Two Cold Cures

I once fell sick with a bad cold while visiting an old medicine man who lived alone up in the mountains. He taught me to do the following:

• First eat a large quantity of fried ramps for breakfast. Ramps are greens similar to leeks, but have a strong garlic odor. They cleanse the blood of impurities.
• Next mix wild garlic in bear fat, and rub it across your chest. This breaks up congestion. If you wrap yourself in a blanket, you will heat the mixture and increase its effectiveness. However, your family will start to avoid you.
• Lastly grate a large quantity of wild onions and take a tablespoon every hour. Bad spirits will not stay in a body full of onion juice. Your loved ones will go live with relatives at this point until you make a full recovery.
  

Onion juice is hard to take straight, so I added a shot of whiskey each time to mask the flavor. After several hours of onion juice and whiskey, I fell into a deep sleep. I awoke two days later and my cold was gone! However, I now needed a cure for a headache. When the old fellow told me it involved chewing tree bark, though, I decided to forgo the inconvenience of pulling splinters from my teeth.

The most valuable thing I learned from this experience was why native prescriptions are not more popular. Even after a hot bath, I had to wait an extra two days before Bleb would let me near him.

I have since adjusted the above cold cure into the following treatment: when sneezing and congestion set in, take one ounce of whiskey with a drop of Wizard Water^© once every hour. Do this until you cannot feel any symptoms of illness. This may take several days, but when you are feeling better at least your mule won't disown you. Keep the original cure in mind if you ever ask advice from a medicine man who lives alone.

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Mrs. Doc hastens to remind readers that any “cures” Doc describes are to be taken with a grain of salt -- but not literally.

Copyright © 2009 Laurie J. Anderson. All rights reserved.