By Pennie Azarcon Dela Cruz, Executive Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

ONCE, while watching “Lost” with family and friends, the question was raised: if we were stranded on a deserted island, what two items would we bring? It took me less than three seconds to come up with my answer: loads of books and White Flower!

Yup, White Flower embrocation, that tiny vial of eucalyptus oil that comes in this white and green (or white and blue) box bedecked with Chinese characters that has crossed over to respectability from the quaint drugstores of Chinatown. Now even Watson’s stocks it, along with its twin, Polar Bear.

I don’t remember exactly how I discovered “White Flower.” Could it be during one of those relentless migraine attacks when the mere whiff of menthol provided relief? Or once when a hacking cough persisted and could only be tamed by rubbing some of the stuff on my chest and back? Who gave it to me?

It couldn’t have been my mom who swears by the magic properties of hot water. You have stomach cramps? Here, put this hot water bottle on your tummy. Sprained your ankle? This hot water bath should relax those nerves. Feeling feverish? Nothing that a hot sponge bath can’t cure.

To make her treatment doubly efficacious, Nanay would often close the windows while administering a hot sponge bath, or swathe us in blankets while smoking out our fever with some slowly burning lanzones peel by our feet. Copious sweat, as far as my mother was concerned, was the highest form of well-being. If I remember right, one of my earliest form of rebellion was taking an ice-cold bath — very early in the morning, in Baguio.

But it was White Flower that changed my life. Suddenly, I couldn’t leave the house without a small vial of this wondrous stuff tucked in my purse. It was my cure-all, security blanket and talisman rolled into one. What if I suddenly got dizzy from all those fuel fumes during traffic? A dab of White Flower on the tip of my nose prevented that. A throbbing at the temples is easily tamped down with two fingertips’ worth of this mentholated medication. For persistent headaches and migraines, I’ve developed a self-massage that involves rubbing my forehead with White Flower smeared on three fingers from each hand, starting from the bridge of my nose down to the cranial area behind my ears. Dyspepsia, hunger pangs and cramps also get a generous dose of this elixir slathered across the troubled tummy. Muscle pain is no match either for the comforting touch of this potion, that also works to soothe insect stings and bug bites. When insomnia strikes, I pat some of the oil over my eyelids and I’m out like a light in 20 seconds flat. It even works like an air freshener, instantly exorcising stale cigarette smoke and funky smells with a few drops dispensed all around.

So yes, I’m bringing some White Flower with me to that deserted island. It might take me some time to figure out dinner, but at least I shall do so amid the comforting mentholated haze of my favorite cure-all.

For more cures — natural, bottled or mythical — check out the Sunday Inquirer Magazine’s Going Natural issue on May 25.