For all of the time I've been visiting Great Britain, it has been way ahead of the States in making the old-fashioned, homely remedies available for purchase. One of my early experiences was over 20 years ago with a cold symptom remedy. I walked into the pharmacy in Bourton-on-the-Water, described the symptoms and ask if they had anything that would make them less uncomfortable while my immune system dealt with the virus. I was handed a remedy containing mostly marsh mallow root, a very old remedy for cough and sore throat. Much to my surprise, it worked.
My first encounter with arnica gel was even longer ago, when I arrived at Victoria Station from Gatwick Airport with a severe bruise on the top of each shoulder caused by my backpack straps setting directly over the snap fasteners on my jacket epaulets. I knew that there are shops in the station, one level up from the concourse, so I went up to see if there was anything useful there. One of the shops was Holland & Barrett, and when I described the bruises, I was handed a tube of arnica gel. I went into the ladies and applied it, unsnapped the epaulets to remove most of the hard surface that was the root cause of the problem, and put the pack back on. The bruises no longer hurt, and when I reached my destination several hours later, I found that they had faded considerably from their former angry appearance. The commercial gel is much more convenient than our ancestors' method of extracting the oil from the arnica montana plant.
My latest experience was about a year ago with a very annoying cough. Friends from Wakefield had come to Holmfirth to visit me for the day, and one of them offered a card of the cough pastilles that she always carries. The brand name is Broncho Stop, which sounds like a rodeo event, but it was the only thing I had tried that worked, including some OTC opioid cough syrup from one of the pharmacies in town that made me feel slightly drunk and that I couldn't have carried back through US Customs without being arrested.
The pastilles contain the herb thyme, an expectorant, which has been brewed into a strong infusion and mixed with a great deal of honey as a cough remedy for centuries. The other ingredient is fructose, which takes the takes the place of the honey in coating the irritated throat. They work for both dry and chesty coughs. They aren't available in the States, but an Amazon.com merchant in the UK carries them at about the same price as Boots, and with free shipping. I now keep a supply on hand.
