Down Home Remedies, part 3
In the first two parts of this article I've poked some fun at a few sworn-by remedies of days gone by but, in truth, some of the remedies that were used back then were good and did work. I can attest to one my mother made and brought four little girls, two sisters, a cousin and myself, through whooping cough with. It was a cough syrup made from onions and sugar or corn syrup. It simply was a matter of peeling the onions and slicing them paper-thin. Mom would layer them in one of her big cast iron frying pans. She added water and a lot of sugar or corn syrup and simmered it all till the onions were transparent and the mixture thickened. I can't give you the exact amounts or measurements since Mom seldom used a recipe for anything. But as this medicine simmered it filled that old Missouri farmhouse with a wonderful and delicious odor. It tasted oh so good, too, and little coughing girls could have all that they wanted.
I used that onion-sugar syrup on my children when they were little but since then I have come up with a remedy for cough that works just as well. Catnip tea will cut a cough down to nothing and is easy to make. Just fill a tea ball with catnip just as you would tea, if you were using that method for making tea, like before the invention of tea bags. Put the tea ball filled with catnip in a cup and pour boiling water over it. Let it steep and cool some, add a sweetener, and drink. I recommend honey as the sweetener since it tends to coat the throat.
The only problem I had with the catnip cough remedy is the 'catnip' part. I had a big old 20-pound cat, all muscle and bone, who was crazier about catnip then a hog is about slop. This cat also liked to stir his water before he drank it. Many a time, after turning my back for a moment, I'd turn back to see him up on the counter with his big black and white paw in my catnip tea, stirring away, splashing and licking his paw. All you could do was let him have the tea. Most times he was as gentle as a doll-until he got on the catnip, then you stayed clear unless you wanted to come away bloody. That tea may have worked on him as well. I never once heard him cough.
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