Home Remedies - Simple Accidents That Worked
Are home remedies nothing more than accidental cures that happened to work? Most of us know
Have you ever heard of using a spider web as a poultice or bandage? That’s a home remedy that most city dwellers may not know. How did such a strange remedy come about? Perhaps an ancient human native somewhere was exploring a deep, dark cave. Besides trying not to cut his hands on the sharp cave walls in the dark, he was constantly pushing curtains of spider webs aside. When he left the cave, he noticed that the cuts on the hand used to push aside the webs were not bleeding. The other hand bled quite a bit. He shared this knowledge with the rest of his group or tribe, and a home remedy was born.
Why would a spider web bandage work? For one thing, it is sticky. It may act to hold the edges of the wound together, much like an adhesive bandage. Spider webs are complex interwoven structures, much like today’s gauze bandages. The webs might even mimic the clotting effects of human blood by trapping blood cells in its adhesive clutches. Regardless of how it works, spider web bandages and poultices have been used for centuries, because they do work.
The above stories are merely guesses at how a certain home remedy came to be. There is probably more than one real story, and no doubt they are lost in antiquity. It is not always necessary to make an expensive doctor visit for small, non life-threatening injuries. Home remedies are still in use today because the worked in the past, and continue to work today.
Copyright 2007 by Douglas S. Smith
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