Folk medicine has been a part of every culture throughout our history. Many folk remedies have been found to be based upon truth. A lot of the medicines we have today were derived from plants. Unfortunately there were many more folk remedies that just didnt seem to make logical sense.
As folk medicine practices grew over the centuries many treatments were developed that were questionable at best. One may want to think twice about using some of these folk remedies as their adverse side effects could sometimes be worse than the condition they were supposed to heal.
As an example of one highly unlikely cure for lockjaw, one was supposed to make a tea with ground up insects and other bugs, cockroaches for preference, and then drink it. It is not mentioned whether the cure was contained in the drink or in the body´s need to forcefully expel the concoction.
A rather painful “cure” for stuttering was to take the shank bone of a freshly slaughtered calf and hit the stutterer in the mouth with it. One primitive culture´s answer to snakebite was to immediately rip a live chicken in half and place one side of the carcass against the wound. As the chicken meat turned green this was taken as a sign the poison was being drawn out. No one has bothered to test this for any possible real solution.
Then there is this dubious cure for warts. According to one folk remedy all one has to do is rub the wart with a piece of red meat and then bury the meat at the full moon. By new moon, two weeks later, the wart is supposed to have gone away.
As one can see, there are any number of strange and bizarre folk remedies that have been tried over the centuries. Many of them have such a sense of “quackery” and folk “superstition” that it is hardly any wonder that all folk remedies are suspect.
However, many folk remedies, and especially herbal treatments, have proven not only effective but are often the basis that modern medicinal practices have modified and improved upon. There are a wide variety of herbs that have proven effective in the treatment of mild to severe ailments, such as coughs due to a cold, rashes caused by poison ivy, or a bad case of nervous tension.
Source – Ezine Articles Written by Simone Mefford and used here with express permission.