Old Wives cures.

Jalima the WHO thing is about using coal tar in treatments for skin complaints and NOT for inhaling!
Bicarb will indeed neutralise stomach acid and the reaction produces Cos gas so hence the burping. However Bicarb also contains sodium - so not at all good for blood pressure. Just as bad for you as the sodium in table salt. And you don't take table salt in spoonfuls. That's why it's not recommended for indigestion these days. Better to choose a calcium based product.

another cure for cramp is a cork in the bed under the mattress

Jacky B my friend said this was because your brain realised that if you sneezed while holding there you would pull your lip off, so stopped the sneeze coming.

I suppose taking bicarb as a regular thing is bad, I have only ever done it on very rare occasions.

I know some people take it for the latest 'health trend' of making the body more alkaline!
Although the body tends to adjust its own alkalinity, or so I thought.

I didn't realise that about coal tar, it was recommended by the health visitor after DD had whooping cough.

I have two remedies: If it is machinery of some sort, give it a drop of oil. If you feel unwell, a hot drink - lemon and honey is good, a paracetamol and an early night. Sympathetic me.

I think that the sugar thing works because the grittiness helps with clotting. When I was a child, I was running with a pencil in my mouth and it dug into the back of my throat. Blood everywhere, panic stations. An elderly neighbour used the sugar cure and it worked perfectly

M and B anyone ?It was the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted
Yes to Kaolin and Morphine
Still have my Wrights Vapouriser (rang GP in a panic when DD 1, now 30, was 6weeks and very snuffly First thing he asked was 'do you have WV)
Mum always gave me Indian Brandee for period pains Was discussing with suffering daughter only last night Don't think you can get it now Was quite successful

I remember the doctor arriving with some miraculous new tablets which would get rid of my tonsillitis.
M&B tablets - so huge to get down when your throat was so sore and practically closed up.

Not an old wives' tale though - M&B tablets were penicillin, the miracle cure.

Indian Brandee was only herbal though, wasn't it? I think you can still get it.

My DF used to give me the real thing

Sounds crazy but a bar of ivory soap under the sheet really does work I wasn't convinced but I stopped for a while and the leg cramps returned.

I remember M&B but I thought they were sulphanilamide

The Germans have a lot of remedies. For a sore throat you put woollen sock round your throat. Probably soaked in something but I don't know what it is.
Raw onion placed on the ear for earrache.
Then damp cloths round the legs, to bring down temperature and with a load of quark - wrapped round an aching knee, takes the pain away and is a real messy affair.

Help. Any suggestions please for tinnitus..awful

Bicarbonate of soda is very good for cystitis it stops the acid
Arrowroot for the runs
Aloe Vera rubbed on a cut
Toothpaste on a burn

If you've got cystitis talk to a pharmacist. Necking down lots of bicarb may not be a good idea for some people due to sodium content.
Aloe vera juice is soothing on small burns. Never tried it on a cut.
Lots of these OWT's are obviously nonsense - but the placebo effect can work on symptoms (but not diseases!)
Many of them are hang-overs from the days when we had no scientific understanding of the body, no scientific medicines and/or when people could not afford professional advice. My Nan used to tell me about all the remedies that were tried to cure her earache when a child in the early 1900s - the most extreme was her own wee poured in.

Well I m not sure I said anything about 'necking down lots of bicarb' and it was a doctor who told me to use it and as I suffered from cystitis for about 30 years it helped me a lot during that time it doesn't cure it but it eases the pain considerable, amazing how a simple sentence gets exaggerated

I think there is a lot of truth in a lot of the old remedies
My Nan always put heated salt in a hankie to hold on earache or toothache if nothing else I guess it was soothing I believe some hospitals use honey for healing also maggots for eating away decayed flesh and again leeches my Nan had that treatment too and I ve read about it being used in hospitals more recently

I believe there has recently been trials on chilli patches for arthritis ginger, black pepper and turmeric are all being looked at Maybe all the things we need are actually out there but we just try to reinvent the wheel a lot of the time

Look at digitalis and aspirin to name a couple

Bicarb is alkaline, just a teaspoon in half a pint of water would help - but not if you have high blood pressure.
Anything to prevent you having to take anti-biotics I would have thought.
You can buy a drink from the pharmacist that helps stop it - but it is really vile!

I think some of the ancient remedies are being investigated and proved to be effective alternatives and I think there is much that people such as the indigenous Australians can teach us - before it is too late.

and of course - born with a silver spoon in your mouth meant that you were less likely to catch diseases that poor people caught, not just because of better diet, hygiene, but also because silver has antibacterial properties.

Crikey, if you'd been born with a spoon of any kind in your mouth you'd be a medical phenomenon!

(sorry...)

I pity the mother.

Jalima I totally agree about indigenous Australians they seemed to have had a real take on things and were very at one with nature but of course they had to be 'developed'

But at the moment the indigenous Australians have a life expectancy much lower than other Australians, so let's not get too carried away. And that's despite their access to modern medicine. Yes of course the diseases of civilisation are part of the problem, as is terrible poverty - always a killer. But their life expectancy back in the 19thC was far lower than it is today. Too much romanticisation of the herbal remedies of the past is seeing through rose tinted glass. People in the past in this country and in Australia mostly died young - much younger on average than today. Only the tough and lucky survived into old age.
And sometimes this romanticisation does harm in the present when people with serious illnesses think they can be cured with "alternatives".

Of course that's right JessM

But I do sometimes think there are many things out there still undiscovered that could be cures - not just as they are, picked from nature, from the oceans, but the medicinal properties harnessed.
I would never advocate discarding modern medicine for a 'natural cure' for such things as cancer, but some of the medicines that are in use have been developed from natural sources. Of course, they have to be developed and go through clinical trials, so I am not saying that we can go out into the tropical rain forest to find our own cures.