Grandma’s Home Remedies – Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

Monday, March 22, 2021

Dr. Ed Iannuccilli, Contributor

Recently I was on a Zoom call with the group from Casa Italia in Chicago. Their guest speaker was Anthony Riccio; author, photographer, and oral historian.

He spoke of what the Italians did in America during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Lacking anything for cure or prevention, they turned to home remedies such as garlic tied as a string of pearls around the neck or camphor, the forerunner of today’s Vicks, also applied around the neck or under the nose. We may find the remedies curious, but that is all they had to offer for a disease that they did not understand and which, sadly, devastated thousands.

It reminded me of my grandmother’s cures when I was a kid.

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As soon as Grandma heard that any of her grandchildren were ill, she appeared like magic, bustling into the room with an evil-banishing gold cornu (horn) swinging like a pendulum from a necklace. In her compendium were valiant remedies imported from Pollutri, her town in the province of Chieti, Italy. Her cures were bizarre, ritualistic, and not fun. She reassured me. I protested and lost. For a sore throat, her remedy was beaten egg whites soaked in a cloth (mopine), wrapped around my neck, and fastened with a large safety pin. After a while, the mopine became cast-like, as stiff as a layer of ice. “You feel-a betta?” I lied.

A cold potato on a burn, or its peels for a headache. Garlic cloves for a toothache; Octagon soap, crushed, and mixed with sugar, for a boil; heated and melted camphor on the chest for a cough.

When Grandma believed illness was a consequence of supernatural forces, or people with evil intent who released the evil eye, the mal’occhio (“malooka”), she acted. Because the look was severe enough to bring ill health upon the victim, she believed it could only be disarmed by doing the malooka. She pointed her inverted first and last fingers downward in the shape of a horn, dropped oil on water, made the sign of the cross and read the pattern. If the oil separated, the sickness was not a mal’occhio. If the oil spread in a single layer, that was proof of the evil eye’s work.

Christianity and modern-day medicine forced Grandma to (sort of) abandon her practices, but never to disbelieve or distrust all of them. The one thing she remained convinced of was the importance of a decontaminated bowel.

A clean bowel meant a good feeling and good health. Vile tasting castor oil was her favorite tonic for everything: fever, pain, rashes, aches, falls, constipation, even diarrhea. It was also a safeguard.

On occasion, even when we were well, she dosed. How well I remember standing pole-like, arms by my sides, fists clenched, lips pursed, then mouth open on command. Gulp ‘errgh, down it went! Not long after, out it came with a vengeance. From outside the bathroom door, Grandma asked, “Ed-a-wood, you feela good now?”

I guess it worked. I am alive to tell it.

 

Dr. Ed Iannuccilli is the author of three popular memoirs, “Growing up Italian; Grandfather’s Fig Tree and Other Stories”, “What Ever Happened to Sunday Dinner” and “My Story Continues: From Neighborhood to Junior High.”  Learn more here. 

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