Friday, July 31, 2009

Old Cures

A mixture of water lily roots and tar was supposed to be a cure for baldness.
Old remides for tuberculosis included eating a mixture of snails dissolved in salt and inhaling the fumes of cow dung.
An old but smelly cure for sprained wrists involved soaking a red rag in a mixture of urine and salt and tying it around the wrist.
Inserting a live louse into a tooth cavity was once regarded as a cure for toothache.
Mole blood was once used as a cure for warts.
An old Yorkshire cure for whooping-cough called for chopped hairs from a donkey's back to be eaten on bread and butter.
Many country men in England used to wear the skin of an adder around their hats as a way of avoiding headaches.
It was once widely believed in England that blackheads,boils,eczema,rheumatism and whooping-cough could be cured by crawling through a bramble-bush.