Horrendous Home Remedy

Horrendous Home Remedy

Doctors don't know everything. Some families have cures for anything that ails you, handed down from Uncle Jack or from generation to generation, usually requiring nothing more in ingredients than things one can find around the house -- or, at worst, in a grocery store.

For most families, this is something like a good chicken soup (which has, actually, been shown to be Truth in Television.)

For some other families, well... the cure might be worse than the disease.

This trope covers any home-brewed "medicine" or remedy that is positively disgusting in appearance, taste and/or ingredients -- and usually all three at once. These remedies don't just taste like feet, they might actually be made with them, with the occasional toe popping to the surface.

Effectiveness has no bearing on this trope -- only the "yuck factor". (Although if they do work as advertised, that's an amusing bonus.) If the remedy or its ingredients don't make you say "oh, hell, no", it doesn't belong here. This can overlap with I Ate What? if it's not immediately obvious what it's made from, whether It Tastes Like Feet or not. And people will take a Horrendous Home Remedy even if it smells or tastes putrescent, because, of course, If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You. (In fact, that may be all the logic that exists behind the choice of ingredients and their preparation.) But don't expect them to be happy when you tell them they just chugged a pint of bat guano and goat urine thoroughly laced with Durian juice, filtered through an old pair of gym socks.

Naturally, this is (usually) a comedy trope.

Super-Trope to the Hideous Hangover Cure. If it's actually effective, it's likely to be an Improbable Antidote to something -- or everything.

Live-Action TV

 * The title character's family in the South Korean TV show Strong Girl Bong-soon has a guaranteed cure that's been handed down from mother to daughter from time immemorial: "poop liquor" -- an alcoholic beverage made from fermented shit.  Amazingly -- or maybe not, given how much Functional Magic there is in the series -- it actually seems to work on everything including physical injuries.
 * Most of Grandmamma's cures on The Addams Family will be this to "normal" people (not to mention possibly poisonous). The Addamses themselves will enjoy them, of course.
 * In a Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. episode, Gomer slipped some of his grandmother's country cure into Sgt. Carter's coffee, since Vincent lost his voice, the first sips made the bedridden Sargent give a disgusted expression. The good news, the country home remedy worked but the bad news was that Sgt. Carter now has a high-pitch voice.