It’s tra­di­tion­al to send bless­ings to friends on Old Year’s Day. I thought I would do the same and show­er bless­ings on my few read­ers by de­scrib­ing some old-time med­ical be­liefs that have gone the way of the do­do.

Might be good for a laugh in these per­ilous times?

Gas. Re­mem­ber when peo­ple used to have gas? Not on­ly trapped in­side the ab­domen but trapped all over their body. A sur­geon friend, a se­ri­ous fel­low, would de­scribe with won­der how one gen­tle­man would squeeze his fore­arm and im­me­di­ate­ly pass gas. You could squeeze any­where, from his head to his big toe. He would pass gas. He re­port­ed a sense of re­lief do­ing this. He spent a lot of time get­ting re­lief. An­oth­er gen­tle­man would “save” it up and let it rip as he came through the of­fice door, “Oh gord, doc­tor, do some­thing for meh, nuh!” And every lit­tle granny had the same com­plaint, “I cyah con­trol the gas, doc­tor! Oops, sor­ry!”

There used to be a big mar­ket in gas pills. Like “ton­ics,” this seems to have van­ished. Ton­ic was huge! A good ton­ic was the bane of old ladies who had was to bear with their soul mates af­ter the dai­ly “ton­ic.” One old­er gen­tle­man said to me, “Life with­out sex is not life. Please give me a good ton­ic.” He dis­ap­peared af­ter I ad­vised him to walk dai­ly and clean his teeth.

The sell­ers of ton­ics are more so­phis­ti­cat­ed now. They have sexy mod­ern names like Pow­er Fruit Ex­ot­ic Vi­t­a­min Ex­cel­sior or Neg­a­tive Ion Gen­er­a­tors and come in var­i­ous forms, po­tions, in­tra­venous in­jec­tions com­bined with in­gre­di­ents from sheep pla­cen­ta or portable hy­per­bar­ic oxy­gen cham­bers that you can buy and set up in your bed­room. Un­be­liev­able stuff!

An­oth­er big­gie was “crack­ing joints.” Crack­ing knuck­les was com­mon. We did it to show our machis­mo or to dis­rupt class. Every boy in my class knew that if you cracked a knuck­le, you would end up with arthri­tis as an adult and dis­abled for sure. Al­most two gen­er­a­tions lat­er, I know al­most no­body with arthri­tis of the knuck­les so that myth has been well and tru­ly de­bunked.

How about “not bathing for an hour af­ter you eat!” Go­ing to Mara­cas meant no food or drink un­til af­ter you had a dip. Then you had to wait an­oth­er hour to go back in or you would “catch a cramp” and drown. Know­ing adults al­ways com­ment­ed on this, af­ter be­ing told that Un­cle Mikey had drowned at Ma­yaro “af­ter eat­ing ah beef stew. He shud­da wait for an hour!” For­tu­nate­ly for us, many peo­ple now go to the beach, eat three dou­bles with slight pep­per, dive straight in, some with the dou­bles still in their mouth, and come out hap­py like pap­py.

Drink­ing wa­ter at half­time. Whoa! This was an­oth­er cramp sto­ry. Cramp and gas used to be big be­fore AIDS and co­caine. One would look pity­ing­ly at the un­for­tu­nate boy who swal­lowed huge quan­ti­ties of wa­ter as he came off the foot­ball field. We suf­fered dry mouths and near ex­haus­tion nobly in the holy name of cramp. The smarter ones went in­to the bath­room on the pre­text of need­ing to uri­nate, re­hy­drat­ed from the tap there and ran past us on the field, nev­er to catch cramp. I be­lieved this sto­ry well in­to med­ical school.

What about the many car crash­es caused by turn­ing on the light in­side the car? We firm­ly be­lieved that do­ing this would cause the dri­ver to be­come light blind, un­able to see on­com­ing ve­hi­cles and crash. My saint­ed moth­er was a strong pro­po­nent of this the­o­ry and the amount of slap we would get from her from the front seat was tes­ta­ment to her twist­ing abil­i­ty.

Vests and colds. Still around. One had to wear a vest to pre­vent one’s chest from “catch­ing a cold.” That was the surest way to catch a cold. Puz­zled par­ents still say, “but I have him in a vest all the time and he still catch­ing a cold.” Breath­ing bare­back was the equiv­a­lent of walk­ing bare­foot. Like hook­worm, the cold virus ap­par­ent­ly en­tered the body, through naked soles and went straight to your un­pro­tect­ed chest and caused you to cough. Some­how or the oth­er if you had on a vest, it couldn’t or wouldn’t do that.

Fi­nal­ly, the worst. You could not cut the child hair un­til he start­ed to speak. Now there are chil­dren with sen­so­ry pro­cess­ing dif­fi­cul­ties who do not talk much and al­so do not like to have their hair cut but that does not mean that cut­ting the hair caus­es the child not to speak.

I Googled, “What type of speech is hair­cut?” and Google replied, noun. That’s as good an ex­pla­na­tion as any you are go­ing to get for some of these ex­tra­or­di­nary med­ical be­liefs.