you may laugh, but years ago I used to regularly buy these big jars of Polish pickles, and especially in the winter when the heating makes the air dry etc, whenever I started to feel a tickle in the throat of a cold coming on, I'd sip some of the pickle juice a number of times per day, and it always made my throat feel better and stop it from getting worse. The idea came when eating pickles with a sore throat and noticing it felt better afterwards, acidity I guess doing its thing.
Weird but true. And it isnt as disgusting as it sounds, at least not with that brand of pickles that had loads of greenery floating in the brine.
That greenery is dill.
And what you do there is probably similar to an old recommendation I heard a long time ago to gargle with salt water to ease a sore throat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/he...real.html?_r=0