Ouch!

I'm currently recovering from a 16 hour long migraine, ouch! Having seen what modern medicine has to offer for my pain, which doesn't seem to be much, I am exploring my other options.

No, no- I'm not thinking about doing anything drastic, just curing a headache! Old folk remedies claim that "these headaches might be bound up with a halter with which someone had been hanged; the rope used in a suicide had special merits." Disturbing? Yes, but this method also was believed to cure baldness and restore hair color. Never underestimate the power of rope!

Or perhaps, if you weren't depending on that last remedy to restore your hair, you might snip a lock of hair and place it under a rock. As long as you do not speak of the headache or the cure for seven days, it was believed that you would be cured of your headache.

And if the rock method didn't work, perhaps you'd find a rattlesnake while removing your lock of hair from beneath that rock and boy you'd be in luck! Rattlesnakes were believed to have an immense power to cure a headache. By simply wearing their rattles in the sweat band of a hat or by wearing their skin or their dead body around your head you could be cured.

While I am sure none of these remedies have any actual healing ability, they are still interesting to read about and actually say a lot about the people who created them and the people who believe them. Many more of these charming charms for headaches and many other ailments can be found at the Online Archive of American Folk Medicine.