what a neat thread!!!

My mother (and her mother, and so far back as I could remember), had one remedy for anything to do with congestion. In Italian it's pronounced PICARADDA.

I heard that in the jewish culture, it's called cupping.

Well, here is how it goes. when you have chest congestion, or a bad cold, you lay on your stomach. Someone else has to do this to you, you can't do this to yourself.

My mom had an old italian friend Lia, who came over one day. I thought she was practicing voodoo on me.

She would take a wine glass, then she would take a quarter, wrap a piece of gauze around the quarter.

She then put the quarter on your back, set it on fire (I'm not kidding you).and insert the wine glass over the corner so the rim is flat on your back. All of a sudden you would hear a whoosh sound, and the fire would suck your skin into the glass, putting out the fire. She would do this all over your back. You would be left with round circles all over your back.

I will never forget when she took me to the doctor the next day (the home remedy didn't work, obviously, and I was coughing my brains off).

The doctor listened to my chest, then he raised the back of my blouse, and when he went to put the stethiscope on my back he jumped and said "oh my god, what are these circles?" My mother explained what had happened and he gave her a dirty look and said:

"Listen to me, she needs antibiotics, AND NO MORE VOODOO!!"

I will never forget that conversation if I live to be 100 and that was over 45 years ago.

lol