Old Wives Tales

Medical progress is all very well but I have a feeling that our doctors are going back  to the middle ages or some past century anyway.

I recently read in a respected medical newspaper column that, as we are all expected to know, eating exactly nine golden raisins, which have been steeped in gin for a fortnight, every day is a  cure for arthritis. Oh? And of course, wrapping a cabbage leaf over your arthritic knee overnight, works wonders too.

We all grow up being taught to rub a nettle sting with dock leaves. They grow near nettles so that's an easy one but did you know that if you put a potato in your bed, you won't get cramp?  Who told me? An eminent doctor. Any potato will do - raw but perhaps washed if you want your sheets to remain clean. It is also a good idea to check under the bed occasionally, particularly if you have cleaning help or you might be embarrassed at having to explain away an old potato which has been kicked out of bed and which is quietly sprouting!

And then there are warts. I had one on my rhumb as a child and all medical and surgical intervention was to no avail It always grew back. And then our old Essex gardener said he would buy it off me for one penny.  Aged nine or t'en, I laughed out loud art such crazy ideas. But the wart disappeared. My adult son had the same problem.  I followed the same financial transaction. The wart disappeared!

If that is not enough to convince one that the past is now the present, how about the fact that leeches are back in fashion. A surgeon told me.