Green - Joey Greens magic health remedies: 1,363 quick-and-easy cures using brand-name products

Hellbent on Insanity

The Gilligans Island Handbook

The Get Smart Handbook

The Partridge Family Album

Polish Your Furniture with Panty Hose

Hi Bob!

Selling Out

Paint Your House with Powdered Milk

Wash Your Hair with Whipped Cream

The Bubble Wrap Book

Joey Greens Encyclopedia of Offbeat Uses for Brand-Name Products

The Zen of Oz

The Warning Label Book

Monica Speaks

The Official Slinky Book

You Know Youve Reached Middle Age If...

The Mad Scientist Handbook

Clean Your Clothes with Cheez Whiz

The Road to Success Is Paved with Failure

Clean It! Fix It! Eat It!

Joey Greens Magic Brands

The Mad Scientist Handbook 2

Senior Moments

Jesus and Moses: The Parallel Sayings

Joey Greens Amazing Kitchen Cures

Jesus and Muhammad: The Parallel Sayings

Joey Greens Gardening Magic

How They Met

Joey Greens Incredible Country Store

Potato Radio, Dizzy Dice

Joey Greens Supermarket Spa

Contrary to Popular Belief

Marx & Lennon: The Parallel Sayings

Joey Greens Rainy Day Magic

The Jolly President

Champagne and Caviar Again?

Joey Greens Mealtime Magic

The Bathroom Professor: Philosophy on the Go

Famous Failures

Lunacy: The Best of the Cornell Lunatic

Joey Greens Fit-It Magic

Too Old for MySpace, Too Young for Medicare

You Know You Need a Vacation If...

Sarah Palins Secret Diary

Joey Greens Cleaning Magic

Joey Greens Amazing Pet Cures

Dumb History

Joey Greens Kitchen Magic

The Ultimate Mad Scientist Handbook

Weird & Wonderful Christmas

Copyright 2013 by Joey Green

All rights reversed. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

The author has compiled the information contained herein from a variety of sources, and neither the author, publisher, manufacturers, nor distributors can assume responsibility for the effectiveness of the suggestions. Caution is urged in the use of the cleaning solutions, folk medicine remedies, and pest control substances.

The brand-name products mentioned in this book are registered trademarks. The companies that own these trademarks and make these products do not endorse, recommend, or accept liability for any of use of their products other than those uses indicated on the package label or in current company brochures. This book should not be regarded as a substitute for professional medical treatment, and neither the author, publisher, manufacturers, nor distributors can accept legal responsibility for any problem arising out of the use of or experimentation with the methods described. For a full listing of trademarks, please see .

Reckitt Benckiser does not recommend, endorse, or accept liability for any use of Frenchs Mustard other than the intended use of the product as indicated on its packaging label.

Direct and trade editions are both being published in 2013.

Book design by Chris Rhoads

Illustrations by Glen Mullaly

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

ISBN 9781609619480 direct hardcover

ISBN 9781609619497 trade paperback

eISBN 9781609619503

We inspire and enable people to improve their lives and the world around them.

rodalebooks.com

For Jeff and Amy

Fatigue

Nicotine Dependency

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

VOLTAIRE

In the Middle Ages, high-priced university-trained doctors firmly believed they could cure disease by bloodletting the patientcutting a vein or placing leeches on the skinto remove the corrupt humours supposedly causing the ailment. If a patient failed to recover from the disease after a pint of blood was removed from the body, the physician would remove more blood. Widely practiced by physicians, surgeons, and barbers, bloodletting resulted in the deaths of millions of people. The barbaric and medically unsound practice of bloodletting had been invented fifteen centuries earlier by the ancient Greek physician Galen, who wrongly believed that four humours (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) regulated the human body.

These same Medieval doctors concocted all sorts of expensive elixirs, potions, and tonics to allegedly cure serious ailments. In 1685, when English King Charles II fell ill from kidney disease, his royal doctors let his blood, cut off his hair, applied blistering agents on his scalp, and adhered plasters of pitch and pigeon dung on the bottom of his feet. They blew the herb hellebore up his nose to make him sneeze out the nonexistent humours from his brain, had him drink antimony and sulfate of zinc to induce vomiting to excise the humours, and gave him purgatives to cleanse his bowels of these humours. After the doctors administered an overabundance of tonics, herbs, and drugs, and let another twelve ounces of blood, King Charles II did what anyone receiving this daft medical treatment would do. He died.

As luck would have it, peasants could not afford the services of these university-trained quacks. Instead, they employed the less expensive services of local wise women who cleverly brewed homemade elixirs and devised ingenious herbal remedies, based on folklore, tradition, and common sense. These resourceful women ingeniously used honey to heal wounds and burns. They prescribed apple cider vinegar to relieve heartburn. They applied mustard plasters to decongest a chest coldall for a mere pittance compared to the exorbitant fees that their eminent counterparts charged for far more lethal treatments.

Over the succeeding centuries, peasants passed these home remedies from generation to generation, and as medical science progressed, becoming more sound and sophisticated, home remedies fell by the wayside, replaced by prescription medicines, antibiotics, and drugs. Feeling sick? Just run out to the drugstore to buy a pill, ointment, or cherry-flavored syrup to remedy whatever ails you.

If you came down with a cold and your grandmother told you to put mustard on your chest and cover it with a wet washcloth to decongest it, youd say, Cmon grandma, get with the program! The drugstore sells decongestants that really work.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Information Age. The costs of health care and health insurance skyrocketed. The number of Americans without health insurance climbed to 49.9 million in 2011, with nearly one out of four adult Americans uninsured, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The average health insurance premium for family coverage more than doubled over the past decade to $13,770 a year, reported the Kaiser Family Foundation. In 2008 alone, the average American spent $7,538 on health-care costs, said the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. And the average out-of-pocket health-care costs for a family of four with employer-sponsored health insurance ballooned from $3,634 in 2002 to $8,008 in 2011, proclaimed the Milliman Medical Index.