Cindy Adams

Skin your knee? Got a boo-boo? Shove the salve. Poo on the pharmacist. Would Noah wait in his dermatologists cave office because of a zebra bite?

While picking the apple for Adam, suppose that snake bit Eve. Minus a friendly neighborhood druggist to unload a $75 unguent, shed have had to shop in the Garden of Eden. Scientific and medical restrictions would ban that today. Could be poison ivy. Shed need Benadryl. Shed need antihistamine. Veggies have pesticides. The kid Abel could contract zxppqycbvyiitis. And our health department would prescribe zip-lofan panxcroderm ziplozinc.

The old days did bush medicine. Rub with garlic. The Medecine Mans prescription read: Got a scrape? Get a clove. Youd smell, but you were healed. Also good for bites. Insect bites. Dog bites. Husband bites.

For piercing our ears, my grandma from the old country said: Saliva. Mouth to fingers to lobe. Perfect. Now? Antibiotics. Then a doc feels your purse and says, Nothing I can do.

Body ache. Tea from tall skinny fever grass weed. Boil in lukewarm water. And bathe your skin in it. Three days, youre fine. Also clean. Tell an internist: Every bone in my body hurts. Hell say: Be glad youre not a herring. Next.

Skin allergy. Stuff the salve. Boil a certain thick bark. Drink. No more allergy. The physicians regimen? Dont drink, eat, smoke, dissipate or do anything to interfere with paying my bill.

Fever. Boil cinnamon and clove. Drink often. Heats the body. Kills germs. Also kills off those MDs who once hit house calls Monday and golf clubs Wednesday.

Newborns. Midwives. Lay on the ground, palms pressed against a wall behind you. Twice a day for five days heal the bellybutton cord with warm coconut oil. The antiseptic? Rum.

Before Lipitor, what antediluvians did for high cholesterol, I dont know. Maybe tuna tartare with radicchio on a bed of chanterelles, shiitakes and portobellos. Mushrooms fight body fat. What they do for cholesterol, who knows?

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Modern medicine ’s puzzling