The informant talked about a folk remedy she learned from her mother and passed on to her children.
“You make it at the first sign of cold symptoms: scratchy throat, watery eyes, aches.
It is equal parts bay leaf, sage, and cinnamon. The cinnamon at the bottom gets all slimy like snot.
I had drank all the water at every rest stop from utah to minnesota and I had got some sort of water sick or something. Originally it had cayenne pepper and lemon in it too. That was practically un-drinkable. Now we separate it out into cayenne and lemon then the tea.
My grandma said if I didn’t get better in 12 hours, they’d take me to the hospital because I was like, 12 and really sick. But we upped the dose and I she got better really quick.
Now we take the cayenne as a pill,  drink lemon-honey tea and do the rest of the icky tea in a cup.”

No one quite knows what about this works but, I tried it last time I was sick and it worked like a charm.