OLD TIME REMEDIES

I have been sick this week. In fact I had to cancel church today because I was too sick to preach. I had a bad head cold and then, as it went to my chest, I started having bad coughing spells. All of the cold medicines and cough syrups had this warning, "Do not use if you have high blood pressure, diabetes, or heart trouble." I have all three.
I began thinking of the old time home remedies my mother used. Having come from a German background, she believed there was a food to treat every illness.
My mother made cough syrup by scraping an onion across a grater until it had been reduced to pulp and a cloudy liquid. She added a spoonful of brown sugar and it was cough syrup. She would give us an oversize spoonful of that concoction. It would transform a tender child into a dragon. Fire would leap out of his nose and even, at times, his ears.
The child who was unfortunate enough to get worms from something he had eaten (like candy from a store), was fed a steady diet of sauerkraut juice every meal until the worms were gone.
Children were not allowed to have coffee or tea in our home. Therefore, we thought that we were partaking of forbidden libation when our mother served us "Cambridge tea" when we were sick. It wasn't until I was grown that I was told that this was made from hot water, canned milk, and sugar.
The comfort food on days you were ill was a piece of black and hard toast placed in a shallow bowl and covered with hot milk. The blackened toast turned the hot milk the color of gravy. If you were a boy, it was sprinkled with salt. If you were a girl, it was sprinkled with sugar.
My mother wasn't a Jewish mother so she hadn't heard of the curative powers of chicken noodle soup. I wish she had!