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Modern medicine’s puzzling

Skin your knee? Got a boo-boo? Shove the salve. Poo on the pharmacist. Would Noah wait in his dermatologist’s cave office because of a zebra bite?

While picking the apple for Adam, suppose that snake bit Eve. Minus a friendly neighborhood druggist to unload a $75 unguent, she’d have had to shop in the Garden of Eden. Scientific and medical restrictions would ban that today. Could be poison ivy. She’d need Benadryl. She’d need antihistamine. Veggies have pesticides. The kid Abel could contract zxppqycbvyiitis. And our health department would prescribe zip-lofan panxcroderm ziplozinc.

The old days did bush medicine. Rub with garlic. The Medecine Man’s prescription read: “Got a scrape? Get a clove.” You’d smell, but you were healed. Also good for bites. Insect bites. Dog bites. Husband bites.

For piercing our ears, my grandma from the old country said: “Saliva. Mouth to fingers to lobe.” Perfect. Now? Antibiotics. Then a doc feels your purse and says, “Nothing I can do.”

Body ache. Tea from tall skinny “fever grass” weed. Boil in lukewarm water. And bathe your skin in it. Three days, you’re fine. Also clean. Tell an internist: “Every bone in my body hurts.” He’ll say: “Be glad you’re not a herring. Next.”

Skin allergy. Stuff the salve. Boil a certain thick bark. Drink. No more allergy. The physician’s regimen? “Don’t drink, eat, smoke, dissipate or do anything to interfere with paying my bill.”

Fever. Boil cinnamon and clove. Drink often. Heats the body. Kills germs. Also kills off those MDs who once hit house calls Monday and golf clubs Wednesday.

Newborns. Midwives. Lay on the ground, palms pressed against a wall behind you. Twice a day for five days heal the bellybutton cord with warm coconut oil. The antiseptic? Rum.

Before Lipitor, what antediluvians did for high cholesterol, I don’t know. Maybe tuna tartare with radicchio on a bed of chanterelles, shiitakes and portobellos. Mushrooms fight body fat. What they do for cholesterol, who knows?

Toothache. Dentists say Cepacol. Penicillin, Chloraseptic. Bushies say: cooking salt numbs the tooth. Pound a plain clove bud. Stick in the hole in your tooth. Cut a twig. Peel. Use the inside. Slice into strips. Shred ends. Chew. Make it soft. Brush the teeth. No toothpaste, no mouthwash, no root canal, no whitening.

Ankle sprain? Roast eggplant. Cut. Place on the sprain. And you know where you can place the heating pad. Also saffron. With water make a paste. Schmear onto a rag doubling as a bandage.

Tonsils? Put finger in mouth wrapped in rag soaked in salt water. Squeeze. Push in, stretch the tongue, squeeze the liquid. Forget nose and throat specialists. They’ll avoid X-rays and talk you into 8-by-10 glossies for $750.

Ear ache? Warm coconut oil.

No stove? So collect mud. Mix with cow dung. Make paste. Fashion a square. Dries in sun. Sticks, dry brush, bark, coconut husk chips inside the square make a fire. How you start the fire is your problem. Call Bloomberg. Maybe he’ll sell you a repossessed Zippo.

Mud stoves gave way to cement jobs then kerosene oil then gas cooking then electric then the repair guy.

Plates? Banana leaves. Pots? Sardine cans or tin containers. Once, five-pound butter cans. Those today would book you on “The Biggest Loser.”

At the riverbed, clothes were washed in running sweet water from sugar cane estates. Slapped against rocks. Boiled, grated, dried cassava, becoming heavy, created starch. Transport was a donkey cart. A horse cart implied you’re rich.

Sylvia Neanderthal and Clara Cro-Magnon didn’t worry about bed springs. An empty sugar bag or flour bag, filled with iron grass, was the mattress. A rice bag made the hammock. And nobody needed sleep therapists.

Purifying your blood? Coriander, nutmeg, saffron, clove, cinnamon were ground on bricks. Or in drugstores in Mexico that advertise: “Prescription not necessary.”

Throw out nothing from the coconut. It makes soap, brooms, oil, food, water, dishes, ornaments, sweets. Throw out nothing from rice grown in the paddy. It feeds animals, goats, pigs, cows, chickens and people.

Toilet tissue? Soaked paper.

Sty? Mash a certain leaf. Soak. Squeeze onto the eye. Medicine’s so specialized nowadays that if it moves from the right eye to the left, you have to switch optometrists.

Before fridges, food was cooked only for one meal. Fried fish could be left outside for another day. Today you can’t eat fried. Boiled meat pickled in cinnamon and salt kept for another day. Today you can’t eat salt.

A Chinese bitter squash plant lowered prehistoric man’s sugar. Now it’s Mellitus for Type 1 diabetes. Januvia for Type 2. And four out of five doctors recommend another doctor.

Headache. Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Tylenol? Uh-uh. Bitter aloe sliced, tied around head in thick leaf. Diarrhea? Faster than Kaopectate is ground spodilla fruit or pomegranate. Foot cut? Bind with snake vine soaked in coconut oil. Ingrown toenail? With heated bobby pin push away bad flesh.

Any problems? Call my answering service and make an appointment next week.