What is in the air right now? I’m not waxing philosophic here. I mean literally, what is in the air?
Forgive me for being indelicate, but I feel like I have wine corks shoved up my nose. Or like someone is inflating a balloon behind my eyeballs. Some kind of insidious allergens have apparently risen up and staged a mid-summer assault on my sinus cavities.
This is no summer cold. No sirree. My nose and I have been together a long time, and my nose knows an allergen when it meets one. It’s never yet met one it likes.
I recently read about some old-time home remedies for congestion, and I’m here to say that stuffy nose and sinus headaches notwithstanding, I’m nowhere near desperate enough to try any of these. Get a load of some of these “cures”:
- Getting passed three times under a horse’s belly.
- Having a fish skin tied to your feet.
- Stuffing your nostrils with cut garlic cloves.
- Pressing a warm, peeled, hard-boiled egg to your forehead.
- Eating snakeskin.
Suddenly my symptoms don’t seem quite so bad. In fact, if these were the only cures available, I’d definitely opt for the affliction.
I’m now envisioning my husband walking in to find me sitting in our recliner with a fish skin tied to my feet, my nostrils stuffed with garlic cloves, holding a hard-boiled egg pressed to my forehead and munching on a snakeskin. Oh yeah – and calling around to see if anyone has a horse I can pass myself under three times.
After 34 years of marriage, it’s hard for me to shock Joe, but that might just do it.
Who on earth came up with these “remedies” anyway? Who first imagined that tying a fish skin to one’s foot could possibly be a good thing?
But it’s not just folk remedies that tend toward the bizarre. Throughout history, people have let medical professionals do all kinds of crazy things to them.
Just think of all the movies you’ve watched that include a scene with a physician “bleeding” a patient—a procedure that likely never passed the Dr. Phil “how’s-that-workin’-for-you?” test.
It makes me wonder what we’re doing now that will be considered barbaric in 100 years. Colonoscopies, knee replacements and root canals come immediately to mind.
“Eeeeee-yewwww,” our great-great grandchildren will probably say when they hear about how we were sliced, diced, poked, plumbed and drilled in the name of medicine.
They’ll probably wonder why we did it, but we know why: pain makes us desperate. And when we’re desperate, we reach for any life preserver we can find.
This is just as true in matters of the soul as it is with physical problems.
Our world is full of desperate people with sick souls. People who will try nearly anything to dull the throbbing ache of fear, loss, and purposelessness.
If folks thought they could find some joy, peace or hope by tying fish skins to their feet, I guarantee they would try it. I’ve seen crazier things.
We’re all trying to feel better; sadly, that pursuit leads some to follow dangling, rotten carrots straight over the cliff and into darkness. The “cure” becomes worse than the affliction.
Jeremiah 8:22 says, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?”
Through the prophet Jeremiah, God was expressing His grief that people were turning everywhere but to Him for answers, healing and meaning.
He still grieves today, and continues to lovingly whisper, “Come to Me…I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”