In the 1950s, the farmers in Yanbei were really poor, and they had to carry small illnesses, but they had to wait for death at home for big illnesses. For those who were better off, the patients were carried to the hospital in Datong only when they saw that they were going to die. At this time, the doctor would often angrily blame the family, saying: “What did you do earlier? The patient was dying before he was brought here!”
When my grandmother was in her sixties, she stopped going to the hospital. Whenever my mother wanted to take her to the hospital, she always sternly refused: “People who are dying, why see a doctor, it’s expensive, it’s a waste of money!”
At that time, the people of Deshengbao mainly relied on prescriptions, and some bizarre methods close to witchcraft. According to the old man in the fortress recalls, in the past the fortress of the fox god temple incense is very strong, the general family got sick, go to the temple to grab the incense ash to take home to drink. Many people believe that since burning incense and wishing for the top, incense ash naturally also has efficacy.
When it comes to medical treatment, there are many spiritual things in Deshengbao. In the past, when the children in Deshengbao got mumps, they usually asked a Mr. Wang who taught private school to cure them. In the morning, Mr. Wang got up early, did not eat, did not drink, did not talk, researched the ink, set out the good brush, and then ready to see the child. Just see him with water in his mouth, chanting and spraying on the child’s neck, then quickly pick up the brush and draw a circle in the swelling of the child’s neck, and then draw different charms in the middle depending on the situation. It is said that after a few days the inflammation on the neck where he had drawn the charm went away.
Mumps is also known as toad plague. Dragon Boat Festival to catch the toad, the quality ink block into the belly, the eaves after drying, grinding the ink to cure mumps. Because of the most difficult to find Duanwu toad, so there are “toad dodge Duanwu, dodge a moment is a moment” of the saying. There is also a fairy nun in Deshengbao, simply to the patient’s swollen half of the face are coated with ink, after a few days to wash off. At that time, many children went to school with half a black face.
At that time, every summer, I would get a rash on my body, I don’t know if it was “Spider Dan”. It itched like hell, but it didn’t hurt. When I went down to Cosmos, the doctor said it was a skin allergy and prescribed a lot of medicine, but it didn’t work. That year, one day, my grandmother went to Mr. Wang’s house to ask questions. Mr. Wang asked my grandmother to take me to his house near dusk, and he used a brush to draw circles with ink on the affected area (drawing it like mosquito incense). The rash disappeared after two more days and has never happened again.
My cousin had a nervous breakdown when he was a child and could not stand to be frightened. The firecrackers always cry desperately during the Spring Festival, annoying people. At this time, his grandmother would take a small cup full of rice, wrap it tightly with a small handkerchief, place it on the child’s chest and turn it around, and comfort his cousin by saying, “Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid!” After the turn, the grandmother opened this rice bag, the original full of rice seems to be reduced, said the spell was successful. It is said that this law is limited to young children, older children will not work.
When I was very young, I was desperately trying to sleep during the day, and when I was in good spirits at night, I cried hard, causing a lot of disturbances. My mother thought of many ways but did not work, this is very distressed. Then an old lady in the next yard knew about it and told my mother not to use a pillow while I was sleeping, but to put the pillow under my feet, that is, to sleep upside down. It’s amazing to say that the effect was immediate and I was normal after a day.
The people of the fortress also have a trick for children crying at night. It is to write on a tree or wall with red paper: “Heaven and earth, my family has a night crying boy. Passing gentleman read three times, a sleep until the dawn.” I heard that when posting this incantation, you can not turn back, you can not return to the original road. Post one at each intersection, a total of seven. This method of treating children’s night cries really works well and has been used to this day.
There was also a time when my eyes were particularly uncomfortable because of the fire, and I felt like there was a foreign body inside. The cousin’s wife took a white cotton thread and tied it to my middle finger, the rule is to tie the left eye to the right hand and the right eye to the left hand, saying that this will soon heal. My cousin’s wife also said that if the bag has grown this method will not work. Why so I do not know, anyway, seems to be a bit effective.
There is also a remedy to reduce fever is particularly disgusting, I actually tried it. It is to take a toad tied to the belly button, 40 degrees will be securely reduced to normal body temperature. The truth is that after the toad was tied, I was told to lie on the bed and then went to the ground. When she came back, she saw a year old me standing on the floor fiddling with the toad.
At that time, children play with everything, once I was greedy to pee on the fire, the result came home to find JJ and swollen and itchy. Cousin’s aunt knows a lot of prescriptions, can use medical and Taoist techniques to exorcise evil spirits and collect compulsions. This time he brought a big rooster to peck my little JJ twice and it healed.
I heard that if a child’s armpit grows something, red or swollen, just go to someone’s house, when people are not paying attention, use his sop to gently rub three times in the affected area to ensure that the disease is removed.
I remember that my cousin was often sick when he was a child, and the saying in Deshengbao is that he loves to attract evil spirits. Once my cousin was sick again, the truth is that he boiled several eggs, removed the egg shells and yolks, leaving the whites, wrapped a small silverware like a ring inside, and then wrapped a layer of cloth around the outside, and applied it vigorously on the inside of the spine and joints, and he was immediately cured. When you open the egg white, you can see the silverware has turned black. When the silver turns black, the truth is that this is the evil energy coming out. That protein can not be eaten, must be buried. If it is eaten by small animals, the small animals will get sick.
When the cousin’s wife gave birth to her cousin and nephew, when the month, a pregnant woman went to see her, after leaving, she suddenly no milk. It turned out that she had plenty of milk, and according to the old-timers there, her milk was “taken” away by the pregnant woman. So how to cure it? We still have to rely on this pregnant woman. So find the pregnant woman again, the pregnant woman’s shoes on the sole of a hole, must be pierced, so that a little water from the eye inside the leak down. The cousin’s wife’s milk did come back.
My cousin’s aunt also had a miracle cure for a wart: after a heavy rain, the pestle in the yard would be filled with rainwater. After washing in one pestle and then in another, the wart will fall off automatically after washing the affected area with rainwater from seven pestles in a row. Don’t turn back until you’ve finished washing and gone home, or you’ll lose your work! This method is more practical than the hospital with drug injections, but also fast results.
There are also some prescriptions that are quite scary. The first time a doll was born, half of her face was a birthmark, her mother did not want him. The grandmother said it’s okay, it can be removed. Then the village died, grandma took him over and took the hand of the deceased and rubbed it on his birthmark, and then the birthmark did gradually recede.
My cousin’s sister-in-law used to have a disease, periodic sudden neuralgia, which started once a year at the age of six, at the end of the year. The pain starts vaguely during the day, in the upper part of the body, later on the left shoulder, later on the right shoulder, and sometimes it shifts to the back; at night it is the worst, like something is drilling in the bones, the pain is indescribable, and it takes the whole night to suffer. There is a custom in Deshengbao that when a dead person is put into the coffin, the hands and body of the deceased should be tied together with a white cloth belt. That year, her grandfather passed away, when the burial grandmother took the tape off and took it home, let her undress and wrap it around her body, and instructed not to take it off for 100 days, no matter sleeping or bathing. Grandmother said that the corpse of a relative’s band can cure all diseases, but must be a relative’s. Later, my cousin’s sister-in-law’s illness never happened again.
After the reform and opening up, there was a 66-year-old man in Deshengbao who spent 300 yuan to buy a health care “miracle stone” from a “miracle doctor” from abroad. The stone is the size of a silver dollar, two coins thick. It says that when you sleep in your mouth, you can massage multiple acupuncture points, tranquilize and calm, cure all diseases …… so unreliable things, but someone fell for it. Later this old man in his sleep, accidentally swallowed this stone, not the family found in time, sent to the hospital rescue, almost killed.
To this day, many people are convinced that prescriptions cure serious illnesses. Many of these prescriptions and tests are still popular among the people. Although some people “worship it like a god”, but some people do not care about it. Of course, most people are trying with the mentality of “throwing yourself at the doctor when you are sick” or “believing it rather than not believing it”. There is still a market for prescriptions in Yanbei, and people say, “People say on CCTV that they don’t look at advertisements to see how effective they are!
Recently, I flipped through the “Compendium of Materia Medica” and realized that this “masterpiece” is actually a book of prescriptions. For example, in the “human part” there is a list of medicine names: head wax, earwax, fingernails, teeth, feces, child feces, human urine, human middle white (urine scale in the toilet), autumn stone (human urine precipitation of white slag), pubic hair, menstrual blood, human bones, heavenly spirit cover, purple river car (placenta) … … and all kinds of animal feces and urine can be used as medicine, you want not to be disgusted are difficult. What’s more, in the “artifacts department”, toilet lids, hanging ropes, yellow calendars, widow’s bed dirt, filial shirts can be used as medicine.
On a rainy day, my cousin Fort Kui was sitting on a bed playing cards with some village boys when one of the boys said his mother had a stomachache and wanted to go home early to cook dinner. He said that his mother had a stomachache and wanted to go home early to make dinner, so Fort Kui liked to play pranks, so he secretly snapped out a bit of mud from his shoes and rolled a dozen soybean-sized mud pills and gave them to him, saying, “These are the pills of Datong Yonghe Tang, the remaining ones are useless, take them home and give them to your mother to drink.
The next day, the young man met his cousin, thanked him profusely and said, “The pills you gave really worked, my mother drank them and felt much better today.”
According to experts, most folk remedies are actually based on the principle of treatment, mainly for psychological reassurance, rather than physical substance treatment. The human body has the ability to heal itself, coupled with the natural history of disease (Natural history of disease), many diseases will be cured after an established process. However, in the person concerned, it is the folk remedy that is identified as having worked and there is no doubt about its efficacy. However, there is no denying that the comforting effect has a significant effect on certain subjective symptoms, such as chronic pain and anxiety.
For example, in the case of herpes zoster, which is commonly known as the “tangle of fire dragons”, even if the patient does not receive any folkloric treatment at the time, the herpes symptoms will subside after a week due to the self-healing function. Many patients used folk remedies such as applying herbs, collecting fright and drinking charm water during the onset of herpes, and thus were convinced of the efficacy of the remedy.
For thousands of years, the country’s little lives have all relied on these elusive methods, stumbling along the way. French anthropologist Levi Breuer said: Although the Chinese have put in a lot of hard work and talent over the centuries, the works on astronomy, physics, chemistry, pathology and treatment are as vast as the sea, yet the results are equal to zero. I beg to differ, for the profound universe cannot be explained by science, for its message may be hidden in those inscrutable wonders.
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