Mustard plasters
and other home remedies
03/23/2008 08:25 PM
Colicky babies. Now there is a cranky thought. I
don't know about this younger generation who take their babies to the doctor for
what seems to be the least little thing. When talking to friends about this, all
of us older women who know "all about raisin' babies", the majority agree that
we didn't run to the doctor with sniffles. Consensus is that when we took our
babies to the doctor was after "all else failed." Baby aspirin. Do they still
have baby aspirin? If two of those little pink pills didn't cure an ailing child
within 2-4 hours, one might get a little concerned.
Home remedies. Don't they have home remedies anymore? I
will never forget the cold bedroom we slept in out on the farm
south of Reliance and being too sick to die. Our mother would whip up this
horrible hot mustard mess and slap it on a rag and
"plaster" it to our chests. I'm not too sure, but there is no doubt in my mind
that we got better just to make darned sure we didn't have to have a second
mustard plaster slapped on our chests! I don't think we ever had a
kerosene-soaked rag tied around our necks like they did on the Beverly
Hillbillies, but that was supposed to cure something and I'm sure it did.
Now me, I had a cure-all of my own. When I had colicky
babies, they got the onion cure. I would take a slice of onion and put a
tablespoon of sugar on it and wait. It .took about half an hour for the sugar to
dissolve and go through the onion. Once I had that half a teaspoon of liquid, I
fed it to the screaming baby and you could practically count down from 25 and
the baby would be asleep before you got to zero. I never could figure out just
what the sugar-onion combination turned into, but it put the baby to sleep and
that was the goal. Maybe it was psychological in that maybe after crying
non-stop for half an hour (whether it was being held, snuggled and rocked, or
whatever), maybe the baby went to sleep from sheer exhaustion. My
believing that the baby would go to sleep once I got the liquid down, made that
last 30 minutes bearable.
Ed's grandfather, Joe Kuper, had his own remedy.
Ed was a four-pound premie "blue baby" with a heart murmur and Grandpa Kuper
kept "Little Emil" alive by jump-starting him occasionally with a dab of
whiskey!
Sindi was such a stickler when Morgan was born, no one
was allowed to do anything unless she approved. Whenever we were allowed to
babysit him for an hour or two, and that was seldom, he came with full
instructions. He cried a lot and I always maintained that he was hungry. One
time I decided he had to have something so I slipped him probably one-fourth of
a teaspoon of baby food rice, the powdered, mix with formula stuff. His mother
would never know. Ya, right. The next day, as soon as he filled his diaper, my
name was mud!
Do you know where that phrase, "Your name is mud," came
from? The doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth (after Booth shot President
Lincoln) was Dr. Mudd. Booth was shot in the leg while fleeing the scene of the
crime and came upon Dr. Mudd's house. Dr. Mudd was ostracized for treating and
probably saving the life of the man who killed Lincoln. He was thrown into
prison and lived a horrible, agonizing life until disease swept through the
prison. Dr. Booth created a remedy and saved many lives. By doing so, he was
freed.
Or something like that. I have the movie, but haven't
seen it for 10-15 years. Dennis Weaver played the part of Dr. Mudd. The next
time you hear the phrase, it could have a whole new meaning for you.
Look at what I found!!!
MUSTARD PLASTER
3 tbs. flour
1 tbs. dry mustard
1 tsp. soda
Few drops baby oil
Make into a paste with hot water. Put paste on a soft cloth and
place this on the patient's chest. Can leave on all night if oil is mixed in. It
won't burn the chect.
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