Aug 7, 2010

Did your mom or dad have a favorite remedy for when you were sick or hurt?

Mom had a number of remedies that were from the pioneer days. For a cold we had honey and lemon mixed together and heated to drink to relieve the sore throat and get out the cold symptoms. Then for the chest when it was a real deep cold that had gone into the lungs mom would mix vinegar and mustard powder with water to make a paste that she would then put on a cloth and set the cloth on our chests with the mustard away from the skin. (If it was on the skin we would get a sunburn type burn from it and that hurt pretty bad. We would keep it on for as long as we could stand it and the heat from the remedy would sink deep into our chest and relieve a lot of the congestion. I was lucky to be raised after the cod liver oil days and was plenty glad about it when I learned what it was really like.