In which I have a cold: Old-timey remedies that no one should try at home
"Fregg", or as my husband calls it "that weird disease that only people from your region, in Germany, can catch". I'm not sure about the spelling, much less how to explain it. It's like a bad cold, only worse. But it isn't quite a flu. It's like a bad cold with the added benefit of a fever, and possibly an upset stomach. So, that's me right now.
The obvious way to treat this horrible disease is to take steam baths. Several times a day. You stick your head over a steaming pot full of camomile infusion, drape a towel over your head and inhale. For at least five minutes, my mother used to say. It's great for the skin, and ever since I'm an adult, I refuse to do it. I'll take congestion over that kind of torture!
But that cure is still better than a lot of ancient medicine. Back in the day, if the disease didn't kill you, the cures could. Blood-letting was a favourite in Western medicine, which was based on the theory of the "humours". In order to restore the balance of the humours, blood-letting was one of the means. There are no humours, and blood-letting only works for a few, rare, diseases.
A lot of medicine in Western history was just plain dangerous. Trouble being that the alternative was even more dangerous. For example, a common cure for syphilis was to infect the sufferer with malaria. Malaria was treatable, before the advent of penicillin, thanks to Jesuit's bark, or what is now known as "quinine". It made sense to kill one diseases with another. Syphilis is a bacterial infection, the high fevers induced by malaria kill them off, you ended up with malaria for life, but that was treatable.
That was one of the more reasonable things. And one that actually worked.
For epilepsy, here's a cure from the 17th century:
QuoteTake a live mole and cut the throat of it, into a glass of white wine, and presently give it to the party to drink at the new and full of the moon, the day before the new, the day after, and at the full. This will cure absolutely, if the party be not above forty years of age.
This is taken from Hannah Wooley's "The Queen-like Closet" (1684), a book of advice for homemakers. She was quite famous for her advice books, and wrote several of them. Literacy for women, in 17th century England, among the middle classes wasn't uncommon, so...poor moles?
For tuberculosis, she advised:
QuoteTake shell-snails and cast salt upon them, and when you think they are cleansed well from their slime, wash them and crack their shells, and take them off, and then wash them in distilled water of hyssop, then put them into a bag of canvas with some white sugar candy beaten, and hang the bag, and let it drop as long as you will, which if you bruise them up, it is the better; this liquor taken morning, and evening a spoonful at a time is very rare.
(Hannah Wooley never shied away from a run-on sentence.)
She was trying to help, with the means of her day. That's kind, admirable and...really, don't follow her advice! Some of her recipes are okay, but the medicine of her time was bloody dangerous! Until you remember the alternative. With her advice, she tried to save lives. It's completely bonkers, all of it, but she gave it a good try. And according to what anyone knew at the time, she was doing well.
That doesn't make any old-timey medical advice great. On the contrary. This is just a tiny selection. A lot of cures were outright fatal. Trust me, you do not want to ingest mercury!
But some are benign. Camomile tea is helping me clear my congestion. Ginger tea is making me cough up all the mucus. However, in a Scottish winter, it has the benefit of making me feel very warm, so there's that. "Lemsip" is...no, forget about that one for me - never mind that it isn't a 17th century cure. The paracetamol makes me feel both sleepy and queasy. I'll take lemon juice instead. And chicken soup.
While coughing, sneezing and running a mild fever isn't that much fun, lying on the sofa and reading a backlog of books is. At least no one is trying to feed me moles. Or sugared snails. And the cures I take will definitely not kill me. Or so, I hope. Maybe, in several hundred years someone will think that my cures are useless, if not fatal. On the other hand, there's the chicken soup. That's a good cure. At least it does no harm, right? Right...?
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