Why Did They Use to Think Gargling Was a Good Idea?

Factual Questions
1

Some time ago, when my paternal grandfather had to go to a nursing home (a very nice one, I may add), we got to go thru his house. My mother told be to take anything I wanted, since it all would soon be thrown away anyways. I took a short radio set–which I still have, and still rarely use. And I took my grandmother’s old commercial cook book, apparently published in 1924. By most accounts my grandmother (who died when I was 5) was supermom–much like my own mother. So naturally I had always wondered were she got her info from. (She used to know the answer to everything when it came to mothering.)

While perusing the book, I came across something interesting. It was all about general care for babies and children. Some of the stuff was weird. For example:

:eek: !

But the one thing that I still wonder about, was the part about daily gargling. The book thought we should all do it.

I have sometimes seen old people gargle and wondered why they were doing it. So why are they? And does the same advice apply today?

:smiley:

2

That should be shortwave radio. I still rarely use it, though.

3

Don’t catch too much TV do you?

Listerine is still promoting gargling to kill all those evil bacteria that infest your mouth.
I guess this is ironic. Listerine didn’t promote putting the stuff in your mouth until 1919. Before then you were supposed to use it for external things, like cuts, scrapes and dandruff.

4

I had never heard not to gargle. The OP assumes you shouldn’t, is this true?

5

What kind of commercial cook book has folk remedies in it?

6

IS there anything wrong with gargling

7

Old cookbooks are full of folk wisdom, postcards - even some newer ones refer to sealing rather than browning the meat. Many are also part cookbook, part home economics, so a chapter on health and hygiene wouldn’t be that out of place. [hijack] My favorite slightly warped tip was from a cookbook chapter on feeding invalids, which having observed that boiling vegies in copious quantities of water leeched out many nutients advised feeding the invalids the cooking water as well. [/]

I’m curious as to muttrox’s query too - at worst, gargling can be an effective pain deadener.

8

I don’t think Jim B. is assuming you shouldn’t gargle, it sounded to me more like he sees it as something for which he does not see the point. And I can understand if his curiosity is aroused at the idea that you should “teach the child early to gargle”, as if it were some sort of essential life skill. That does strike me as quaint.