Home Cough Remedies

Standard cough remedies are of two sorts - expec­torants which seek to loosen the secretions in the lungs so they can be coughed up - or suppressants - which attempt to suppress the cough as their name suggests. There are several household rem­edies which can also be categorized in the same way, and included amongst the most unusual to feature in this anthology are noxious fumes from gas works or road building,

Steam: Steam is a useful expectorant as well as soothing to irritated airways.

Chicken soup: Chicken soup increases the veloc­ity of nasal and bronchial secretions and thus is a particularly effective remedy for a dry cough.

Noxious fumes: Noxious fumes were used as a common treatment for the persistent cough of whooping cough in childhood. Particularly favored were the smells from gasworks, the smoke from a steam engine and liquid tar. 'When I was a little girl at infant school about seventy years ago and contracted whooping cough it was thought desirable for a child to inhale the sulphurous fumes coming from the local gasworks. I was taken daily for a walk past Chelmsford gasworks and instructed to inhale deeply. It certainly did the trick.' Miss I. E. Woolford from Chelmsford.

'The gasworks remedy did not work for Mrs. Elizabeth Jones from Dorset so her father resorted to more drastic measures: 'This necessitated a train journey through the Severn Tunnel. As soon as the train entered the tunnel my father opened the window and thrust my head out facing the engine. I have often thought that had a train been passing in the opposite direction, my cough might have been silenced permanently'

The fumes from liquid tar would have worked in a similar way as this anonymous contributor points out: When I was young in the thirties in a North London suburb the recognized palliative for a cough was to locate an area where street resurfacing was taking place. I have clear memo­ries of being daily walked up and down past the roadside brazier where a cauldron of tar was being prepared and required to deeply inhale the coal tar fumes.'

Cough medicine: Mr. Norman Gardiner from Chelsea records this home-made cough syrup from the 'hungry Thirties': 'Sliced swede with brown sugar and placed between two plates in a warm place near the kitchen range. The juice exuded was used as a cough syrup. In a variant of this recipe onion is substituted for the swede.

Wet towels: A nocturnal cough in a child, espe­cially if he also coughs following exercise, is usually a sign of mild asthma which usually responds to appropriate anti-asthma medication. There may, however, be a simpler explanation and Mrs. Bolt from Yorkshire suggests that central heating may, by drying the air, cause chronic nocturnal coughs in children. 'A wet towel over the radiator or a bowl of water brings immediate relief,' she writes.

A handkerchief: Cold air can irritate the airways resulting in a chronic cough at night for those who sleep in cold bedrooms. Mrs. J. Barton from Sussex reports discovering the following remedy: 'As I coughed only at night for two winters, I thought if I could breathe warm air at night it would help. I put my head under the bedclothes and the coughing stopped - but began again when I came up for air. The next night I put a large thin handkerchief over my whole face and breathed in and out deeply through the mouth. I think the warm air breathed out slightly warmed the cold air going in.