How Mom Handled Double Pneumonia in her Asthmatic Kid

I'm not posting it to a bunch of groups. This is just support for a statement I've made in another post. Rather than wait for someone to ask, I've provided a link in that post to this one so that if anyone wants an explanation of that particular statement, it's immediately available. I am sharing it with one group, because the subject matter fits that group.

The line from the post which refers to this one is, "I was treated with a combination of modern medicine and home remedies, and it worked."

I was sent home with a prescription for an antibiotic. Since I was allergic to Penicillin, I was given an alternative. I also had two inhalers that had to be used both multiple times a day... one at breakfast and bedtime, the other every four hours. These were two of the ones I usually had to take during the fall mold-is-everywhere-there-is-no-escape! season. Along with that, she gave me an expectorant and advised that I must sleep propped at an angle, rather than lying flat.
Our doctor all ready knew the other remedies which would be used at the house.
Three times a day, I'd have to use a salt-water nasal wash and throat wash, because at that time, my immune system was weakened, and I had a tendency to go from one illness to the next pretty quickly. Since I had a chest infection, it had been historically demonstrated by my body that the next thing would be either a sore throat or a sinus infection.
The formula for the throat wash was a teaspoon of salt in a cup of warm (110 degree) water. For the nose, the salt was cut to a half teaspoon to a cup. Too much salt is very uncomfortable and can even burn the delicate skin inside the nose.
The throat wash was gargled. The nasal was was used as nose drops, administered with a medicine dropper.
Suppers would include hot soup. Mom had two favorites for dealing with colds; home-made chicken, and whacha-got soup or stew.
The chicken soup recipe used two big cans of chicken broth, thin egg noodles, chunks of cut up chicken breast, celery or celery seed, parsley, onion, and garlic. Ginger can be added to help calm the tummy.
Whacha-got was made with beef broth, chunks of roast beef, barley or rice (whichever we had), a bay leaf, chunks of chopped cabbage, onion, chopped potatoes, and whatever other veggies we had in stock... hence the name of the recipe. Sometimes this meant a frozen container of mixed vegetables. Other times it was just peas and corn. Occasionally, there would be cauliflower or broccoli in it. For soup, the broth was left thin. For stew, the same kind of white sauce that is used as a gravy base would be mixed slowly with broth, to thicken it. It wouldn't quite be a gravy, but it would be thicker and more creamy than broth. It wouldn't be good for a cold with mucus... the residue left from the creamy broth can thicken it... but it's great for an achy-breaky flu virus.
Soup can be a good solution to the problem of reduced appetite and sensitive stomach during a bad cold. It's tasty enough to be appetizing even when nothing else looks good. The comfort of bundling up on the couch and sipping a cup of hot soup can be a really soothing way to get the nutrition you need to fight a cold. Hot broth will also help thin and get rid mucus in the throat.
Even when other foods won't go down, broth will. Often, when other foods won't stay down, chicken broth will, especially if it is cooked with a little ginger (to taste.)
At night, I would wear a plaster to bed. No, it wasn't a mustard plaster. Mom mixed salt with bacon grease and a little Vicks VapoRub ointment, and spread that on my chest. Over that, she would put a folded-up old cotton t-shirt, which would stay in place under a moderately tight pajama shirt. The grease and salt kept the body heat inside in that area, and the Vicks, which contained Eucalyptus oil, had a decongestant and cough suppressing effect. The t-shirt was there partly to enhance the warmth effect, but mostly to keep the bacon grease from getting everywhere else. This remedy, gross though it was, helped to calm the cough, and at the same time make whatever coughing still happened more productive, so that I could get rid of the mucus in my chest. The reduction in frequency of my cough would give me a chance to sleep - the most important thing you can do when sick.
If my cough got too bad, Mom would do a steam treatment. In our little bathroom (the one upstairs, in which a full-bath was squeezed into a room just barely wide enough to accommodate the tub) she would run the shower with only hot water, with the tub plugged so that it would fill, and the bathroom door closed so that the room would fill up with steam. A chunk of Vicks - probably about a teaspoon full, if we'd measured it - would be dropped into the tub. Carrying the medicine into the lungs that way, in a steamy mist, would help it to work more effectively. The hot mist would also help thin and loosen the mucus, so that when I coughed, I could get rid of it instead of just suffering. Today, I'd suggest using a personal steamer or one of the plug-in waterless vaporizers on the market.