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Avoid Pesky Doctors

Taking medical advice from a drunken hillbilly witchdoctor

By Skunky Precious

Editor's Note: UWeekly recommends seeing a doctor in the event of any illness. The primary focus of this article is entertainment, with the exception of sitting in a hole full of buttermilk, while wearing a dirty poncho, which is actually quite effective)

My girlfriend just ran screaming around her kitchen, flailing her arms in the air, snot pouring out of her nose, like a faucet on trickle. She kept braying that her stomach was on fire. Her eyes were wide and she was a'burping and a'snarling.

"It still tastes like pepper!" she cried, having just taken the Remedy.

I know several "hill cures," as I have grown up entirely without health insurance. Doctors were expensive and not especially trustworthy, besides. Hill people have always learned to improvise.

Many collerge students is likewise poor and without health insurance, or maybe don't have the time to go wait in line for yon doctor. For y'uns, I present here some of the more 'fective hill cures and absolutely no scientific data backing up my conjectures. This is pure hoodoo magic, and so the science ain't really necessary.

For the Common Cold:
This one is fun and easy, and chances are great that you already have all the ingredients you need, bein' that you's in collerge. Take you two shots of very pure, very cold clear-burning moonshine (or vodka, as yer a collerge student) and add two or three heaping spoonfuls of black pepper. Cap it all off with about half a shot-glass full of Tabasco brand hot sauce. Now, you get that all mixed up real good, and you pinch your nose and drink it fast. Make sure to stir it right before you drink it, or you will leave a bunch of pepper on the sides of the glass. You want to make sure that you have put enough pepper in there to hurt yourself a little bit. This is the cure known as "The Remedy," and you must take it just as soon as you start to feel a sniffle coming on. Common sense tells you how it works: you are frightening your body. It thinks to itself, "holy shit, you did THAT to me for a sniffle? What the hell are you going to do for a full-blown cold? Cut off a leg?" It then proceeds whup that cold out of you.

For Stuff Growing On You (What That You Don't Want There):
There's a mess of cures for bad things growing on your hide, but my personal favorite is a rotating treatment: witch hazel, tea tree oil and unfiltered apple cider vinegar. Some combination of the three is probably a cure for cancer, but I don't think I have the right proportions for that yet - but everything else, it works. Be it a wart, rash, skeeter bite or minor infection, cleansing the skin with witch hazel and apple cider vinegar is generally the fastest and most effective way to clear something up, and won't hardly cost you anything at all. Witch hazel is an astringent found next to the isopropyl alcohol and peroxide and such things in any grocery store, and usually costs around a buck a bottle. Distilled for centuries by Native American tribes, the leaves and bark are astringent and are effective also at reducing bruises, hemorrhoids and shaving cuts, as well as sunburn. Apple cider vinegar is a little more expensive, because you want to use "the Mother," found in unfiltered cider vinegar. The Mother of Vinegar is bacterial poop resulting in the vinegarization of the cider. Much like witch hazel, vinegar has been used for centuries to cure everything from warts to gout, and is damned effective on things growing on your skin that you don't want there.

Tea tree oil is more expensive than the other two, since it is an essential oil. It is better for smaller areas, and is strong enough that you don't want to overuse it: very good for tough-to-beat acne, but not as great for a large rash. Large rashes, what you get from your poison ivy-type sittyations, is best treated with a rotating treatment of cider vinegar and the witch hazel.

'Nother good one is sitting in holes. Mos' holes cure mos' anything wrong with you. If you can't find one, dig one yourself with a shovel or a motivated terrier. If you really powerful sick, git yourself a Mexican-style poncho and duct-tape it to a dog for a while, preferably when it's real rainy. Let it grow some stink fer a day or so, while you dig the biggest hole you can. Don aforementioned dirty poncho, and then sit in 'at hole until yer better. Works best if you can fill the whole thing up with buttermilk first, too, but most people tell me that's illegal.

Originally Published: November 11, 2009

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