If you have read this column over the years, you will have noticed that in my weekly offerings I have occasionally referred to how traditional folk medicine has been used to overcome many diseases and complaints.

And here I must confess to being a bit of a hypochondriac.

I put this down to having nurses in the family and to the kindly neighbour who, when I was about nine years of age, gifted me with a multi-volume set of a “home doctor”.

I can’t quite remember the title, but it was published sometime in the early 1920s.

It was arranged alphabetically and I must have been the only lad of that age who was conversant with various diseases and ailments from A to D.

I probably lost interest after the letter E.

I don’t know what happened to these books.

When I’m in an occasional nostalgic mood, I wish I still had them – for purely historical reasons of course.

In this digital age, I can indulge my hypochondria by consulting my laptop.

I often think of myself as being a cyberchondriac.

I’ve been housebound this past week.

I was suddenly smitten with an attack of arthritis, severe rheumatism or some such complaint which left me scarcely able to hobble around the house.

So I have, quite naturally, been interested in what folk cures have been used over the years.

For purely historical reasons only, of course.

There’s no way I’m recommending their use in this day and age.

Modern medicine can be highly effective. I should know.

After a few days of taking seemingly innumerable pills and potions, they’ve worked and I am now painlessly ambulant once more.

Isn’t the NHS a marvellous institution?

They say that prevention is better than a cure.

Tradition has it that you could ward off arthritis and other complaints by carrying one or two small potatoes in one of your pockets.

Does this work?

I don’t know – for some reason I neglected to try it.

I understand that I should keep these potatoes in my pocket until they turn rock hard and then replace them.

One version of this cure insists that these potatoes had to be stolen or it would not work.

Assuming that you have bought or grown some potatoes, you should peel one and put it in bed with you.

In this weather I think that if you opt for a hot water bottle to keep warm, the combination would be a trifle unpleasant.

If you are that queasy, you could opt for the alternative of keeping a small basket of potatoes beneath your bed.

But for how long should I devote one of my pockets to carrying potatoes about?

I must say that I find the prospect of being a permanent potato carrier more than a trifle unappealing.

Other superstitions counsel the carrying about of various other objects.

The one which least appeals to me is pocketing the right foot of a hare.

Why only the right foot?

I could also have opted to carry about an acorn, a small magnet, a horse chestnut or, according to one source, the jaw of a female hedgehog!

But where would I get one of those?

And, being honest, would I really want one?

I don’t think so!

Commercial cures were available in earlier years.

However, they tended to be expensive.

Back in 1806, the Cumberland Pacquet carried an advert for Cumberland Bituminous Fluid which, the advert claimed, was a certain “cure for rheumatism, rheumatic gout, sciatica, lumbago, pains in the back and kidneys, gravel, windy complaints, etc.”

This medicine was, according to the advert, “discovered and prepared only by G Ramsay, Penrith, many years of Apothecaries Hall, London.”

The advert contained a number of recommendations from satisfied users.

This was the practice in those days.

No price was given for this medicine in the advert.

Did it work? I don’t know.

Something else to research!

Many of the older folk cures involved the use of bees.

Bee stings have had the reputation of “curing” rheumatic and arthritic pains for many years.

Radio listeners were told how bees could cure rheumatism back in 1949.

Veteran Portinscale beekeeper Robert Just was interviewed by Wilfred Pickles on his Have a Go programme.

He told how he took some 20 bees to bed with him in a matchbox.

He then applied the box to his paining shoulder to allow the bees to sting him – and cure him of rheumatic pain.

Bee sting cures might work, but they most certainly don’t appeal to me.

I’m really glad that I live in the age of the NHS!