Many people will still stand by their weird concoction of dog ear flakes and mashed earthworm saying that it will kill off those pesky whatevers before you know it. I just see these people as frizzy haired, wear my undies over me trousers and blink uncontrollably while staring at my kneecaps...what was I saying again....
I any case. The placebo effect can be a useful ally to the ingroant mind.
Sure once upon a time when a person couldn't find a solution to a problem, they would simply make one up out of desperation. But now things are different. Scientists have more than likely already conducted research on your problem and have come up with a solution (or if not, have at least prooved that your home remedy is bollocks).
Moving along.
When I was a kid I was subjected to various home remedies as a first resort (probably handed down from my great great grandparents). Luckily sanity would prevail and my father would bring out the medication and injections before things got too bad.
I'm not sure if anyone else did anything similar to what my family did, it would be interesting to find out. in any case some of the home remedies that stand out from my childhood are:
- Toothache remedy. rub baking powder on and chew cloves with the offending tooth. I guess this was a temporary fix at best. it probably worked by distracting your mind from the toothache pain by having an awful taste and interesting fizzing sensation. Nowadays we simply go to the dentist for a filling.
- Chicken pox remedy. This one was particularly useless in my opinion. I was stripped of my clothes (which is fun when you're 5) and covered in a mixture containing crushed mulberry leaves probably with some other stuff in there too. It didn't work... I smelled funny and still itched all over. This probably oringated as a joke, imagine seeing your kid covered in bits of leaves and trying to scratch its back by rolling in the carpets. heheee I think I'll carry this one forward to the next gen. Now we just give the kid a bath in calamine lotion (still smells funny but stops the itching).
- Weight (loss) home remedy. Having a number of females in my family I often laughed at the things they would do to try loose weight 'the easy way'. Solution WONDERBEANS! I'm not sure who came up with this or what species the wonderbean was but somebody made a killing selling packets of dried beans to overweight people. How it worked>>>replace one meal a day with a few wonderbeans and you will miraculously loose weight! If this did work it was because you only ate two meals a day as opposed to three. No thanks...
