If you are an American, you no doubt grew up drinking your great-grandmother's ginger tonic whenever your tummy ached or swaddling your bee-stung finger with your great-great-aunt's special herbal wrap for bug bites. But where did your great-grandmother and great-great-aunt get these remedies? Probably from their own great-grandmother and great-great-aunt, back in the "old country."

"Folk Medicine in America Today" looks at the remedies that were brought to our country by immigrants from all over the world. It is the only folk remedy book that includes ethnic remedies from and for the wide variety of peoples that make up America today, including: Russians, Germans, Greeks, Indians, Italians, Scandinavians, Native Americans, Latin Americans, Vietnamese, and many others.

Some of the ethnic folk remedies that made it to our shores are long forgotten, but a surprisingly large number have become standard components of the modern American medicine cabinet. But what exactly are these remedies? Where did they originate? Why did they come about? Medical anthropologist and renowned health researcher John Heinerman looks at the remedies we learned from our mothers and are teaching our children, and not only gives us specific directions for using them, but tells us about their history and reason for being.

For example, from Russia, comes a vinegar tonic made with watercress and used for curing headaches. And from Indonesia, there's a remedy "to increase your muscle stamina for a competitive sports engagement (especially soccer)." Made from dried cinnamon bark, dried fenugreek seeds, and dried gotu kola (pegagan leaves), one cup of this warm tea should be sipped just before a game -- and alsorubbed into the leg muscles. In this era of HMOs, specialist referrals, authorization numbers, and approved medication lists, Dr. Heinerman helps us return to medicine on a human scale.

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