Unusual/Old Time Home Remedies and Cures

[Duke]

What unusual home remedies do you remember being used by your parents and grandparents?

I remember several, but here are a couple to get the ball rolling.

Toothache--My Mom would soak a Q-Tip in clove oil and swab the affected tooth and gums around it. Seemed to work.

Croup--Never had this given to me, but my Dad said his Mom would treat croup with a tablespoon full of sugar with several drops of kerosene added. He said it tasted awful, but it did work.

 

[Lynne]

Homemade cough syrup. Whisky , lemon juice and honey. Warmed.

Baking soda paste for stings.

Vinigar, mouthwash and salt for a foot soak.

 

[Debi]

This burned like the fires of hell! We used to cry when we saw it coming at us!

 

[Duke]

View attachment 19656

This burned like the fires of hell! We used to cry when we saw it coming at us!

Is that the same as Merthiolate? That's what my Mom used on us. It burned as well, and was reddish orange in color.

 

[Debi]

Is that the same as Merthiolate? That's what my Mom used on us. It burned as well, and was reddish orange in color.

Same family. Both contained mercury as the prime ingrediant.

 

[ozentity]

Bread and milk poultice,grandma used to swear by these to draw the "poison"as she said out of infections.I fortunately never participated.

 

[ozentity]

Same family. Both contained mercury as the prime ingrediant.

As a greenkeeper here we used mercury based fungicide on the greens,banned now as it was found to cause kidney and brain damage.

 

[Rowan2222]

....and a lot of the chrome - hexavalant chromium is carciogenic. I did part of my apprenticeship in a metal plating shop - Chromium, cadmium, acid tanks, cyanide hardening. You could always taste the cyanide in the air. God knows how the rats in there survived or what they ate.

They did have two full time nurses on site that you could visit anytime - just pop in. Went there for a couple of mouth ulcers and was treated with something that sealed it over - Think it was this stuff -

Also for splinters and deep wounds they would usually swab it with a brown strong smelling thick liquid but I don't know what that was. An I had seen an old bottle labelled as Friars balsam.

This place had been around since the first world war and I'm sure they still had all the supplies left over from that!

 

[Duke]

....and a lot of the chrome - hexavalant chromium is carciogenic. I did part of my apprenticeship in a metal plating shop - Chromium, cadmium, acid tanks, cyanide hardening. You could always taste the cyanide in the air. God knows how the rats in there survived or what they ate.

They did have two full time nurses on site that you could visit anytime - just pop in. Went there for a couple of mouth ulcers and was treated with something that sealed it over - Think it was this stuff -

Also for splinters and deep wounds they would usually swab it with a brown strong smelling thick liquid but I don't know what that was. An I had seen an old bottle labelled as Friars balsam.

This place had been around since the first world war and I'm sure they still had all the supplies left over from that!

The brown, strong smelling thick liquid you mentioned sounds like the "drawing salve" my Mom used on us for splinters. She had a tin of the stuff, it was a commercial product, not something she whipped up. As a kid I thought it smelled like dirty motor oil you'd drain from a car, it was about the same color but much thicker. I also remember my Dad using it on a boil once. The stuff worked, but I never liked it because of the smell.

 

[garnetsilver]

I have had wounds washed with salt water by my Mom. She also served bay leaf tea for stomach upset; don't know why, but it worked. I myself used a plug of chewing tobacco on my daughter when she was an infant and got constipated; my mother-in-law swore by it. My paternal grandma made this stuff that looked a lot like moonshine, but she served it to us in a small shot glass for any ailment. It usually worked, too!