Well, not so much rediscovered it as reasoned that that might be the cause of the pain and then confirmed it. The shocking part is that no doctor advises to use this after a tonsillectomy (or other kind of mouth or throat procedure).

My dad (also a doctor) called it a typical case of "the nurse's wisdom": the kind of quality of life interventions that typiqally get discovered by nurses and passed down orally, but never make it to official medical journals.