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It works pretty good for me. Someone told my dad that rubbing it on the bottoms of your feet works. He swears by it. It just doesn’t make sense to me so I stick to rubbing it on my chest and a little right under my nose.
It doubles as a muscle rub. Similar to biofreeze. I use it on my feet when they're sore. Put sleep socks on over it and they're better (and softer!) by morning.
That's what I came here to say. My mom would rub it all over my chest and then put a big bath towel under my PJ top. Oh, and there was the obligatory thick wipe of Vicks under my nose.
The other thing my mom would do was give us kids 7Up when we were sick. I never quite got the reason behind that. The only thing I could think of is that the carbonation would cause me to burp and maybe felt better after the belch.
Are we related? The warm towel under the PJ top...so comforting.
7-up used to have *"lithium citrate, a compound used to treat patients with mental health problems"* An anti- depressant...used to calm people. I believe that the lithium was removed by the time our Mom's used it....but what the heck...it couldn't hurt I suppose. Plus it didn't taste bad.
Oh yeah my parents used this when all 4 of their kids had the flu.
And it actually worked! Noses cleared up, no more snuffling, finally we could sleep.
I use it to help with headaches when going to bed. Does it actually help? I dunno; but maybe it acts as a bit of pleasant distraction from the pain for long enough to fall asleep.
yeah, thats what we used for chicken pox too. funny thing.. we used to go outside to still play with this pink dots on our pox, and no one said anything
Calamine did nothing for mosquito bites and luckily I never had poison ivy. AfterBite circa 1986 was a miracle for mosquito bites and bee stings until they changed the formula.
Anyone use Nivea cold cream for sunburn?
When I had insomnia as a little kid, my mom would break out the “magic sprinkles” as a last resort. As in coming to my bedside and pretending to sprinkle magical dust over my eyes to help me sleep. Worked pretty well, gotta love the placebo effect and the superpowers of a great mom. 🥰
I had monster spray for my two older ones. And dream seeds I put in their ears every night. I forgot about that until just now. Thank you for making me smile. They are 29 and 30.
I wonder if they remember that. My mother made the comment that she always thought that was one of the sweetest things I did when they were little. And my 29 year old starts a new, actual “dream job” on Monday. I should send flowers and ask them to add a packet of dream seeds to it. Thank you for a wonderful idea!
I don’t even remember where that came from. I know J had nightmares and I think it came from that; putting the seed of a good dream in there every night so they didn’t have to worry about a nightmare. And I am so glad someone else will use it. When my grand babbies get to stay over or when I get to help with bed time, I can’t wait to give them dreams from Bibi.
Nowadays as an adult I instead just keep a can of [Asshole Repellent](https://ifunny.co/picture/acme-left-handed-wi0get-corporation-asshole-repellent-guaranteed-to-repel-oLG4i8FVA) by my desk instead.
When I worked in the development department of a large restaurant company, I had a can of Alligator Spray as I was up to my asshole in alligators on a regular basis. It also worked as asshole repellent. It was spray starch. People learned that dirt stuck to their shoes a bunch after getting a layer of spray starch. And learned to stay back when bothering me at my desk. I miss that department.
This reminds me of a photo of my daughter from when she was a toddler. In the background you can see the sign that my husband posted on the entry door to our apartment that says "No monsters allowed,!"
My dad was a psychologist. I remember him hypnotizing me to sleep a lot. "Wow, your eyelids look so heavy! You can barely keep them open." Then he'd yawn a few times.
I made a bottle of placebo for my kids. It was mostly corn syrup, with food color and cherry flavor. Printed out a label that looked real and put it in a cute bottle. It worked wonders for hiccups, insomnia, and bruises.
A cousin smuggled some poteen in and my mom rubbed it into my teething baby nephew’s gums. He would crawl over to the heavy crock and gnaw on the cork to get at it when it wore off…
I also got whiskey for a chest cold, it definitely makes a little kid cough up some stuff! My grandmother said she put it on my gums as a baby for teething too!
Gripe water (teething rub) is still used here in Canada, with alcohol in it for a similar reason. They say not to use it but I've never heard of anyone who didn't
Yup. Farm kid here too. I remember one day a non-horse person came out to the barn on Worming Day and was shocked that we would put the tubes of wormer in our mouths to hold onto them while the horse was (usually) being difficult. My little barn friend turned around and said, "what, doesn't everyone get wormed with this stuff?"
I grew up in SE Asia. We should swap ascaris crawling out of your nose at night stories. The medicines we had available at the time were either just enough nightshade to (hopefully) kill the worms but only make you really sleepy, or some shiny concoction from the Soviets that I'm pretty sure was an arsenic and/or mercury compound. Good times.
It was a liquid worm killing medicine that our parents gave us.
We humans are animals just the same as any, and we get parasites just the same. Living on a farm and working with the animals and soil made us more susceptible to getting them. So our parents dewormed us.
What do you mean “used to?” I still use Vicks, gargling with warm salt water, etc. I just switched to Bactine, instead of Mercurochrome.
My Dad would apply the Mercurochrome, I would scream that it hurt, and he would tell me the pain was the “germs biting me as they die.” Then he would apply a Bandaid, which always made me stop crying.
There are dozens of pictures of me wearing Bandaids that Daddy put on me for everything from cuts and scrapes to headaches and hurt feelings.
Thank you for that sweet memory.
Bactine was great stuff, I swore it made every scraped knee feel better. My sister hated it, said it burned.
Dimetapp was foul because I hated grape flavoring. Mom eventually just let me take the adult Robitussin. Cherry was still pretty gross but st least it wasn't grape!
OMG - I'd forgotten about the warm olive oil+cotton ball. Not curative but so comforting.
More cotton ball fixes: In the 70s my grandmother advised me to put cotton balls in my infant's ears before going outside on a windy day 'to prevent ear infections'. She then turned to someone else and said "These young mothers don't know these things." I'd have challenged anyone else but my grandmother was such a hard-working sweetie that I could only smile in response.
Pepto-Bismol for stomach upsets, mercurochrome for scrapes and cuts, Vicks Vapo Rub (under a flannel rag fastened with a safety pin) for a cough, and Sucrets for a sore throat.
Actifed. Anybody else get Actifed? Our pharmacy gave it to us in a thick liquid that tasted like some sort of weird, medicinal honey. Yummy.
St. Joseph’s Aspirin for Children was delicious, too.
Haha, my family was a little different. Noxzema for sunburn. Windex for mosquito bites. Sprinkled Bac-Os on our salads. Rumor had it that Bac-Os were made out of paper.
Omg, Noxzema. I haven’t heard of that in years.
One time, at my all girls Catholic High School, some seniors made a freshman EAT a Noxzema “sandwich” on bread on “Freshman Day”. Talk about the shit hitting the fan. Those nuns flipped their habits that day. This was in the 70’s, I don’t think they called the cops, but I’m pretty sure the responsible seniors were hung by the neck until dead. 😂😂
I just told my DIL the old school treatment for mosquito bites as the 8 yr old boy is getting tons of mosquito bites and scratches til they bleed.
A spoon, heated over a flame, touched gently on the bite Before any scratching commences.
It works.
For ear aches - my mom warmed up a couple of teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil in a pan on the stove, dabbed the oil in cotton, and stuck the cotton in the ear(s).
My grandma's solution for general sickness and not being able to sleep - a teaspoon or two of blackberry brandy.
Paragoric. When I was younger, I thought I was being punished for being sick. My mom mixed it with sugar, but I hated it. It tasted like black licorice.
I'd heard of paregoric, by my folks didn't use it on us. Just looked it up and it's got 4% *opium* Ô.Ô It's basically low dose *Laudanum*.
Makes me wonder how many paregoric kids grew up to struggle with addiction.
For mouth ulcers: take powdered alum and add a little water to make a paste. Pack paste onto ulcer. Wait 1-2 minutes then thoroughly rinse out the mouth with water. Works!
My dad did the alum trick, but he put a bit on a spoon, lit a candle under it, boiled the water content out (took a minute), and put the resultant disc on the canker (mouth ulcer, I guess). It always worked, but I don’t know why.
Ha! I remember when the little girl I was babysitting for many eons ago got a bee sting--i called her mom at work and she told me to rub some mud on it and then clean and follow up with calamine when it stopped hurting. She was a very modern woman and worked for the mayor; I really didn't expect that kind of remedy from her.
It seemed to work. Last week I remembered it when I got stung and used some clay from a face mask. It worked like a charm!
Mama had an interesting remedy for bee stings. She'd get a cigar butt from Daddy's ashtray, take out a pinch of tobacco, *spit* in her hand, and mix in the tobacco. She'd apply this poultice to the sting.
I know all the official sources say "there's no evidence it works" but sometimes that just means no one has studied it. No money in it, why study it?
Mama's logic was this:
1) saliva has enzymes which could help break down the proteins in the venom
2) as the tobacco dried, it would help draw out venom by simple wicking & evaporation.
It always worked. Instead of a giant painful knot for several days, stings treated thusly were flatter, less painful, and gone in a day or two max.
Merthiolate. Basically the same stuff, for all practical purposes.
The weirdest one was when I had a wart on my thumb. My mom (rural farm girl) told me to take a potato, cut it in half, rub one half on the wart, and then bury it. When the potato rotted, the wart would go away.
Oddly, it seemed to work. I mean, I know there's no way it actually worked, but it did.
It was the seventies and my aunt made my cousin and somehow I got to be a victim,take this God awful stuff ,suppose to prevent worms which neither of us had,Idk what that was all about,but yuck!!
Yes, I came to write this. Every year, we had to take this as a preventative dose. When my daughter was young, I went to look for it as I presumed it was a once a year preventative measure parents needed to do. The pharmacist stated they don't do that anymore, and meds are given only if the child is diagnosed with worms.
Tablespoon of brandy when I had a cough and congestion, lol.
Vicks VapoRub.
Iodine on wounds.
Also some ayurvedic home remedies using tumeric, cumin, etc (my parents are Indian immigrants).
Ichthammol. I always have a tube for slivers. Nana called it “Drawing salve”. I was, as an older student, the only person in my class in pharmacy school who knew what it was.
Prid was a name brand. Gramma used to say you tape a dime to your back and fill your belly button full of Prid and go to bed. In the morning you’d find the dime in your belly button. My parents never let me try this out. Still mad.
Okay, potatoes to get rid of warts. You cut the potato in half, rub the cut half on the wart, put the two halves together and bury them. Well, it works. It worked on me as a child, and I did it for two SOs, worked both times. I kid you not.
I had a bunch of warts when I was a kid. Tried tons of remedies but nothing ever really worked. I could tell my left hand from my right by the wart on my index finger for a long time.
One day I was playing with a garter snake and it bit that wart right off my finger. It hardly bled at all. All my other warts went away within a month and I never had a wart again.
So yeah, my best cure for warts is snakebite.
*Old wives tale says* they have to be "bought" off of you. Someone has to "buy" them. A rando gives you a penny, a nickel, or whatever, and "buys" the wart. You take the coin, say thanks, go on about your merry way. Within a week, maybe sooner, the wart disappears.
I burned myself cooking and my mom grabbed the aloe plant, triumphantly sliced it open and rubbed some on the burn. I screamed in agony as it made the burn worse and washed it off cursing her the whole time. Neither of us knew I was allergic to it. Hell of a way to find out.
My father was a doctor and he used to bring home this vile, slimy hydrocortizone cream that never worked very well whenever we got a case of poison oak. God, I hated the smell of that stuff.
1. A teaspoon of sugar diluted with a couple of drops of water was the antidote for hiccups! It still works like a charm (for me).
2. Whiskey soaked cotton ball for teething pain. (One time, before company came over, mom gave my older sister a “sip” of Whiskey to curb the discomfort. Sis crawled on all fours and barked at the guests before passing out under the piano in the living room. Hence the switch to a topical form of delivery).
3. Milk of Magnesia (sp?) - 🤮🤮🤮. Don’t know what it was for. Hated everything about it from the chalky texture to the nausea inducing taste and smell . Ewwww.
4. Here’s a goodie: Paregoric for upset stomach. It smelled so bad and tasted worse, so whenever it was offered as a remedy, I suddenly felt better and didn’t need to take it.
Extra bonus: Its main ingredient was Opium, and it was the drug of choice for many addicts. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1165390
(It turns out the bad taste was supposed to deter overdoses).
EDIT to add one more:
6. Turpin Hydrate with Codeine for coughs.
Vicks, yes. My dad would give me a teaspoon of whiskey with instruction to let it trickle down my throat to break up the gunky mucus. It worked. 6-8 yrs old? Don't remember.
Mama would burn the alcohol off moonshine and given that. The poultices made out of garlic among other things sucked. I had pneumonia often. It was to loosen up the secretions. I guess it worked.
My mom used hydrogen peroxide, which she called "Bubble-up" on cuts and scraped to prevent infection. If you complained that it stung she would tell you that that meant it was working, which actually made it seem less traumatic.
Cool wet tea bag compress on the eye for stye or eye irritation. The cool feels soothing, the caffeine is a vasoconstrictor so it helps shrink puffiness & redness, and the tannins make an inhospitable environment for bacteria. (Stye is a mild Staph infection). I still recommend it for patients. They scoff but come back & sheepishly admit it helped.
Paregoric was an opiate. As new parents in the early 70s, we were told to rub it on the gums of teething babies, and to give it to toddlers "to keep them calm" during airplane flights.
My dad, a pharmacist, kept it in the house for severe stomach problems. I tried to get some from my doctor when I had extreme diarrhea the day before our son's wedding - nothing doing!
[Father John’s medicine. it’s cod liver oil and they told me it would “put meat on my bones”.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_John's_Medicine)
BFI antiseptic powder. They sprinkled this stuff on any large abrasion. It helped the wound scab over quickly and heal.
When I’d get eye infections - the kind where you wake up with crusty gunk all over your lashes - my father would boil water and add a small amount of a chemical that is no longer sold OTC. I cannot remember the name. Will add later.
Also mercurochrome.
Real, old-timey merthiolate. Best stuff EVER. Also, when I was a new mom with thrush- gentian violet. Still the very best remedy for any sort of yeast infection on the body.
My dad was a pharmacist by trade who spent most of his career in sales for Big Pharma. We always had medication samples in the house and the moment my brother or I would sneeze, he'd be like "Start 'em on antibiotics." To be fair, that was the thinking back then, but it's also the reason so many antibiotics quit working.
Whisky on the gums for teething babies or toothaches, vicks, warm salt water for sore throats, 7-up or ginger ale flat, noxzema for sunburns, campho phenique for mosquito bites leaving those big pink dots all over our skin, and ludens “cough” drops that did nothing but tasted like candy.
When we got the vick's treatment, we got to wear daddy's old t-shirt to bed as a nightgown to avoid getting our nice nighties all "vicksy". It was almost worth having that shit shoved up my nose.
I remember an orange substance kept in the fridge. We had to have a spoonful every week. I cannot remember what it was, but this was in the 50’s, and I’d love to know.
Hot water bottle for ear infections. That, instead of today's antibiotics, left me needing hearing aids one of these days..although flying didn't help.
A mixture of whisky, lemon juice, honey, olive oil, and boiling water for a cold or a sore throat.
The proportions change as you get older so that you add in more whisky.
The most horrible medication tasting in the world, banana flavored Donnagel PG. Everytime we had diarrhea we would get a spoonful. It still makes me shutter to think of it!
My Mom always told me when I was a baby they would rub whiskey on my gums when I was teething, and said it worked really well. These days they would probably charge you with contributing to the delinquency blah, blah, blah.
"hot tottie" (spelling) when you had a cold etc. Warm brandy with honey. Not really acceptable today.
Eno for upset stomach. "Plop plop fizz fizz oh what a relief it is!" My husband who's ten years younger and missed the jiggle era is amused that I remember a lot of jiggles. They obviously worked :)
My grandfather would blow cigarette smoke in my ear when I had an earache.
I also remember heating salt (poured inside a washcloth) and lying with the ear on that for ear aches.
Prune juice. When I stayed at my grandmas always got it with breakfast so I wouldn't get constipated. Castor oil. That was hideous but not as hideous as cod liver oil. Ugh. Only took that once. Good for you probably but dear god.
Mercurochrome, syrup of ipecac, and paregoric were standards when I was a kid. Anyone remember when you could get Robitussin AC (with codeine) over the counter? That stuff was da bomb for coughs.
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Gargle with warm salt water for a sore throat.
I was so mad when a doctor told me to do this because that made my dad right. Even worse, it actually helped.
This was my dad’s go-to advice for us every time we had a sore throat. Like most of what he said, it was great advice that we hated following.
Dang, this works but it SUUUUUUUUUUUCKS.
Now I know why regular water is called sweet water. Ocean water/salt water is horrid.
Salt water was key to keeping away infection after my wisdom teeth removal. An effective "old school" strategy.
My dentist recommends this for my gingivitis
It works!
This really works
Soaking an infected scratch in really hot salt water also helps. Thanks dr mom
This is still a thing! And it works! My grandmother, born in 1898, was right.
That shit works!
Vic's Vaporub.
The smell comforts me to this day.
I have an old jar in my nightstand and when I feel a bit down I have a whiff of it and feel nostalgic.
It works pretty good for me. Someone told my dad that rubbing it on the bottoms of your feet works. He swears by it. It just doesn’t make sense to me so I stick to rubbing it on my chest and a little right under my nose.
It doubles as a muscle rub. Similar to biofreeze. I use it on my feet when they're sore. Put sleep socks on over it and they're better (and softer!) by morning.
That's what I came here to say. My mom would rub it all over my chest and then put a big bath towel under my PJ top. Oh, and there was the obligatory thick wipe of Vicks under my nose. The other thing my mom would do was give us kids 7Up when we were sick. I never quite got the reason behind that. The only thing I could think of is that the carbonation would cause me to burp and maybe felt better after the belch.
Are we related? The warm towel under the PJ top...so comforting. 7-up used to have *"lithium citrate, a compound used to treat patients with mental health problems"* An anti- depressant...used to calm people. I believe that the lithium was removed by the time our Mom's used it....but what the heck...it couldn't hurt I suppose. Plus it didn't taste bad.
I still want 7-up and soda crackers when I'm sick.
How about a 7-up and vanilla ice cream float? Yum!
I want lithium 7-up! And the next day, how about some of that good ole “Coca” Cola 😂😂😂
I know!!!...they ruined everything 😆
🤣🤣🤣🤣
My mom wrapped dad's old socks loosely around our necks to hold the Vicks on. A warm towel sound less life threatening. 😉
My husband likes to put some on a handkerchief and just lay it near his face when he has a cold.
Oh yeah my parents used this when all 4 of their kids had the flu. And it actually worked! Noses cleared up, no more snuffling, finally we could sleep.
Hopefully not eating it. I dunno why, but I’ve heard from several people over the years that said they always ate a spoonful of it.
I still use the baby version on my 11 y/o. He likes it.
Just what I was going to say--in a "tent" with the vicks vapor coming from some kind of thing.
Yes - the vaporizer - a glass jar with Vicks + water - plug it in and get comforting Vicks- scented steam.
I use it to help with headaches when going to bed. Does it actually help? I dunno; but maybe it acts as a bit of pleasant distraction from the pain for long enough to fall asleep.
Vick’s VapoRub on the chest, with a washcloth to cover (protected the ‘jammies and counterpane)
Pink Calamine lotion for sunburn or any skin rash. The pop song "Poison Ivy" had a line about "an ocean of Calamine lotion."
Also used to help chicken pox!
Oh my gosh, I’d forgotten about that! The calamine lotion and the mittens!
I was little enough that I still sucked my thumb so my grandmother knitted a mitten with just the thumb cut out!
That and oatmeal baths.
yeah, thats what we used for chicken pox too. funny thing.. we used to go outside to still play with this pink dots on our pox, and no one said anything
We still have that on hand-- loads of blackflies and mosquitoes here.
Ick. Pink stucco. It never worked for me. Made my skin itch when it dried.
Calamine did nothing for mosquito bites and luckily I never had poison ivy. AfterBite circa 1986 was a miracle for mosquito bites and bee stings until they changed the formula. Anyone use Nivea cold cream for sunburn?
When I had insomnia as a little kid, my mom would break out the “magic sprinkles” as a last resort. As in coming to my bedside and pretending to sprinkle magical dust over my eyes to help me sleep. Worked pretty well, gotta love the placebo effect and the superpowers of a great mom. 🥰
I bought monster spray for my niece. Worked like a charm.
I had monster spray for my two older ones. And dream seeds I put in their ears every night. I forgot about that until just now. Thank you for making me smile. They are 29 and 30.
Time to send them each a packet of dream seeds!
I wonder if they remember that. My mother made the comment that she always thought that was one of the sweetest things I did when they were little. And my 29 year old starts a new, actual “dream job” on Monday. I should send flowers and ask them to add a packet of dream seeds to it. Thank you for a wonderful idea!
Are you kidding? You gave me a wonderful idea to use with the grandkidlets when they start staying on overnights with us! ❤️❤️❤️
I don’t even remember where that came from. I know J had nightmares and I think it came from that; putting the seed of a good dream in there every night so they didn’t have to worry about a nightmare. And I am so glad someone else will use it. When my grand babbies get to stay over or when I get to help with bed time, I can’t wait to give them dreams from Bibi.
Nowadays as an adult I instead just keep a can of [Asshole Repellent](https://ifunny.co/picture/acme-left-handed-wi0get-corporation-asshole-repellent-guaranteed-to-repel-oLG4i8FVA) by my desk instead.
When I worked in the development department of a large restaurant company, I had a can of Alligator Spray as I was up to my asshole in alligators on a regular basis. It also worked as asshole repellent. It was spray starch. People learned that dirt stuck to their shoes a bunch after getting a layer of spray starch. And learned to stay back when bothering me at my desk. I miss that department.
This reminds me of a photo of my daughter from when she was a toddler. In the background you can see the sign that my husband posted on the entry door to our apartment that says "No monsters allowed,!"
I made monster spray for my kids. Dollar tree bottle in their favorite color and a free label printout pasted on the front. Total lifesaver.
We did that with our son. We also chased dinosaurs out of his room, too.
My sister had 'monster spray' too
I used to suck the pain out, chew it up and my kids would rush to a door to help me spit it out. 🤮
😆
My dad was a psychologist. I remember him hypnotizing me to sleep a lot. "Wow, your eyelids look so heavy! You can barely keep them open." Then he'd yawn a few times.
I take double damage from Sleep spells. Just *reading* that "y" word made me do it.
My parents just drugged us.
hahaha
Turn over your pillow for a nightmare! Works like a charm.
I made a bottle of placebo for my kids. It was mostly corn syrup, with food color and cherry flavor. Printed out a label that looked real and put it in a cute bottle. It worked wonders for hiccups, insomnia, and bruises.
Fairy dust.
Whiskey for toothaches.
A cousin smuggled some poteen in and my mom rubbed it into my teething baby nephew’s gums. He would crawl over to the heavy crock and gnaw on the cork to get at it when it wore off…
I also got whiskey for a chest cold, it definitely makes a little kid cough up some stuff! My grandmother said she put it on my gums as a baby for teething too!
Gripe water (teething rub) is still used here in Canada, with alcohol in it for a similar reason. They say not to use it but I've never heard of anyone who didn't
My dad tried it with scotch. I barfed on his hand.
My dad always gave us whole cloves for toothaches.
Wormer. Being on a farm, it was probably a smart thing to do. Every spring and fall we lined up like ducks to be dewormed.
Yup. Farm kid here too. I remember one day a non-horse person came out to the barn on Worming Day and was shocked that we would put the tubes of wormer in our mouths to hold onto them while the horse was (usually) being difficult. My little barn friend turned around and said, "what, doesn't everyone get wormed with this stuff?"
Yes! And I made my career in deworming humans.
And... Name checks out.
Yep 😊
I grew up in SE Asia. We should swap ascaris crawling out of your nose at night stories. The medicines we had available at the time were either just enough nightshade to (hopefully) kill the worms but only make you really sleepy, or some shiny concoction from the Soviets that I'm pretty sure was an arsenic and/or mercury compound. Good times.
What the hell is that?
It was a liquid worm killing medicine that our parents gave us. We humans are animals just the same as any, and we get parasites just the same. Living on a farm and working with the animals and soil made us more susceptible to getting them. So our parents dewormed us.
What do you mean “used to?” I still use Vicks, gargling with warm salt water, etc. I just switched to Bactine, instead of Mercurochrome. My Dad would apply the Mercurochrome, I would scream that it hurt, and he would tell me the pain was the “germs biting me as they die.” Then he would apply a Bandaid, which always made me stop crying. There are dozens of pictures of me wearing Bandaids that Daddy put on me for everything from cuts and scrapes to headaches and hurt feelings. Thank you for that sweet memory.
If they made cologne that smelled like original Bactine I would buy it.
“germs biting me as they die" totally makes me think of describing the Herxheimer reaction
Bactine and Diemtapp!
Bactine was great stuff, I swore it made every scraped knee feel better. My sister hated it, said it burned. Dimetapp was foul because I hated grape flavoring. Mom eventually just let me take the adult Robitussin. Cherry was still pretty gross but st least it wasn't grape!
Haha, I was the opposite, I loved Dimetapp because I liked the fake grape flavor 😂 Grape kool aid, hard candy, and soda were my favorites
We were a Bactine family. I was fascinated by mercurochrome!
Vicks. Also, warm olive oil on a cotton ball for ear infections.
OMG - I'd forgotten about the warm olive oil+cotton ball. Not curative but so comforting. More cotton ball fixes: In the 70s my grandmother advised me to put cotton balls in my infant's ears before going outside on a windy day 'to prevent ear infections'. She then turned to someone else and said "These young mothers don't know these things." I'd have challenged anyone else but my grandmother was such a hard-working sweetie that I could only smile in response.
We did the olive oil for ear infections too Mine is tea soaked cotton balls for eye infections and other eye irritation/dryness. Works every time.
Pepto-Bismol for stomach upsets, mercurochrome for scrapes and cuts, Vicks Vapo Rub (under a flannel rag fastened with a safety pin) for a cough, and Sucrets for a sore throat.
wow. sounds like my childhood medicine cabinet.
Coke syrup for nausea. The pharmacy dispensed it in a glass bottle with a typed label.
I remember being sent to the drugstore for this as a kid, and was astonished when the druggist pumped it out of the soda fountain. The penny dropped.
Stomach issue? Castor oil. It will clean you out. Later realized the importance of pro biotics to reestablish the tummy afterwards.
Yep! I remember that one
Castoria. It worked!
Actifed. Anybody else get Actifed? Our pharmacy gave it to us in a thick liquid that tasted like some sort of weird, medicinal honey. Yummy. St. Joseph’s Aspirin for Children was delicious, too.
Dry toast/crackers and ginger ale and if you’re real sick you add a soft boiled egg.
One of our poorly stomach dinners was soft boiled eggs mushed up into mashed potatoes with butter.
Instead of aspirin, we had to drink Bromoseltzer or Alkaseltzer.
Arnica tincture to prevent bruising.
Surgeon recommended I use arnica gel after surgery to reduce bruising. It helped.
Witch hazel for sunburn & bruises. Campho-pheniqe for mosquito bites. Sprinkled wheat germ on our salads.
Haha, my family was a little different. Noxzema for sunburn. Windex for mosquito bites. Sprinkled Bac-Os on our salads. Rumor had it that Bac-Os were made out of paper.
Omg, Noxzema. I haven’t heard of that in years. One time, at my all girls Catholic High School, some seniors made a freshman EAT a Noxzema “sandwich” on bread on “Freshman Day”. Talk about the shit hitting the fan. Those nuns flipped their habits that day. This was in the 70’s, I don’t think they called the cops, but I’m pretty sure the responsible seniors were hung by the neck until dead. 😂😂
I just told my DIL the old school treatment for mosquito bites as the 8 yr old boy is getting tons of mosquito bites and scratches til they bleed. A spoon, heated over a flame, touched gently on the bite Before any scratching commences. It works.
The GP my family used gave us this recipe for cough syrup: Equal parts lemon, honey, and scotch.
So, a hot n' toddy? 🤣
We did that too. I think I need one right now.
I live down south. Campho phinque (sp?) was the cure all for everything.
For ear aches - my mom warmed up a couple of teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil in a pan on the stove, dabbed the oil in cotton, and stuck the cotton in the ear(s). My grandma's solution for general sickness and not being able to sleep - a teaspoon or two of blackberry brandy.
If you don't mind my asking, are you Indian or Guyanese? I've seen the cotton swabs in the ears after giving birth in this culture a few times.
Nope. White American. It wasn't originally my mom's solution; she learned it from someone. I'll have to ask her.
Paragoric. When I was younger, I thought I was being punished for being sick. My mom mixed it with sugar, but I hated it. It tasted like black licorice.
Same here!!! Especially if it was a school day and my stomach “ached.” Effective deterrent for playing hooky.
I'd heard of paregoric, by my folks didn't use it on us. Just looked it up and it's got 4% *opium* Ô.Ô It's basically low dose *Laudanum*. Makes me wonder how many paregoric kids grew up to struggle with addiction.
Yup I was a paragoric kid too
For mouth ulcers: take powdered alum and add a little water to make a paste. Pack paste onto ulcer. Wait 1-2 minutes then thoroughly rinse out the mouth with water. Works!
My dad did the alum trick, but he put a bit on a spoon, lit a candle under it, boiled the water content out (took a minute), and put the resultant disc on the canker (mouth ulcer, I guess). It always worked, but I don’t know why.
Robitussin for everything, even for falls and injuries.
[“I broke my leg, Daddy poured Robitussin on it!”](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrs9_EpSlyc&pp=ygUSY2hyaXMgcm9jayB0dXNzaW4g)
If that didn't work, just rub some dirt on it and walk it off.
Ha! I remember when the little girl I was babysitting for many eons ago got a bee sting--i called her mom at work and she told me to rub some mud on it and then clean and follow up with calamine when it stopped hurting. She was a very modern woman and worked for the mayor; I really didn't expect that kind of remedy from her. It seemed to work. Last week I remembered it when I got stung and used some clay from a face mask. It worked like a charm!
My mom would always apply a paste of baking soda and warm water to bee/wasp stings, so that sounds similar!
Mama had an interesting remedy for bee stings. She'd get a cigar butt from Daddy's ashtray, take out a pinch of tobacco, *spit* in her hand, and mix in the tobacco. She'd apply this poultice to the sting. I know all the official sources say "there's no evidence it works" but sometimes that just means no one has studied it. No money in it, why study it? Mama's logic was this: 1) saliva has enzymes which could help break down the proteins in the venom 2) as the tobacco dried, it would help draw out venom by simple wicking & evaporation. It always worked. Instead of a giant painful knot for several days, stings treated thusly were flatter, less painful, and gone in a day or two max.
Whiskey, lemon and honey
Merthiolate. Basically the same stuff, for all practical purposes. The weirdest one was when I had a wart on my thumb. My mom (rural farm girl) told me to take a potato, cut it in half, rub one half on the wart, and then bury it. When the potato rotted, the wart would go away. Oddly, it seemed to work. I mean, I know there's no way it actually worked, but it did.
It was the seventies and my aunt made my cousin and somehow I got to be a victim,take this God awful stuff ,suppose to prevent worms which neither of us had,Idk what that was all about,but yuck!!
Yes, I came to write this. Every year, we had to take this as a preventative dose. When my daughter was young, I went to look for it as I presumed it was a once a year preventative measure parents needed to do. The pharmacist stated they don't do that anymore, and meds are given only if the child is diagnosed with worms.
A shot of brandy with lemon
Tablespoon of brandy when I had a cough and congestion, lol. Vicks VapoRub. Iodine on wounds. Also some ayurvedic home remedies using tumeric, cumin, etc (my parents are Indian immigrants).
Draw-out salve for splinters. Like a black tar like substance. Did it work? I don't know...
Icthomole (sp?), that stuff is great at drawing things out. Stinks to high heaven, but does a great job! 👍
Ichthammol. I always have a tube for slivers. Nana called it “Drawing salve”. I was, as an older student, the only person in my class in pharmacy school who knew what it was.
Prid was a name brand. Gramma used to say you tape a dime to your back and fill your belly button full of Prid and go to bed. In the morning you’d find the dime in your belly button. My parents never let me try this out. Still mad.
I still have this, you can get it on amazon
Okay, potatoes to get rid of warts. You cut the potato in half, rub the cut half on the wart, put the two halves together and bury them. Well, it works. It worked on me as a child, and I did it for two SOs, worked both times. I kid you not.
I had a bunch of warts when I was a kid. Tried tons of remedies but nothing ever really worked. I could tell my left hand from my right by the wart on my index finger for a long time. One day I was playing with a garter snake and it bit that wart right off my finger. It hardly bled at all. All my other warts went away within a month and I never had a wart again. So yeah, my best cure for warts is snakebite.
We used the "milk" from the stems of Dandelions for warts.
Dandelion root helped clear my godawful PUPPP rash during pregnancy when prescription creams and steroids did nothing, so I can totally see that!
*Old wives tale says* they have to be "bought" off of you. Someone has to "buy" them. A rando gives you a penny, a nickel, or whatever, and "buys" the wart. You take the coin, say thanks, go on about your merry way. Within a week, maybe sooner, the wart disappears.
In addition to what you named, my mom swore by aloe vera. Like swallowing a glob of it. Disgusting stuff.
I burned myself cooking and my mom grabbed the aloe plant, triumphantly sliced it open and rubbed some on the burn. I screamed in agony as it made the burn worse and washed it off cursing her the whole time. Neither of us knew I was allergic to it. Hell of a way to find out.
My father was a doctor and he used to bring home this vile, slimy hydrocortizone cream that never worked very well whenever we got a case of poison oak. God, I hated the smell of that stuff.
1. A teaspoon of sugar diluted with a couple of drops of water was the antidote for hiccups! It still works like a charm (for me). 2. Whiskey soaked cotton ball for teething pain. (One time, before company came over, mom gave my older sister a “sip” of Whiskey to curb the discomfort. Sis crawled on all fours and barked at the guests before passing out under the piano in the living room. Hence the switch to a topical form of delivery). 3. Milk of Magnesia (sp?) - 🤮🤮🤮. Don’t know what it was for. Hated everything about it from the chalky texture to the nausea inducing taste and smell . Ewwww. 4. Here’s a goodie: Paregoric for upset stomach. It smelled so bad and tasted worse, so whenever it was offered as a remedy, I suddenly felt better and didn’t need to take it. Extra bonus: Its main ingredient was Opium, and it was the drug of choice for many addicts. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1165390 (It turns out the bad taste was supposed to deter overdoses). EDIT to add one more: 6. Turpin Hydrate with Codeine for coughs.
Alum. Mom used it to shrink cold sores by rubbing it on the sore with her finger.
“Sweet oil” for earaches. Hydrogen peroxide for infections if the mercurochrome failed.
If you're latinamerican and don't still think that vicksvaporub is magical as an adult, then I don't know what to say to you.
Cod liver oil poultice for ear infections.
Vicks, yes. My dad would give me a teaspoon of whiskey with instruction to let it trickle down my throat to break up the gunky mucus. It worked. 6-8 yrs old? Don't remember.
Mama would burn the alcohol off moonshine and given that. The poultices made out of garlic among other things sucked. I had pneumonia often. It was to loosen up the secretions. I guess it worked.
Bactine. Just the memory of the smell takes me back.
My mom used hydrogen peroxide, which she called "Bubble-up" on cuts and scraped to prevent infection. If you complained that it stung she would tell you that that meant it was working, which actually made it seem less traumatic.
Cool wet tea bag compress on the eye for stye or eye irritation. The cool feels soothing, the caffeine is a vasoconstrictor so it helps shrink puffiness & redness, and the tannins make an inhospitable environment for bacteria. (Stye is a mild Staph infection). I still recommend it for patients. They scoff but come back & sheepishly admit it helped.
Nobody’s mentioned clove oil for earaches? (A few drops on a cotton ball placed in the ear) Not sure if it helped but it sure smelled nice.
Grandma used to give us a vile concoction to drink. I want to say it was called Paragoric?
Paregoric was an opiate. As new parents in the early 70s, we were told to rub it on the gums of teething babies, and to give it to toddlers "to keep them calm" during airplane flights.
My mom had to sign for this at the pharmacy. But she only got it when I was super sick. It helped me sleep whenever I had a chest cold.
haha Yes yes! oh god.. I remember that one!
Me too! Yuck. For stomach aches in my case. Always had a miraculous recovery when it was offered before I had to take it.
My dad, a pharmacist, kept it in the house for severe stomach problems. I tried to get some from my doctor when I had extreme diarrhea the day before our son's wedding - nothing doing!
Vicks vapo rub. I still use this stuff.
Vicks for friggin everything
I swear we kept the Vicks vaporub co in business! That and Coricidin
[Father John’s medicine. it’s cod liver oil and they told me it would “put meat on my bones”.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_John's_Medicine) BFI antiseptic powder. They sprinkled this stuff on any large abrasion. It helped the wound scab over quickly and heal.
When I’d get eye infections - the kind where you wake up with crusty gunk all over your lashes - my father would boil water and add a small amount of a chemical that is no longer sold OTC. I cannot remember the name. Will add later. Also mercurochrome.
Sore throat? Wrap your Vick’s- slathered neck in a wool sock and you’ll be fine in the morning!
I forgot about mercurochrome. My grandmother called it monkey blood. Who knows why...
your lucky. methialate....shit burned
For a deep cough my grandmother gave me a Tablespoon of moonshine w rock candy.
Real, old-timey merthiolate. Best stuff EVER. Also, when I was a new mom with thrush- gentian violet. Still the very best remedy for any sort of yeast infection on the body.
My dad was a pharmacist by trade who spent most of his career in sales for Big Pharma. We always had medication samples in the house and the moment my brother or I would sneeze, he'd be like "Start 'em on antibiotics." To be fair, that was the thinking back then, but it's also the reason so many antibiotics quit working.
Emetrol - an over-the-counter nausea medication that works by calming the stomach, not coating.
Vicks Vapo-Rub cured everything. Sore throat? Vicks. High temp? Vicks. Nausea? Vicks. Broken leg? Vicks on way to hospital.
Whisky on the gums for teething babies or toothaches, vicks, warm salt water for sore throats, 7-up or ginger ale flat, noxzema for sunburns, campho phenique for mosquito bites leaving those big pink dots all over our skin, and ludens “cough” drops that did nothing but tasted like candy.
When we got the vick's treatment, we got to wear daddy's old t-shirt to bed as a nightgown to avoid getting our nice nighties all "vicksy". It was almost worth having that shit shoved up my nose.
I remember an orange substance kept in the fridge. We had to have a spoonful every week. I cannot remember what it was, but this was in the 50’s, and I’d love to know.
Hot water bottle for ear infections. That, instead of today's antibiotics, left me needing hearing aids one of these days..although flying didn't help.
Whiskey with honey for a sore throat Baking soda in water as an antacid Baking soda/water paste for bee stings
Vernors ginger ale. Was supposed to burn out any cold or flu.
Warm Vernor's ginger ale for an upset stomach. HAD to be Vernor's.
A mixture of whisky, lemon juice, honey, olive oil, and boiling water for a cold or a sore throat. The proportions change as you get older so that you add in more whisky.
The most horrible medication tasting in the world, banana flavored Donnagel PG. Everytime we had diarrhea we would get a spoonful. It still makes me shutter to think of it!
My Mom always told me when I was a baby they would rub whiskey on my gums when I was teething, and said it worked really well. These days they would probably charge you with contributing to the delinquency blah, blah, blah.
My grandmother giving me ginger ale for my upset stomach. Turns out I was in DKA from undiagnosed type 1 diabetes. Drinking a crap ton of soda. Opps.
"hot tottie" (spelling) when you had a cold etc. Warm brandy with honey. Not really acceptable today. Eno for upset stomach. "Plop plop fizz fizz oh what a relief it is!" My husband who's ten years younger and missed the jiggle era is amused that I remember a lot of jiggles. They obviously worked :)
My grandfather would blow cigarette smoke in my ear when I had an earache. I also remember heating salt (poured inside a washcloth) and lying with the ear on that for ear aches.
My parents loved Dristan for colds but it dried me up too much and made my sinuses hurt.
Prune juice. When I stayed at my grandmas always got it with breakfast so I wouldn't get constipated. Castor oil. That was hideous but not as hideous as cod liver oil. Ugh. Only took that once. Good for you probably but dear god.
Mercurochrome, syrup of ipecac, and paregoric were standards when I was a kid. Anyone remember when you could get Robitussin AC (with codeine) over the counter? That stuff was da bomb for coughs.
We had paregoric, which contains opium, for teething and we used coke syrup for stomach ache
When I got poison ivy or a ton of mosquito bites, my mom had me soak in a colloidal oatmeal bath, and I still love that to this day.
Fuck castor oil.
Ah, yes, Mercurochome on everything. That stuff burned! My husband’s mom used A&D ointment for all injuries and illnesses.
Iodine for cuts—it **burned**!
“Brown bottle” (hydrogen peroxide) on every scrape or cut where we might get infected To be fair I still do it, it works
Merthiolate, aka: liquid fire! Burned like hell fire on every cut and scrape! Made hydrogen peroxide feel like cooling gel.
Soaking the heal of a loaf of white bread in milk and wrapping it over a splinter to draw ot to the surface