Most Unusual Home Remedy or Treatment You have witnessed ..

[crotchitymedic1986]

I remember responding to a call for a child with fever. Upon arrival, i found that my patient had a large red mark on her neck. When I asked what happened to her neck, the parents explained that they were treating her fever by coining her. Then they put a penny to her neck and started scrubbing. Apparantly it is a common asian custom, that I had never heard of:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2228235_use-coining-treat-fever.html

What is the most unusual home or cultural remedy that you have witnessed on your calls ?

[p3medic]

We see a lot of coining here, very common. My most unusual was some weird voodoo Haitan queen dancing around and passing out, something with chicken bones. Maybe some of our members from the Big Easy can comment on that.

[Eydawn]

Hot cooked onion poultice on the chest for coughing/being sick... fortunately, they were smart enough to put a towel between the greasy, steaming poultice and the person's chest so the person didn't get burned...

Wendy

CO EMT-B

[cldutcher]

Yellow mustard covering a burn from a coffee pot explosion. The ER Docs had a laugh but when i googled it, it seamed to be a fairly common practice.

[tniuqs]

I remember responding to a call for a child with fever. Upon arrival, i found that my patient had a large red mark on her neck. When I asked what happened to her neck, the parents explained that they were treating her fever by coining her. Then they put a penny to her neck and started scrubbing. Apparently it is a common Asian custom, that I had never heard of:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2228235_use-coining-treat-fever.html

What is the most unusual home or cultural remedy that you have witnessed on your calls ?

Yes agreed, have witnessed this penny "effect" with Vietnamese and the Chinese as well, the copper in NA culture is revered as a cure for well for arthritis, and some swear but it.

Has anyone witnessed the color change in whiteish Opal (chinese thing) ..... I have but only anicdotally with P02s and SPO2.

Question being is NA medicine ignorant of thousands of years of the "barefoot" doctor (I wrote a paper on acupuncture btw ) or is there something valid to these concepts, actually we do use trace elements like Mag Sulphate, although disputed in may research papers for asthma treatment.

AND we do know through clinical investigation than some derivatives of ginseng do (re: NA scientific medical based evidence boost the immune system) ie COLD FX dang phizer lost a lot of cash with that vioxx.

Gold injections have also been trialed for arthritic conditions ... is it possible that NA medicine is on the wrong track ignoring thousands of years ... ps tiger penis does not work please trust me ... lol.

Finally an interesting topic to debate.

There maybe hope for U crotch .... Time will tell.

cheers

[Michael]

tiger penis does not work please trust me

"I did trust you," she said, "and look what happened!"

[Just Plain Ruff]

I saw one patient who had a toothache(needless call for EMS but hey, you call we haul) from a farming community and they heard from a friend that if you go out to the corn field and find a worm in an ear of corn that you place that worm on the tooth area that hurts.

The worm will eat whatever infection is in there and also the worms saliva will numb down the area. They said "it didn't work well" but the worm did eat a hole in their gum which allowed some of the pus from the abcess to drain thus allowing the antibiotics to start working quicker that the ER prescribed.

Not sure if it really did work but the Pilgrims did it way back then, so why not us do it now.

[crazyemt5150]

So I work in Lamont California which the majority of the people are hispanic, due to the farm land. A majority of the calls that we get for febrile seizures, the family takes rubbing alcohol and poors it all over the baby. We try to explain to them that when the rubbing alcohol evaportates it will increase the febrile seizure. Might I also say that they don't just use it on kids they use it on everything and anyone with a sickness. I researched into the reason why, the use rubbing alcohol, and I guess in mexico and other foreign places. The doctors down their give them rubbing alcohol for different types of reasons.

[sirduke]

I've seen the "coining", first time freaked me out, kid looked like he'd been beat with a strap all over his body.

Had an elderly AA lady who gargled bleach to cure her sore throat, never had heard of that one before.

My mother always swore by Vanilla extract for a toothache, it didn't work for me and that sheite is nasty.

Chewing tobacco juice on wasp, bee and ant stings, it works, so does a dab of bleach on the site.

Guess the nastiest one I can think of is when one of my uncles got finned by a catfish, he rubbed the fishes anal opening on the puncture site. He swore it took away the pain, but wtf?

[firedoc5]

We all know not to put butter or any kind of cream on a burn, especially a deep burn. I was doing clinicals one day when a 15 yr. old boy was brought in by his parents. He was walking funny and asked what was wrong he said that he got "burned a little". He also seemed a slow, if you know what I mean. What had happened was a cruel prank that went bad. He was hanging out with some of his 'friends' when one of them slowly sprayed lighter fluid on the back of his pants. It was so gradual that he didn't notice. After a couple of minutes one of the boys lit his pants on fire. Of course he didn't stop, drop and roll. He actually took off running, fanning the flames. Also his shirt caught on fire. To add injury to insult, the others just stood there and laughed. I believe the convenience store clerk came running out with an extinguisher.

To make the story a little shorter:

When he went home he told his parents what had happened. I think they were a little slow too. They had him lay down and they covered his whole back side with lard and baking soda. It wasn't until three days later they brought him to the ER. I was busy with another pt. at first, but my partner was given the task of removing all that gunk. It took him more than an hour. Come to find out he had 3rd degree burns on 35% of his body, including his rectum and genitalia. It was very serious. It wasn't until then that the police were even called. They didn't dare call before that due to the father had an outstanding warrant for bad checks. So due to having all that lard caked on for three days severe infection had already set in.

He was flown out immediately to Barnes Burn Unit in St.Louis. The boys that lit him on fire said they did it to embarrass him in front of some girls. Guess they thought it was funny until they were arrested for aggravated assault, arson, and if the kid died, manslaughter.