Mexican Medicine
by irms
This post is not about the swine flu. This about real illnesses and real people. Some of them live next to you, or in the shanty behind your house. Some of them mow your lawn and clean your pool. Some of them have fixed your cars with five-dollar parts from the “swap meet”. Most of them are related to me. This post is about Mexicans. In order to understand this post, you have to understand Mexican families. We have rules. They are never broken.
Growing up, we rarely went to the doctor. Don’t ask me why. My parents had rockin’ health insurance, so that wasn’t it. We’re a very do-it-yourself breed, so that’s probably to blame.
When you are young and (Mexican and) sick, you do whatever grandma tells you to do to remedy the problem. It doesn’t matter how absurd it sounds, you just do it. My grandma once told one of my many cousins to tape pennies to his temples to cure a headache. He didn’t do it because he didn’t want to look like a fool. By the next day he had come down with a very severe, very public, case of the flu. Not only has his embarrassment outlived his illness, but we’re pretty sure it’s because our grandma put the bad juju on him for not following instructions. These are the kinds of things you get used to. Grandma is the Queen, we are her worker bees.
These are just a couple of the things Grandma has taught me:
- The stomach flu is cured with 7up and crackers. The warmer the 7up, the better.
- An upset stomach can also be tamed with hot water and a bit of sugar. Let the sugar dissolve before drinking.
- If you blow on an open cut, it will somehow hurt less. Try it, it works.
- If you have a sore throat, pour a mug of scalding hot water, toss a tablespoon of salt in it, and gargle with it as far down your throat as you can go without gagging. No. Better yet, gag a little. It’ll do you some good. You will burn your mouth. Don’t worry too much about that, it heals fast.
- Headaches are cured in a number of ways, but a lot of the remedy depends on where the headache is coming from. Here are some things you should try:
- Have someone tug on your hair. You heard me. Put your head on their lap, and let them tug on patches. Let them tug hard enough to be uncomfortable, but not so hard as to tear out any hair.
- Ask someone to rub your hands. Particularly the webs between your fingers.
- Get fresh air. (This one is universal. It doesn’t matter how sick you are, you still need to go outside at least once a day.)
- Aloe vera is the miracle drug. Next to marijuana, there is nothing better to help an ailing body. Severed limb? No problem, rub some aloe vera on it. Mexican grandma’s have at least one plant in the yard at all times. Don’t have one? Ask mine, she always has extra.
- Always touch the baby. Infants are prone to ojo. You can give a baby ojo if you fail to touch the child when one is in your presence. Believe me, you do not want the responsibility for that one.
- If your body gets wet, you must also wet your head. Mexican children will never be seen playing in the pool with dry heads. Parents are likely to be punished for allowing such a thing.
- Colicy babies should be given salt. I don’t know why, but it works.
There are some traditions that are just plain creepy and I’ve left them off. Some things involve needles and such, or flesh wounds. There are others that are weird, but not creepy (like rolling an egg on a crying baby and cracking it in a glass of water). I’ll leave it to my family to put them in the comments.
Oh, I have a few that I’ve heard from Andy’s grandma! If you have a new born and you have a headache, put a diaper on your head and it will go away. If you just have a headache, put a banana peel on your forehead and it will go away. If you have an ear ache, have somebody blow cigarette smoke in your ear. If you have water in your ear, put a piece of rolled up paper in your ear and light the other end on fire. The list goes on and on. lol.
the rolled up newspaper would make sense. First off you make a controlled and limited environment with the tube set against a wet ear. Then the fire burns away the oxygen leaving solid byproducts at the mouth of the tube. This burning of the oxygen creates a vacuum within the tube and the suction would draw out the water from your ear into the tube to replace the missing air.
Interesting musing, love the picture of my mom with Logan sure is a keeper. Growing up with your gma was always an adventure; things like if you had a bee sting put mud on it. Ok I’m game i’ll put mud on a bee sting, not really sure what that was about. Anyway she was and still is always wanting me to drink estafiate (herb) for my tummy or mint tea. I know it works but the stuff is horrific. If you had a headache lets enhance this by dipping potatoes in vinegar and put them on your head and hold them there with a kerchief tied really tight. There of thousands of these remedies but can’t remember them right now.
I find it funny that there are quite a few of those I knew about because my parents taught them/ did them to me. Mostly the aloe vera, blowing on a cut, and the stomach flu. 🙂 Granted, as soon as my mom found out about amoxicillin (or as she pronounces it… “Mach-acillin”, like mach-5), then it didnt matter what your ailment… take some mach-acillin. Drug companies have it backwards. They need to hire some mexican grandmothers to help cure the world. 🙂
Rubbing alcohol or the green alcohol is used when you don’t have an open wound but have some sort of unexplainable ache, you take this stuff and rub it on your ache doesn’t matter where the ache is rub it. Gma always has at least 5 bottles of this stuff around the house, because you can never be to careful and you must be prepared at all times.
Nora-li, It’s so weird to me that it has to be the green alcohol, but I know it works!
Brian, mach-acillin! That’s funny!
Tracy, we have a similar one for an ear-ache: Roll a newspaper into a cone, put the pointy side in your ear and have someone light a match near the opening. It makes your ears pop!
Just remembered another:
For a canker sore (a blister inside the mouth), dampen an unused tea bag (black tea) and place directly on sore. Let it soak there for about 20 or 30 minutes.
Do the same thing about 12-16 hours later.
Sore will be gone in two days.
I swear by this one. It tastes awful, but it works really fast.
Interestingly enough a lot of these family traditional home rememdies do work better than modern medicine at times.
I admire what you did here. I’m keen on the section wherever you talk about you do this to offer back still I’d personally presume due to all the responses this is performing for you at the same time.
My Nana and mom used to put potatoes with salt on my forehead to break my fever, when my nephew was brn
Sorry I hit the enter button before I was finished lol Anyway as I was saying.My Nana put a half dollar tied with a plain white T-shirt on my nephew’s bellly button to make it an inny and not an outty.When one of the newborn babies soft spot fell they used to rub the inside of their mouths and that would push the soft spot back up.Theres so many remedies to list, but I sure am thankful for them all I don’t think I would be here if it wasn’t for them lol.
Thank you for this.My Grandma said if you have a cold sore to put a hammer in the field at night then get up real early the next morning and put the cold hammer on your cold sore and it will disappear. This worked for me.