another option: i would instead recommend a therapy which would encourage the ear to drain (rather than put oil into a fluid filled ear). garlic oil and other infection fighting herbs could be taken internally and an onion poultice used to relieve pain and encourage the ear to drain. onion poultices occupy an honored place in folk healing tradition being inexpensive, easy to make and use, effective. i have a client handout on making and using an onion poultice i'll gladly share, if anyone wants a copy message me privately from here. This post was edited by kaliaman on Wed, Aug 7, 13 at 10:03

I suppose if one were in an isolated area with no access to modern medicine it might be necessary to fall back on home remedies for pneumonia, but that is probably what killed so many so soon in the days before modern medicine. Some illnesses are so severe, and move so rapidly, that traditional treatments do not have the strength to work. I have always considered pneumonia to be one of those. Essentially, the way I picture it, you have a concentrated ball of microorganisms rapidly doubling in quantity, and something has to be done to stop that fairly quickly before it kills you. Even today and hospitalized, many elderly still die of it. Traditional herbal treatments often cannot be safely taken in massive doses because they have not been treated by modern processes to remove any non-therapeutic constituents that could be harmful. There probably are remedies that could be taken to help ward off pneumonia, before a lung infection actually developed to the point it could be called that, but I don't know what they would be. I know the buds of forsythia have some antibiotic quality, but the Chinese grow a special strain in which that characteristic is stronger. There would be no guarantee, in either case, though, that the antibiotic quality of the forsythia buds would kill the harmful bacteria, rather than simply kill off more beneficial ones that might help to keep more lethal bacteria strains at bay. Only a practitioner in the area where the infection was occurring who had practiced on others with the same condition would tend to have this knowledge. Herbal treatment was probably by trial and error in the early days, and later patients probably benefited more than earlier ones during any particular epidemic. My theory is that most epidemics begin in more crowded and less affluent conditions, which would enable the ambitious practitioner to exercise his or her best remedies on the more affluent. Since herbs take more space to grow and store than today's pills, and transportation was also more limited, the average herbalist was probably rather limited in the number of remedies actually on hand. There were probably a few standards (like comfrey, because it grows so large and well in a variety of circumstances) which would be tried for almost every malady, since there was such a good supply of it, and other herbal remedies, which might acutually have been more effective, held in reserve for the very worst cases or the wealthiest clients. Herbs from warmer, or cooler, or dryer, or more humid climates than the practicing herbalist's would have been in short supply in the early days. An herbalist that relocated to an area with a different climate, for any reason, would have initially been able to bring a supply of his or her own remedies along, but would soon have needed to resupply with remedies that could grow in the new area, or which were obtainable through reliable trade with other areas. Even for conditions which the herbalist knew how to treat effectively, many probably died because of insufficient supplies of herbs or lack of anything to pay for treatment. All of that, again, would have resulted in those who had the knowledge and resources to do so, growing or gathering their own herbs where possible. It is possible that monks and nuns might have shared clones of valuable plants with parish priests, who then could pass offsets on to parishioners, but I don't know if anyone has documentation of that. Possibly, on pilgrimages, people also were on the lookout for curative plants that could be brought home.

I love the idea of using the hair conditioner for shaving legs. I need to try that one. My husband has used dryer sheets in his pockets when he is out camping and it does work to keep the mosquitoes away. Baby oil is great to remove the oil sludge from your skin that you sometimes get down at the beach (and most of us are avoiding many beaches along the Gulf for that very reason!) We found this out last summer when we were down by Corpus Christi and one of my boys had it on his legs. Brunettes - Use soy sauce as a rinse in your hair to enrich the natural color. Comb it through your hair and let it sit for a few minutes, then rinse. I need to add this list of helpful hints link to my favorites so I can pop back and refer to it later. Thanks everyone for posting these great ideas!

I sliced my foot open a while back and I found using just plain old vegetable oil and then using a gallon zip bag. You have to first understand that your feet have NO oiling mechanism like the rest of your body.......they simply depend on sweat to moisturize. The worst thing you can do is go barefoot and take super hot showers!! I learned quite a bit about feet as we have had so many family members with diabetes and foot issues that coincide. Now I soak my feet in lemon juice and water for half an hour-warm water, then apply a coat of Flexitol Foot Balm, and I use the zip bags because you can zip it but it isn't strangling the leg and blood supply but it's enough to create plenty of moisture. This method has worked very well for me.