24. Eskimo Mothers Suck The Snot From Their Babies' Noses

The Inuit tribes of North America were some of the most resourceful people to have ever lived. You thought in American History class that the Apaches were tough? The Inuit took the term, living off the land, to an extreme level, surviving any way they could in the tundra wastes of Northern Alaska and Canada. They made their houses out of ice and used every bit of the animals they hunted, right down to the small bones for tools. In the comforts of modern society, we can only imagine what childbirth must have been like in this sub-zero environment with nothing to eat. Keeping a newborn warm in those conditions had to have been no easy task. The babies would be perceptive to the common cold, which was problematic because there was no Kleenex to fight off a nose-drip. So Inuit mothers used the next best thing: their mouths. Like snot sucking vacuum cleaners they would place their mouths over the babies nostrils and sucked out the congestion. Then they would spit and repeat as necessary.