Tag Archives: remedy

Remedy for Curse of Mexican Evil Eye

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/12/17
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

The informant’s family is originally from Mexico. She learned this cure from her grandmother who performed it on her and her siblings. She doesn’t think that it’s really a cure, however her mother and grandmother told her that it helped cure her when she was cursed with the “ojo”, or eveil eye.

“Some of the things they do to get rid of the curse from el ojo I learned from my grandma. She blesses your whole body with an egg. She grabs it from the fridge and rubs it all over your body and cracks the egg open over water. If it floats, then your good and if it sinks, it’s bad…like the egg absorbs all the bad from your body and it sinks, but I can’t remember…it might be the opposite actually.”

This remedy is used when a baby is cursed by “El Ojo”, or the Evil Eye, as it’s known in other cultures. It’s usually performed in the home, as the informant told me. There are also different variations to it concerning what one does with the egg when they crack it. Some say to leave it under the victim’s bed overnight and check it in the morning.

I had previously never heard of this remedy and I’m very curious as to why they use an egg. I don’t know if there’s something symbolic about it or where it came from originally. I did some more research and there are various methods to this. Some say you have to crack the egg in a bowl and leave it under the victim’s bed, and by morning something will happen that let’s you know they have been cured. It’s apparently a well-known remedy among their community, and I’m surprised it’s so well-revered. When I think of a remedy I usually think it’s something that a person needs to ingest in order for them to be cured.

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.

 

“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.

“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.

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.