Nonna Sarah's treatment for high blood pressure

 

This is "the" one treatment I remember clearly!

Today i may be looking for my keys or eyeglasses or anything else but my nonna's high blood pressure treatment I remember clearly. And that was around 1948!

The leech (sangsues) doctor regularly came to my grandparents. When my nonna said she had a babour (réchaud) in her head, it meant that it was time to apply those leeches.

Was he a doctor?
i do not know. but he knew his job.

My nonna sat on a sofa in her darkened room and he took one worm after another and pressing its jaw gripped my nonna's white skin on her temple. He put three or four worms on each side and nonna sat there with a basin full of water waiting for the worm to have drunk her blood and fall off.

As a child I sat on one of the stools and watched fascinated. From thin little things they grew and grew till they became fat and dropped in the basin.

They left little holes in my nonna's white skin (she came from Smyrna).

She would rest in her darkened room and feel better till it was time again to stop "el babour" with the visit of the "leech doctor."

 

Sultana Latifa

taken from The Jasmine Necklace Trilogy.