[Maharlika]

Originally Posted by dragon wench

@Phreddie,
Oh indeed! There's nothing like wasabi for clearing out the sinuses!!!

That reminds me of this story about a friend of mine who mistook a tube of wasabi as some sort of mint-flavored japanese toothpaste.

As for Granny's Wisdom, here are a few Folk Cures from the Philippines.

The writer of the column is a Benedictine Monk with whom I had the pleasure to work with during my first year of teaching.

This was taken from The Philippine Daily Inquirer.

I took the liberty of editing out some of what was written since it talks about menstrual blood which I find too squeamish to post.

A whole section in the two-volume "Encyclopedia of Folk Beliefs and Customs" compiled by the Jesuit Francisco Demetrio (Xavier University, 1991) covers folk medicine. I consulted the book to see how leftover ash from Ash Wednesday was used in other ways and found so many folk remedies for all kinds of diseases.

Naturally sacramentals -- holy water, crucifix, rosary, medals, novenas, estampitas, images of saints, etc. -- figure in a lot of folk remedies. Some folk beliefs about their effects are quite, like the one traced to the southern city of Iligan, which holds that it is bad for a sick person to be visited by a priest, and worse if the sick is administered Extreme Unction because then he would die. We all die anyway, so I am wondering whether it is better to die with the sacrament than without it.

Some people don't agree. The more fantastic cures are as follows:

Unripe papaya is used as a cure for appendicitis. But this isn't half as bad as taking the "baticulon" of a chicken for same appendicitis. This is supposed to be the part of the intestine (?) where the waste material of the chicken is collected. The innermost yellowish layer is separated and broiled as a cure that seems worse than the disease.

Asthma is a common disease for which many remedies have been prescribed, ranging from dog meat, monkey meat, broiled centipede and roasted house lizard.

One cure for baldness is cheap but disgusting. You catch a fly (or seven flies), crush them and rub the paste on the bald part to make hair grow.

The cure for bedwetting has to be quoted lest readers think I am making it up: "A child who often urinates in bed can be cured by pouring a pail of water on him. No one must laugh when this is done." (The first part is easy; the second almost impossible.)There are many remedies for snakebite, the most unusual being the first excrement of a child applied to the wound externally and also taken internally! This is preserved in bottles and called "triaca" or "theriacum." The squeamish has the option of making a cut near the wound and applying ginger and garlic directly on it.

Infants or babies who keep people awake with their crying are cured by undergoing fumigation with various elements, ranging from blessed candles to fish and seaweed. So far the worst cure for a crybaby is whipping with coconut midrib or "tingting."

There are many remedies for sore eyes: excrement from red-feathered chicken, ground bedbugs mixed with oil, urine, breast milk and a child's urine.

Hemorrhage is cured with roasted and powdered earthworm mixed with coffee.

Most of these folk cures have disappeared in the wake of modern medicine, but knowing them helps us appreciate living in the 21st century and helps us understand or to be puzzled by the past.