to my informant who grew up on a farm in a poor family, in the old days mothers used to put baking flour on cuts as a folk remedy to stop bleeding. He heard this from one of his brothers, who actually told him that the remedy was a false one. This brother of his had cut his foot when he was younger, and his sister had put flour on it in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. The blood didn’t stop flowing.

Essentially, it was a poor person’s remedy. It may have gotten its reputation as a cure for bleeding due to its absorbency, but would never be very effective on anything larger than a paper cut as it doesn’t really have anything to do with blood coagulation.

A Natural Cold Remedy – Ecuador

Nationality: Ecuadorian
Age: 26
Occupation: Nurse
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

My informant was born and raised in Ibarra, Ecuador until she left to live in the U.S. when she was sixteen years old.  Whenever she and her brothers had a cold or a sore throat, her mother made a drink for them made from lemon juice, a little bit of orange juice and honey.  Her mother would then heat it up on the stove, which my informant says helped a lot since the steam would reduce congestion and the warmth would relieve sore throats.  She also says that you have to drink it with a straw or it will ruin your tooth enamel.  The remedy has a long tradition in her family: her grandmother prepared it for her mother, her great-grandmother prepared it for her grandmother, her great-great grandmother prepared it for her great-grandmother, etc.  She says, “Everyone in Ecuador does it… I think [laughs]… Or a lot of people I knew did it.”  It provides a lot of Vitamin C as well so it offers a cheaper and more natural alternative to medications.  The honey not only cuts the acidity of the lemon juice, but also adds anti-bacterial elements into the “cocktail.” “Unless we were really sick, we didn’t go to the doctor… Especially not for simple colds.”  To this day, she still prepares the remedy when she is feeling under the weather.  When I asked if she would do the same for her children, she replied: “Of course, it’s a family tradition!”