Behind Closed Doors: Home Remedies

The folksy and borderline sadistic treatments they used to swear by.

These days, you can’t turn on the TV without being assaulted by drug commercials promising to improve everything from your erection to your opioid-induced constipation (inside this issue Dr. Scott Sigman offers a much better alternative than Movantik!).

If you’ve got an ailment, you can bet your sweet keister, they’ve got a pill out there to fix it. I can’t help but wonder what my Grandma and Grandpappy would think of today’s [prescription] drug culture. They used to believe they had everything they needed right there in their old medicine cabinet. How many of these home remedies do you remember? How many do you still rely on.

• Upset stomach (From debilitating nausea to, well, nausea’s cousin down South): ‘The Pink Stuff.’ If you took it before bed, you’d wake up the next morning with a black furry tongue. Sometimes they also had Milk of Magnesia, Cod Liver Oil or Emetrol. Ginger ale usually helped, but they never wanted to spend good money on ginger ale. Most of the time, Grandma’s expert medical advice was just asking if you needed to poop and sending you to the bathroom to sit on the toilet for a while.

• Stopped up nose and congestion (a cold): Vicks Vaporub. In seven to 14 days you’d be good as new. You could rub it up your nose. I’d stick the corner of a kleenex or a piece of toilet paper up there with it. They’d yell “Get that out of your nose. It’ll get stuck up there” They’d rub it on your chest and put a warm (hot) towel on you. If you protested about the temperature of the towel, they just told you: It’s supposed to be hot!”

• Sore throat: Super Anihist. Can’t find that now. Most likely Grandma would make you gargle warm salt water. Mom was more partial to honey and lemon. Today I use honey and lemon with a shot (or two) of Crown Royal.

• Cuts and Scrapes: Hydrogen peroxide. I learned to roller skate at four. My knees and elbows kissed the sidewalk a lot. Treatment for always hydrogen peroxide. Never failed to elicit a yelp from me. Burned like hell. Then came the mercurochrome. By then, I was trying to escape or screaming for Grandma to blow on it. She’d let me go saying, “Don’t fall or we’ll have to do this all over again.” Grandma tried Unguentine once but it made the neighbors think she was killing us. Mercurochrome always left a red stain on the skin. Come September and starting back to school, I always had the remnants of the color red on my war wounds from summer skating.

• Dog Bite: Same as Cuts and Scrapes with an, “I told you to leave that dog alone.” Everyone knew the dogs of the neighborhood. There wasn’t any rabies assessment. It took stepping on a rusty nail to go to the doctor for a tetanus shot.

• Fever: St Joseph’s Baby Aspirin for kids. I preferred mine dissolved in a teaspoon of cola.

• Earaches: A couple of drops of warm oil or resting the ear on a towel wrapped around a hot water bottle. I got to listen to a transistor radio while laying on the hot water bottle.

• Bee Sting: Baking soda paste. “Leave the bees alone. They’ll sting you causing that bee to die.”

• Burns: Butter or lard. Went right on the wound, which made it hurt worse.

It’s a wonder we made it to be as old as we are. Somehow we survived. We have our Grandmas and Moms to thank for it. We gave them gray hair and a case of nerves, but there was always a remedy at hand. Even if that hand was to our backside. OSM