Old Time Cough Remedies
Lemons
coal oil
Honey
Pictured above are some of the home remedies that were used on me when I was a kid and had a cough. The honey and lemons are acceptable ones. But turpentine and coal oil? I don't think so!
However, my mother did use them on me. I don't know if they helped or not but now I shudder to think of giving a kid turpentine or coal oil. My mother would take a spoonful of sugar and put a couple of drops of turpentine or coal oil on the sugar and have me swallow it. I can remember how yucky it tasted.
Sometimes she would get me up maybe at 2:00 in the morning if I were coughing and have me suck on a lemon for a while. There again, I don't know if it worked or not but anyway that is what I had to do. But that was much more appealing than the turpentine or coal oil even if it was 2:00 in the morning!
She also sometimes made a cough syrup using honey, vinegar, sugar and I don't remember what else. I didn't mind that so much. It seemed I always had my coughs at night and would have rather slept than work on a cough!
I found that when my own two children had coughs that just giving them an aspirin did better than anything else to ease their cough. But we did try other things--not with turpentine or coal oil--but other kinds of cough syrup.
Even though I had all of that weird stuff poured down me, I am still alive, at 83 so I guess it didn't do that much harm! You probably would be arrested for giving a kid that kind of thing these days (even though salmonella and e coli are OK!)
posted by kyra lafain @ 11/09/2009 12:30:00 PM
1 Comments:
Grandma used to give me hot lemonade. I think lemons really do help soothe a cough. I tend to use the old hot toddy now -- A little bourbon, a little honey, and a little lemon. I think the alcohol must relax the throat muscles, because that seems to help when nothing else will.
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