23.02.12
It's flu season, and I can't help but to think of the many spells, concoctions, remedies (tortures) that my mother and grandmother subjected my cousins, siblings and me to as we were growing up.
Anything from a cough to the flu, a spider bite to a wasp sting to a case of head lice was readily cured by something that my grandmother believed would help.
Many of these homemade cures were staples of the medicine cabinet and they doubled for multiple purposes.
I hated to even mention that I felt anything less than the utmost of health and vitality.
At the mere whisper that my stomach was upset, Grandma would serve me up a sweet, but hideous, looking glass of prune juice.
It looked like the swill at the bottom of a tobacco chewer's spit cup and I must say that as a child, I thought it tasted that way, too.
The prune juice was meant as a stool softener; I guess it worked ... eventually.
Source: Brazil Times