Mama Lopez's Home Remedies

Do not mention that you have a scratchy/sore throat around my mother. She will demand that you pour a copious amount of salt into a cup of vinegar and then gargle with it.

Oh yes, it is as bad as it sounds.

But I checked up on it and it's actually medicinally sound. You see, the salt draws water out of the cells in your throat, creating inhospitable conditions for the attacking germs.

And the vinegar, well, the vinegar makes it all taste so horrible that the germs become convinced that you are trying to poison yourself. This causes a mass exodus in which the germs abandon your throat cells and desperately hunt for a less suicidal host organism.

At least, that's what it says here in my medical journal.

Hm, there's a footnote, too. "This concoction has also been used historically to persuade prisoners of war to reveal information. The Geneva Convention ended it's use on the field of battle and severely limited it's production. It is now only readily available to Australia* and to a handful of doting, Mexican mothers.

*To make up for their lack of nukes.