I don't remember an onion poultice being used on my chest, just Vicks VapoRub--which didn't smell very good, either.

The one remedy using onions I did like was "onion syrup" for coughs. My Grandmother would cook sliced onions with a little water and lots of sugar; it would be very "syrupy" and actually tasted good and soothed my throat.

Nicotine is classified as a drug. It may not just be blowing smoke, this old wives tale.

I swear my grandma told me that they cut a toad in 1/2 and put on her chest one time when she had the croup, or some chest congestion. I must have imagined that. She gave me whiskey, honey and lemon juice when I had a caugh. Hate Whiskey to this day, but like the other ingredients. She always told me not to sit on the well curb on a late summer night because the cold concrete was bad for my "female parts". this was long before my female parts were doing anything female like. she also wouldn't buy any store bought chocolate candy bars, said there were worms in the chocolate. I didn't complain, because she would make me homemade fudge.

"For earache if you had somone around that smoked blowing tobacco smoke in the affected ear was a sure cure."
This is 2010 and the smoke blowing in the ear seems to be still around.
I had never heard about it until a few months ago when
someone had an ear ache and someone else said to "smoke" it out and went into details(I'm not describing the details) how to do that.
Holy smokes, I'm not going down that road.

So, what's up with the nicotine connection?

George, I remember my mother telling about her father smoking a pipe when she was young. He would blow smoke in her ear if she had an earache.It must have been a common practice.

Smoke in the ear must be an American cure, never heard about that when I grew up.
Chamomile and peppermint tea for an upset stomach, ditto a very thin oatmeal porridge, cooked in water and strained, no salt or sugar, blaah.

Yup! Daddy always blew smoke in our ears for ear ache. Today folks are using "ear candles" to remove old wax in the ears and I've talked to some people who have used it and they say it works. Vicks Vapor Rub on the chest. Honey and lemon for a cough. For the flu we could have soda crackers to munch on and maybe lemonade if Mom happend to have a lemon. As we improved,my Mom made a poached egg on warm milk toast. Iodine for sure (don't let Mom know you have a scrap), later we had Mercurochrome to use for cuts and scraps. In the Spring it was Sulfur and Molasses to thin your blood which was suppose to have gotten thick over the winter. Don't forget the Cod Liver Oil in the Winter! My Sister's Mother-in-law put either bear-grease or goose-grease on her kids's chests for a cold. God help us if we had a canker sore as
Dad would come with his "septic stick". I now have a recipe for cough medicine that is Maple syrup, lemon and red pepper!

My doc use to use a caustic pencil on cold or canker sores ( stomatitis). Man it hurt like hades, but it was gone in hours. I'll take the quick cure any day instead of farting around with numbing agents and waiting.

A nursery I went to when I was pre-school used to line us up and administer a teaspoon of cod liver oil and an orange juice chaser. It was the first time I ever saw one of those little paper cups.

Warm water with baking soda works quite well for heartburn. I'd still take it in a pinch. It's also a good poultice for sunburn or to apply on insect stings.

Fels Naptha laundry soap for poison ivy.

Vicks for colds..rubbed on the chest, stuffed up the nose and a lump to swallow for good measure. rofl. No, I do not recommend it being used this way! But, that's what we got.

I never had an earache when I was a kid.

Mama would not let me drink Dr. Pepper, because she said it was to cure constipation and not a soft drink.

Yes, sure I remember merthiolate and mercurichrome and also iodine. Yep, lets slap a little mercury on you. LOL.

Poached eggs and toast were convalescent food, as well as Mrs. Grass's noodle soup. I still love both of them. I guess I associate it with caring and comfort.

Nope, I didn't have to suffer the poultices and tars my folks did as kids. Surprises me. But, my husbands family who were all butchers and owned a slaughterhouse, still make the family 'drawing salve'. I was a non-believer, but I changed my mind. It would pull chrome off a bumper.

I really, really dreaded getting splinters. They were usually removed with a needle made sterile with the flame of a match, or if it were too large, the tip of a jack knife.

Yes, posieh 3. it was the candle thingy that was described to me. And it had been performed right here in Silicon Valley.
calliope 6,In the old days I went through the splinter ,needle and a hunting knife no less. These days DH, the nerd with precision mind and hands can remove the smallest splinter with a common tweezer .

I've tried, but I don't remember any folksy 'remedies'. Cuts and scrapes were cleaned with soap and water... if there was any redness showing a few hours later, hydrogen peroxide was poured over until it quit bubbling. My parents were adamently against the iodine/mercurochrome stuff: maybe that was the chemist/medic background or maybe it was sheer luck. Alcohol was used as a disinfectant for real cuts (as opposed to scrapes or scratches).

I do remember somebody trying out Vicks... and we discovered the smell was guaranteed to make me upchuck. I don't know why since (separately) neither eucalyptus nor menthol bother me.

I don't remember any comfort foods as such, but a fever always makes me crave grape juice.

One folksy thing [I haven't any idea where I learned it], is to use wet tea bags on a burn.... nowadays, the medical field seems to accept tannin as a remedy for burns. But o man, slap a wet tea bag on a fresh burn and for about ten minutes one thinks the cure is worse than the affliction.

The only remedy not already mentioned was something, not from my childhood, but from a lady who worked for me in the 70's and 80's. She was about 15 years older than I but I had never heard of this one. She came to work one day with a terrible case of bronchitis. She treated herself with kerosene and sugar. Blech! She put the kerosene on the side of her closed fist, sprinkled it with sugar and licked it off. She swore it cured her but I'm still not so sure. The human body is a wondrous thing. You will almost always get better with time. (forgot to mention, she called kerosene "coal oil" but it was actually kerosene. I still don't know if it actually is the same thing.)

I don't remember using Kerosene, but Hubby was raised in an old Norwegian community, with newly immigrated folks, and they would swallow a tiny bit for a cough. Yuck !

Never heard of anyone using "Kerosene" for a cough in Norway.But then I grew up during the war(WWII)and we did not have Kerosene or anything else flammable for that matter, the German soldiers confiscated all flammables. Perhaps this is something new, but IMO, totally dumb.

My grandfather was a herbalist, not professional,, but very knowledgeable. For stomach problems - and sleeplessness a few drops of tincture of Valerian on a cube of sugar was the remedy - and believe or not, I used it sometime now for restlessness and it works and taste just the way it did whenI was a kid.
Hot compresses of vinegar water around the neck, covered with something water-proof and then a wrap of a wool-scarf was the remedy for sore throat - I hated it! That wool-scarf got so scratchy by and by!
Chamomile or peppermint tea for stomach upsets.
Hydrogen peroxide as first aid for cuts and scrapes - still my first disinfectant in the medicine cabinet.
Comfort food; farina (cream of wheat) lightly toasted, thinned with broth (Angebrannte Griess Suppe) I still have it at times.
My sister acquired pin-worms once and was treated with enemas of milk and garlic.
There was a cough syrup made of hollowed out carrots, filled with brown crystal sugar, the juice was very nice, the winter cod-liver oil not so much.
Spring-time Grandfather would gather the whole family for a purifying tea to thin the blood, even my father got caught in that one several times.

Oh farina "suppe" or pudding was a staple at our house in Norway, I've brought our kids up with that and now the grand children. True comfort food.

Sometimes, you've got to look a herbalist in the mouth. Hubby and I and our three young children went to a family holiday dinner. After dinner we were offered herbal tea , herbs grown and tea made by a respected and highly valued family member who was an adamant Teetotaler.
Well, that tea knocked us out while we were sitting in the parlor. Our children were on their own while we were knocked out. We woke up and asked what on earth happened and what was in the tea. We never got an answer. We don't do unknown herbal anything anymore.

It were probably poppy tea.

I did not know about poppy tea then and I still don't know anything about it. This was some 40+ years ago in the Bible Belt of Pa. It is still a mystery.

Ohh, memories!

That was fun and sad. Re-reading a post from a long time ago and friends which have disappeared or are not living anymore. Thanks.