Re: Early Miracle Cures

07/17/13 - posted by Paul Judge

Yeah, Steve what was the tonsils thing about? Or, having one's adenoids removed like I heard stories about from my elders. They claimed their's were removed at home on the kitchen table. One uncle swore he was born on the window sill (Was that a form of the stork delivery story?). I don't hear about Tonsillectomy being performed as routinely as was the fashion in decades past.

My tonsils were removed at Kaiser Hospital on Geary about 1956 or '57. I remember being in a ward with kids lined up in beds. Nurses in their white uniforms attended to us. Their great promise to us was that we'd get to eat ice cream after the surgery. It turned out most of us got Jello. We could play board games with each other if we wanted to but it was mostly a room of strangers waiting their turn for the operation. There was a glassed off room with a kid in isolation that the nurses referred to with hushed voices. You kinda got the sense that he lived there while the rest of us were only temporaries in the hospital. The experience was a mix of scary and intrigue. When they came with the gurney and wheeled me into the operating room the aesthetician put that mask over my face and I f-a-d-e-d out.

Back to home remedies. The elders all had childhood stories about having to swallow cod liver oil or castor oil that by their description almost turned my stomach. One time Uncle Bud switched out some liquor for the cod liver oil being given to Uncle Fat. Apparently grandma didn't truck to the deed and made both of 'em take double doses of cod liver oil. Her sons towered in height over her but Rose Judge was not one to tangle with. She even tossed my police captain grandpa and his cronies outta the house for tying it on, horsing around, and breaking a table

As a young child I recall our mom got the aspirin in us by crushing it in a spoon and mixing jelly. That proved to be a gateway portal to other spoon license as dipping into jelly and peanut butter jars when she wasn't looking.

I mostly recall that our medicine cabinet was spare. There weren't many remedies or aids but yes there was hydrogen peroxide  and a gray bottle Kaopectate. Mom's home economy kept our first aid kit to ointments, gauze and white bandage tape long after Band-Aides hit the market. Most the bathroom clutter in a household of five females was hair and cosmetic stuff that prompted our dad to say, "Powder and paint makes 'em look like they ain't." to an audience that marginally appreciated that quip.