Medicinal Teas
Mexican people use plants and other materials found in nature to treat illnesses much more than do Norteamericanos. We tend to place our trust in western medicine; most Mexican people can't afford it. They rely instead on folk remedies developed and handed down through generations.
For a sore throat or a cough, Rosario gives me té de yerba buena, made from dried leaves she buys in the mercado. Yerba buena is the name for any number of local mint species. In the States, over-the-counter cold palliatives have contained menthol compounds for generations.
Limón Grass is always somewhere in our kitchen. Rosario gives me limón grass tea when I have a mild stomach upset.
Limón grass from the herbolario
I usually feel better after drinking one of her concoctions. But I'm enough of a skeptic to question whether these plants actually have medicinal properties, or if I'm just responding to the mothering and the hot drink.
In Lagos de Morena, Patty and I ran across a woman selling piojos del burro, shown below.
Piojos del burro
Piojos del burro. Means donkey lice. They're seed pods, burrs that hook onto cloth or fur and won't let go. An annoying plant.
We asked what it was used for. The woman told us it was for curing kidney stones. You boil three pods in a couple quarts of water and drink the resulting tea for nine days. Voilà. No more kidney stones.
Years ago, I passed two kidney stones. I have two more I'm saving for a rainy day. They're huge, the size of my thumb, so they're never going to descend. They're not growing and they're not causing any problems, so my urologist recommends just leaving them in place. OK, but at my weigh-ins with my internist, I've been asking for an allowance for the stones.
I think I'm going to pass on the piojos del burro. I can't imagine any mechanism by which they would help. And somehow, I don't think a poor country woman sitting in a doorway in Lagos de Moreno is a good source of medical advice. Most importantly, Dra Rosario isn't buying it.