When your grandparents bring you up, getting cured with peculiar medical remedies is as natural as getting double portions on your dinner plate because you’re the youngest. We all got warm milk, honey and a drop of rum when we had a bad cough, and eating eggs was certainly forbidden if we were taking antibiotics.

My grandmother, as many others from the Southern Piemonte area, also swore by segnare il mal di denti con la cenere- she would make crosses on my cheeks after dipping her finger in ashes - while a friend of mine was forced to wear a clove of garlic around her neck for the whole night when she had a bad stomach ache. If some of this concoctions and practices are certainly more folklore than medicine, some other have solid roots in ancient medical practices and are worth knowing.