Old Wives cures.

I find mustard handy for small burns,relieves pain almost instantly and seems to stop blisters forming.

A hot steamy bowl of Friars Balsam is just what I need right now after this pigging awful cold I have. Earlier I was inhaling the damp warm air from my cup of tea.

I nearly blew my head off Liaise when I tried menthol crystals.

I inhale menthol crystals dissolved in hot water for sinus headaches. Quite powerful so only a little is needed. Put a towel over your head for maximum effect. It works!

I've got some Friars Balsam in the cupboard. My mother used to make us have a spoonful of cod liver oil and malt every day. Yuk! Awful stuff.

Does anyone remember Friars Balsam? You put some into a bowl of boiling water, put a cloth over your head and the bowl and breathed the steam. It was our family cure for coughs and sore throats. I and all my 5 children were given Woodwards Gripe Water as babies and it worked well. Vicks Vapour Rub on the soles of the feet was also a favourite. As a child I loved Liquifruita cough medicine and at 3 years old my mum found me hiding behind the wardrobe swigging it from the bottle.

Thank you Nanevan. Glad it works for your OH as well. That's a couple of ticks for me in St. Peter's ledger!

Yes miep that would work well. I had a wart on the lower part of my finger when I was at school and wore my signet ring to cover it. It dropped off (yeuch!) after a few weeks. So, I think you can suffocate them.

Sticking duck tape over a wart gets rid of it pretty quick!

Thanks Chicken for that tip about getting rid of cramp. It really does work. OH had trouble recently with a severe pain in his thigh. Doc thought OH had a clot in his leg. All checked out and no clot. But he still gets severe cramp like pain in his thigh. Tried your tip of putting a finger in between nose and top lip, pressing hard and magic the pain goes away? So thanks again.

In the course of looking at old 19th century newspapers for my family history stuff I encountered a lot of adverts for quack remedies for all sorts of diseases. It makes an interesting diversion.

You can put a paste of Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) onto a splinter to draw it out. No idea how it is supposed to work.

Indeed. Artemisin is a drug used for Malaria. It was discovered by a Chinese woman scientist. I was reading earlier about attempts to genetically engineer other plants to produce it, as its a slow process growing it via artemisia plant.
Then there is digitalin and aspirin...

Wrights vaporizers got me through three children they were wonderful the night time coughs died down amazingly and we never set the house on fire ?

I remember my mam taking me to where the men were tarring the road. There were always several children around the hot tar. Also every autumn I started taking 'The Linctus' and stopped taking it the following Spring. I often wonder if I had winter asthma rather that the winter bronchitis the doctor diagnosed. Maybe the treatment for asthma was pretty useless at the time and it was less scary to be told you had continuous bronchitis lol.

Wrights Vaporisers were wonderful. I always thought it was because a flame was involved that they were discontinued.

A child with whooping cough was taken to smell the tar where a road was being repaired. Black bullets (sweets) were boiled in vinegar to make a cough syrup. A stocking was filled with salt, heated and tied round the neck for a quinzy (sp) throat. You used to be able to get a foul smelling disk with a hole in the middle to tie round the neck to ward off germs.

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.

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".

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'

I pity the mother.

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

(sorry...)

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.

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.

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