Croup

Give equal parts of butter and honey melted together, or lard and sugar, or onion juice and sugar, or equal parts of alum and sugar. If choking is bad give the white of an egg or something to cause vomiting, that the phlegm may be thrown up. Always grease the breast well with lard, and keep covered with flannel. Melt the lard and put it on as hot as can be borne. If nothing else helps, wrap the child in blankets and give hot drinks until sweating is induced, but after this treatment great care must be taken as the patient will take cold very easily.

Source: The Inglenook Cook Book

Treatment of Croup

Every mother knows those fearful premonitory symptoms of croup, the hoarse sepulchral cough which is so startling. The child should be at once taken up, its throat and chest rubbed thoroughly before a hot fire with lard and camphor melted together, then a wet compress put on, by folding up a cloth of a half dozen thicknesses, (have it about two or three inches in width,) wring it out of cold water, then pin it on to a piece of flannel, allowing the flannel to extend beyond it on either side at least an inch, pin it securely around the neck placing another piece of flannel or a soft towel out side, entirely excluding the air. If the child is very much oppressed give sufficient ipecac (syrup) to vomit it ; these remedies can be used until you have time to secure a physician. If the child continues t© be hoarse, continue giving ipecac all the next day every two hours not enough to vomit it, but sufficient to keep the phlegm loose. Another remedy for croup is alum, about one-half teaspoonful of pulverized alum in a small quantity of molasses, repeat the dose every hour until the patient is relieved ; or alum dissolved in water, and given in small doses every hour. Onion syrup is also very good for hoarseness in children ; put two or three onions in a pan, place them in the oven of the stove, let them get thoroughly baked, then squeeze the juice out into a saucer, and to every spoonful of juice put the same of white sugar, and give the child a teaspoonful every hour or oftener if necessary.

Source: The Housekeeper’s Friend: A Practical Cookbook

Bronchitis, General Relief for

“Dose of castor oil every night; one teaspoonful for child. Grease well with camphorated oil or any good oil.” The castor oil is very good for carrying off the phlegm from the stomach and bowels that children always swallow instead of coughing up like an older person. It is well in addition to the above remedy to give a little licorice or onion syrup to relieve the bronchial cough.

Source: Mother’s Remedies: Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remidies from Mothers of the United States and Canada, T. J. Ritter

Ingredients: Ivy (Ground)

This common, and very familiar little herb, with its small Ivy-like aromatic leaves, and its striking whorls of dark blue blossoms conspicuous in early spring time, comes into flower pretty punctually about the third or fourth of April, however late or early the season may be. Its name is attributed to the resemblance borne by its foliage to that of the true Ivy (Hedera helix). The whole plant possesses a balsamic odour, and an aromatic taste, due to its particular volatile oil, and its characteristic resin, as a fragrant labiate herb. It remaineth green not only in summer, but also in winter, at all times of the year.

From the earliest days it has been thought endowed with singular curative virtues chiefly against nervous headaches, and for the relief of chronic bronchitis. Ray tells of a remarkable instance in the person of a Mr. Oldacre who was cured of an obstinate chronic headache by using the juice or the powdered leaves of the Ground Ivy as snuff: Succus hujus plantoe naribus attractus cephalalgiam etiam vehementissimam et inveteratam non lenit tantum, sed et penitus aufert; and he adds in further praise of the herb: Medicamentum hoc non satis potest laudari; si res ex usu oestimarentur, auro oequiparandum. An infusion of the fresh herb, or, if made in winter, from its dried leaves, and drank under the name of Gill tea, is a favourite remedy with the poor for coughs of long standing, accompanied with much phlegm. One ounce of the herb should be infused in a pint of boiling water, and a wineglassful of this when cool is to be taken three or four times in the day. The botanical name of the plant is Nepeta glechoma, from Nepet, in Tuscany, and the Greek gleechon, a mint.

Resembling Ivy in miniature, the leaves have been used in weaving chaplets for the dead, as well as for adorning the Alestake erected as a sign at taverns. For this reason, and because formerly in vogue for clearing the ale drank by our Saxon ancestors, the herb acquired the names of Ale hoof, and Tun hoof (“tun” signifying a garden, and “hoof” or “hufe” a coronal or chaplet), or Hove, “because,” says Parkinson, “it spreadeth as a garland upon the ground.” Other titles which have a like meaning are borne by the herb, such as “Gill go by the ground,” and Haymaids, or Hedgemaids; the word “gill” not only relating to the fermentation of beer, but meaning also a maid. This is shown in the saying, “Every Jack should have his Gill, or Jill”; and the same notion was conveyed by the sobriquet “haymaids.” Again in some districts the Ground Ivy is called “Lizzy run up the hedge,” “Cat’s-foot” (from the soft flower heads), “Devil’s candlesticks,” “Aller,” and in Germltny “Thundervine,” also in the old English manuscripts “Hayhouse,” “Halehouse,” and “Horshone.” The whole plant was employed by our Saxon progenitors to clarify their so-called beer, before hops had been introduced for this purpose; and the place of refreshment where the beverage was sold bore the name of a “Gill house.”

In A Thousand Notable Things, it is stated, “The juice of Ground Ivy sniffed up into the nostrils out of a spoon, or a saucer, purgeth the head marvellously, and taketh away the greatest and oldest pain thereof that is: the medicine is worth gold, though it is very cheap.”

Small hairy tumours may often be seen in the autumn on the leaves of the Ground Ivy occasioned (says Miss Pratt) by the punctures of the cynips glechomoe from which these galls spring. They have a strong flavour of the plant, and are sometimes eaten by the peasantry of France. The volatile oil on which the special virtues of the Ground Ivy depend exudes from small glandular dots on the under surface of the leaves. This is the active ingredient of Gill tea made by country persons, and sweetened with honey, sugar, or liquorice. Also the expressed juice of the herb is equally effectual, being diaphoretic, diuretic, and somewhat astringent against bleedings.

Gerard says that in his day “the Ground Ivy was commended against the humming sound, and ringing noises of the ears by being put into them, and for those that are hard of hearing. Also boiled in mutton broth it helpeth weak and aching backs.” Dr. Thornton tells us in his Herbal (1810) that “Ground Ivy was at one time amongst the ‘cries’ of London, for making a tea to purify the blood,” and Dr. Pitcairn extolled this plant before all other vegetable medicines for the cure of consumption. Perhaps the name Ground Ivy was transferred at first to the Nepeta from the Periwinkle, about which we read in an old distich of Stockholm:–

“Parvenke is an erbe green of colour,
In time of May he bereth blo flour,
His stalkes are so feynt and feye
That nevermore groweth he heye:
On the grounde he rynneth and growe
As doth the erbe that hyth tunhowe;
The lef is thicke, schinende and styf
As is the grene Ivy leef:
Uniche brod, and nerhand rownde;
Men call it the Ivy of the grounde.”

In the Organic Materia Medica of Detroit, U.S.A., 1890, it is stated, “Painters use the Ground Ivy (Nepeta glechoma) as a remedy for, and a preventive of lead colic.” An infusion is given (the ounce to a pint of boiling water)–one wineglassful for a dose repeatedly. In the relief which it affords as a snuff made from the dried leaves to congestive headache of a passive continued sort, this benefit is most probably due partly to the special titillating aroma of the plant, and partly to the copious defluxion of mucus and tears from the nasal passages, and the eyes.

Source: Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure, William Thomas Fernie

Croup, Coal Oil, Turpentine and Snuff, a Canadian Remedy for

“A little coal oil and a few drops of turpentine soaked up by snuff, and used as plaster. Makes the child sneeze after a few minutes. The poultice loosens the phlegm and the sneezing throws it off.”

Source: Mother’s Remedies: Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remidies from Mothers of the United States and Canada, T. J. Ritter

Asthma, Lobelia Tea for

“There is no medicine that is half so effective as lobelia in removing the tough, hard ropy phlegm from the asthmatic persons.” This remedy is very good, but care should be taken not to give it to consumptives, because it is too weakening. To obtain the best results, enough of the remedy should be given to produce relaxation of the bronchial tubes. Dose.— For adults should be from fifteen to sixty drops according to the strength of the patient. This will cause a little sickness of the stomach and vomiting, thus relaxing the muscles and relieving the asthma.

Source: Mother’s Remedies: Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remidies from Mothers of the United States and Canada, T. J. Ritter

Definition: Expectorant

An expectorant is a substance which aids in the secretion or discharge of phlegm, mucus or other substances from the chest or respiratory tract.