In praise of garlic

[john duffer]

For the last two weeks I've taken two garlic pills a day. I did nothing else to ward off insects and came back from Pickett's Mill with zero bug bites. Not the first tick or chigger. This is the second time this has happened in an area where I would expect to be eaten alive and I'm firmly convinced it works.

[MassVOL]

Re: In praise of garlic

For the last two weeks I've taken two garlic pills a day. I did nothing else to ward off insects and came back from Pickett's Mill with zero bug bites. Not the first tick or chigger. This is the second time this has happened in an area where I would expect to be eaten alive and I'm firmly convinced it works.

My father used to tell me that bakers yeast would do the same thing though I have never tried it.

[LWhite64]

Re: In praise of garlic

I can second John on that, I did the same thing and zero bites. I started taking the garlic last summer and didnt get bite all summer either. Good stuff.

Lee

[K Bartsch]

Re: In praise of garlic

John,
I took nothing, and used no other bug repellent and rec'd no bites of any kind either. I was expecting clouds of skeeters but didn't see one all weekend. Slept on the pinestraw strewn ground and it was chigger-free for me.

Given my experience, perhaps you'll need another test of those garlic pills before you're sure. Say, it could have been those vests we had in our knapsacks! There's powerful mojo in them blue-trimmed vests. :wink_smil

Cordially,

[hardtack1864]

Re: In praise of garlic

I have also heard from other people that garlic at least keeps ticks away, but I have no use for keeping bitting bugs away since at least in So cal, there are'nt really any bitting bugs at reenactments.

[C.G. Williams]

Re: In praise of garlic

My friends and I went to Into the Wilderness, and one of them has been taking garlic pills for sometime now. He always praised how great they worked, anyway the pills did not seem to ward off the ticks from Brandy Station, VA.

[DougCooper]

Re: In praise of garlic

Garlic worked at Mansfield for many of us, keeping bugs away no matter the species. With all the other benefits of garlic, including heart, circulation, prostate, etc, it's nice to know this old home remedy works!

[I. Hogg]

Re: In praise of garlic

I used nothing and received no bites as well.
I had heard horror stories of all things faunal but was amazed at the lack of
bites.

Scorpions were somewhat disconcerning to us boys from the northwoods, but we only saw two, and while that made for some nervous sleeping we survived.
The heat and red Georgia clay were more harmful than the creepy crawlies.

I'd do it again even if the place was swarming with scorpions.

Steve Parrish
Hogg Mess

[JimConley]

Re: In praise of garlic

Same here. No supplements, no bites! I think the conditions at Pickett's Mill were very favorable. One poor boy did encounter a scorpion though :baring_te . But I can see where such a tactic (garlic) would come in handy, especially with the summer months appraoching.

[LWhite64]

Re: In praise of garlic

I spoke to a number of folks as things were wrapping up at the Mill that had been bite by chiggers, including some that slept just a few feet from me, so I dont think the results were unfounded, plus last summer there were clouds of the Georgia state bird in my back yard and they avoided me like the plague.

Lee

[Strawfoot]

Re: In praise of garlic

I've been using the garlic method for some time now, with complete success. Two of my messmates at the Mill were eaten alive by something that left big red bumps all over them.

One guy had to remove a tick from his ankle, and another of our company mates did get stung by a scorpion. At the rail fence, I killed a scorpion with my rifle butt, just as he was about to nail me on the hand. There were Brown Recluse sightings as well...

The ground seemed to have a singular moving effect, with all the spiders, ants and so forth crawling through the leaves and such. It's a miracle I came out unscathed, with not even any poison ivy afteraffects.

Mike Phineas
Arlington, TX

[Jim of The SRR]

Re: In praise of garlic

I have used the same garlic tablet method for several years now and I confirm the same findings. It works great. The one time I forgot to do it, I found two ticks on my after the event. Now if I could find something that works as good against poison ivy!

Regards,
Jim Butler
The SRR

[Pritchett Ball]

Re: In praise of garlic

I feel lucky!

I had dusted myself all over with powdered sulfer, used nothing else, and was completely bite free after the event at Pickett's mill.

I got close to a scorpion the crawled onto my blanket on Saturday, we looked each over carefully, before I carried him away from camp, and let him loose. I saw many Rabid Wolf Spiders, a couple of Cockroaches, saw no snakes. (Darn it!)

I saw a posting a while back, about folk eating lots of garlic bread to ward off critters, and it made sense to me. I just hadn't got around to buying garlic pills, was glad to be bite free!

Kevin Dally

[RockCityGuard]

Re: In praise of garlic

"Garlic is good to chew and fumigate."
8th century B.C. Assyrian Health Guide

Hey John, I seem to remember telling you a couple years ago about the benefit of garlic and tobacco to ward off insects. ;)

I would be sure to eat REAL garlic if you want to use it as an insect repellent. Most all garlic supplements now are ‘odor free’. It is the oils that contain and cause the odor that ward off the bugs. People who want to keep insects out of their herb gardens often plant leek and garlic around them. Bugs do not like the oil. When you eat them as it metabolizes your body oxidizes the chemicals and you sweat them out of your pours giving you a natural head to toe insect repellent. Tobacco works the same way. Mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers don’t care for high levels of nicotine. (Chewing gives higher nicotine levels than smoking)

I have used these methods for years. You have to eat enough garlic that your mess mates can’t stand to be around you, but it does work well. Just be sure to take Monday off of work after an event or you may get a new nickname….

Richard (Russ) Russell
Co. A 1st Tenn Inf CSA
Rock City Guards

[RockCityGuard]

Re: In praise of garlic

Back on the Bug Bandwagon....

In reading Spencer Talley's (28th Tenn Inf) recollections I ran across this..

"Not far from our camping ground stood an old church house in which soldiers had been camping before and I decided it would be better for me to spend the night in it and thus be out of the wet and cold, so with a lot of the men we took refuge to our sorrow afterwards, for on the next day I could feel something tickling in my undershirt and at camping time that evening. I made an examination to find the cause of it and found that I was badly infested with army lice. They have another name for the pest in this age but I can't think of it just now. On reaching Shelbyville I had all my clothes put in boiling water with a view of being rid of them but it was not so, but one of us more of less infested. We had been hearing of the critters for months but this was our first sight and experience with the annoying pest. A few months later we discovered a plan to their annihilation, which was to stretch our garments by inserting stiff brush and hold over a blazing fire until almost hot enough to burn. I don't know who made this discovery, but as soon as it was found to be a success, the news was passed down the line and it was not long before the pest was exterminated. Long before the war ended not a "Gray back" was to be found in the army. I mention this to let you know that in our Civil War, they were here to molest."

http://www.tennessee-scv.org/talleyD.html