With medicine shortages affecting pharmacies across Dublin this winter, people may be looking into alternative remedies to cure common illnesses.
And if you’ve ever been curious about what cured people ages ago used to have, you’re not alone, as we’ve gathered a list of the weirdest and wackiest old Irish remedies. They were compiled by schoolchildren in Ireland in the 1930s and posted online on Ducha , the National Folklore Collection UCD Digitization Project.
We need to put a disclaimer here: don’t take any of these remedies seriously - and don’t try them at home! You will be much better off taking a trip to the pharmacist or making some hot tea than pursuing any one of these.
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We start off with old herbal remedies. Dandelion was supposed to be an old cure for rheumatism. “Squeeze the white stuff out of them and drink it and put the leaves between two cuts of bread and eat it,” people would say.
Boiled cabbage leaves and grass in a rag that is then put into an ear was supposed to cure earache. Meanwhile, getting a frog and putting it to your jaw was supposed to cure a toothache.
Some cures were based on pure superstitions. Brown bread made by a girl married to a man of the same surname was supposed to cure whooping cough. A well in the Grallagh churchyard called Saint Patrick's was thought to be another cure for the illness.
Warts were cured in many ways, among which was the water that fills the holes at the foot of trees after rain. Baldness was treated by washing the bald parts of the head with sheep’s milk.
Some cures were downright macabre. A cure for toothache was thought to be getting the ends of the candles that were lit around a corpse and rubbing one to your face where the pain is. Spiderwebs dipped in whiskey were supposed to cure cuts.
There was even a supposed cure for cancer. “About seventy years ago a man named Mr Byrne lived on Tubbermore Avenue,” one of the schoolchildren wrote back in the 1930s. “He made a cure for cancer and cured another man named Mr Dunne.”
Mr Byrn allegedly went on to cure the cancer under his lip by putting on some ointment - but he kept the ingredients of the ointment a secret for as long as he lived. Tou can read more about Old Irish superstitions, remedies and tradition on the official website here.
Do you know about any old cures? Let us know in the comments below.
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