Kitchen Medicine

1802 - Domestic Event

Ever gargle with salt water, put meat tenderizer on a bee sting or nurse a cold with chicken soup? Then you’re taking part in a long-lived tradition of kitchen remedies. Even Hippocrates, the father of medicine, advised in the 4^th century B.C., “Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food.” While ingredients have changed over the centuries, some that were widespread centuries ago are still in use today. Now as then, people learn about such cures from family elders, friends, magazines and self-help books.

Besides pantry staples such as sugar, vinegar, baking soda, tea and honey, home remedies include such household items as beeswax, alcohol, tobacco and charcoal. Some seem silly but relatively harmless, like wearing a dirty stocking around your neck to cure a sore throat. A few—turpentine and kerosene, for instance—can be dangerous. The examples shown here are presented only as historical information, not as recommended treatments.

North Carolinians have been treating health problems with foods and household items since Colonial times.

Around-the-House Remedies

North Carolinians have used an amazing variety of household items to relieve common maladies. Some, like gunpowder and camphor, probably aren’t things you keep around the house today. But others are still part of our daily lives.

For example, many locals used a centuries-old English remedy ingredient: brown paper. Headache sufferers typically soaked it with vinegar and placed it on their heads. A 60-year-old woman from Pitt County recollected this treatment in 1980:

“When one of us had a nosebleed, somebody would get a little piece of brown paper bag, write our name on it, and give it to us to put underneath our upper lip while we were laying on our back. It worked good, but I never knew why our name had to be written on the piece of paper.”

Money cures were a dime a dozen. Wearing coins on a string around the neck was said to ease the pain of infant teething. Around the leg, it would relieve arthritis. Vinegar in which a penny had soaked would cure ringworm.

Scraps of cloth were used for poultices, to make bandages and as small drawstring bags to contain medicines worn around the neck. Red flannel wrapped around the neck was a popular cure for a sore throat. Even a stocking would do:

“If you have sore throat, take the stocking you have been wearing and tie it around your neck. Some say the dirtier the stocking is, the better.”—Davidson County woman, 1910 – 1940

Other items used as ingredients in home remedies included:

Castor oil
Asafetida (a gum resin from plant roots)
Camphor
Sulfur
Gunpowder
Charcoal
Soot
Alum
Tobacco
Kerosene
Turpentine
Moonshine

Many people wore red flannel or a stocking around the neck to cure a sore throat.

Home-Cooked Cures

Some of the most common ingredients in home remedies are foods. In fact, cookbooks used to contain recipes, or  receipts, for treating health complaints. “Doctoring” was considered part of housekeeping. Here are some examples recalled by past and present North Carolinians.

• To cure a baby’s fever, boil fresh pigs’ feet, skim off the grease at the top and feed the warm grease to the infant.
• For a sore throat, heat and stir together mutton suet, butter, powdered rosin (a turpentine byproduct) and melted beeswax. Spread on linen cloth and wear around throat, covered with a piece of flannel, for two or three days.
• To draw out a splinter, apply a mixture of lard and sugar.
• For diarrhea, drink a mixture of 3 teaspoons flour, 3 teaspoons sugar and 3 teaspoons vinegar in ½ cup of water.
• To relieve a headache, fold thin-sliced potatoes with vinegar and turpentine into a cloth and put it on your head.

Some kitchen cures resemble products we buy today to treat our ailments. What drugstore remedies do these homemade ones remind you of?

• “You takes sugar, lemon juice, and honey and mixes it together and it will cure a cold and weaken a fever.”—47-year-old mother in Bertie County, 1976
• “A good cure for indigestion is a mixture of vinegar, sugar, baking soda, and water.” (Hint: it fizzes.) 
  —52-year-old woman, Hertford County, 1975

From fevers to splinters, common ailments were often treated with remedies from kitchen pantries.

Today's Home Medicines

While home remedies may seem quaint to us, many are very much in use today. In recent years, North Carolinians have suggested these treatments:

• Apply a mixture of red vinegar and aspirin for arthritis pain.
• To stop the bleeding and sting of a bad scrape, rub the broken skin with cement mix.
• Eliminate wrinkles on the throat and dark circles under the eyes by applying hemorrhoid cream.
• Use a roll-on or stick deodorant to stop mosquito bites from itching.
• Sprinkle meat tenderizer on bee stings to relieve the pain.
• For chigger bites, apply nail polish to stop the itching within 24 hours.
• Treat a urinary tract infection by drinking a glass of cranberry juice every day.
• Muscle aches? Rub in WD-40 oil.

Like aches and pains, home remedies are still part of our lives.