Ingredient: Blackcurrant

Black currant tea is one of the oldest of old-fashioned remedies for sore throats and colds. It is made by pouring half a pint of boiling water on to a large tablespoonful of the jelly or jam. To make the jelly use the same recipe as for blackberry jelly.

The fresh juice pressed from the fruit is, of course, better than tea made from the jelly, but as winter is the season of coughs and colds the fruit is least obtainable when most needed.

Source: Food Remedies: Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses, Florence Daniel

Ingredient: Onion

The uses of the onion are many and varied. Fresh onion juice promotes perspiration, relieves constipation and bronchitis, induces sleep, is good for cases of scurvy and sufferers from lead colic. It is also excellent for bee and wasp stings.

Onions are noted for their nerve-soothing properties. They are also beautifiers of the complexion. But moderation must be observed in their use or they are apt to disagree. Not everyone can digest onions, although I believe them to be more easily digested raw than cooked.

A raw onion may be rubbed on unbroken chilblains with good results. If broken, the onion should be roasted. The heart of a roasted onion placed in the ear is an old-fashioned remedy for earache.

Raw onions are a powerful antiseptic. They also attract disease germs to themselves, and for this reason may be placed in a sickroom with advantage. Needless to say, they should afterwards be burnt or buried. Culpeper, the ancient herbalist, says that they “draw corruption unto them.” It is possibly for this reason that the Vedanta forbids them to devout Hindoos.

Garlic possesses the same properties as the onion, but in a very much stronger degree. Leeks are very much milder than the onion.

Source: Food Remedies: Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses, Florence Daniel

Ingredient: Nettle

The tender tops of young nettles picked in the spring make a delicious vegetable, somewhat resembling spinach. They are excellent for sufferers from gout and skin eruptions.

Fresh nettle juice is prescribed in doses of from 1 to 2 tablespoonfuls for loss of blood from the lungs, nose, or internal organs.

Source: Food Remedies: Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses, Florence Daniel

Ingredient: Brazil Nut

Brazil nuts are excellent for constipation. They are also a good substitute for suet in puddings. Use 5 oz. nuts to 1 lb. flour. They should be grated in a nut mill or finely chopped.

Source: Food Remedies: Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses, Florence Daniel

Uses of Salt

It cleans the palate and furred tongue, and a gargle of salt and water is often efficacious.

A pinch of salt on the tongue, followed ten minutes later by a drink of cold water, often cures a sick headache. It hardens gums, makes teeth white and sweetens the breath.

Cut flowers may be kept fresh by adding salt to the water.

Weak ankles should be rubbed with a solution of salt water and alcohol.

Bad colds, hay fever and kindred affections may be much relieved by using fine dry salt like snuff.

Dyspepsia, heartburn and indigestion are relieved by a cup of hot water in which a small spoonful of salt has been melted.

Salt and water will sometimes revive an unconscious person when hurt if brandy and other remedies are not at hand. Hemorrhage from tooth-pulling is stopped by filling the mouth with salt and water. Weak and tired eyes are refreshened by bathing with warm water and salt.

Salt rubbed into the scalp or occasionally added in washing prevents the hair falling out.

Feathers uncurled by damp weather are quickly dried by shaking over a fire in which salt has been thrown.

Salt should always be eaten with nuts.

Source: 1001 Household Hints, Ottilie V. Ames

Ingredient: Coffee

Coffee is a most powerful antiseptic, and therefore very useful as a disinfectant. It has been used as a specific against cholera with marvellous results, and is useful in all cases of intestinal derangement. But only the pale-roasted varieties should be taken, as the roasting develops the poisonous, irritating properties. There is always danger in the roasting of grains or berries on account of the new substances that may be developed.

I do not recommend coffee as a beverage, but as a medicine.

Source: Food Remedies: Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses, Florence Daniel

Ingredient: Lavender

It is very much to be regretted that the nerve-soothing vegetable perfumes of our grandmothers have been superseded, for the most part, by the cheap mineral products of the laboratory. Scents really prepared from the flowers that give them their names are expensive to make, and consequently high-priced. The cheap scents are all mineral concoctions, and their use is more or less injurious. A penny-worth of dried lavender flowers in a muslin bag is even cheaper to buy, inoffensive to smell — which is more than can be said of cheap manufactured scents — and possesses medicinal properties.

Lavender flowers were formerly used for their curative virtues in all disorders of the head and nerves.

An oil, prepared by infusing the crushed lavender flowers in olive oil, is recommended for anointing palsied limbs, and at one time a spirit was prepared from lavender flowers which was known as “palsy drops.”

A tea made with hot water and lavender tops will relieve the headache that comes from fatigue.

Dr. Fernie advises 1 dessertspoonful per day of pure lavender water for eczema.

The scent of lavender will keep away flies, fleas, and moths.

Source: Food Remedies: Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses, Florence Daniel

Mandrake

Given in chronic liver and bowel complaints. Its properties for exciting the liver to healthy action has few equals. It has been given successfully for incontinence of urine. A teaspoonful of powder in treacle once or twice a day.

Source: Fray’s Golden Recipes for the use of all ages, E. Fray

Broom

This is a plant common enough in England, growing in abundance on most of our commons and heaths. It has very powerful and diuretic properties, which render it useful in cases of dropsy, and other diseases of the kind. The tops and seeds are the parts used, but principally the former. They are usually taken in the form of a decoction, and prepared thus :—

Broom Tops, 2 ounces.

Water, 1 quart.

Boil down to a pint and a half, and strain.

Dose:— A wineglassful three or four times a day.

In liver complaints the above decoction, with an equal quantity of dandelion roots, is held to be very efficacious. The same decoction will draw away all phlegmatic and watery humours from the joints, thereby helping the gout, sciatica, and pains of the hips and limbs; it cleanses the kidneys and expels the gravel and stone, provokes urine abundantly, and taken occasionally, will prevent the water and stone forming again in the body.

Source: Baldwin’s Herbal Guide To Health, G. Baldwin

Rhubarb

The primary action of rhubarb is that of a mild purgative, but it has also tonic and astringent properties, so that its secondary effects are to confine the bowels; hence it is well fitted for use in diarrhoea, but not in constipation, or any affection in which a continuous aperient action is necessary. It is not fitted for inflammatory or febrile cases, although it seldom acts as an irritant; its stimulating, combined with its aperient properties, render it valuable in dyspepsia. Generally speaking, it suits children and aged persons best. Where the bowels are sluggish, combined with ginger and a little extract of dandelion, it makes an excellent dinner pill. The ordinary dose of the powder is from 20 to 36 grains. Some persons have no objection to chew the root, and to such as have not, this is a very good way of taking it. There is an immense variety of medical compounds of which rhubarb forms an important ingredient. Mixed with an equal proportion of carbonate of soda it is an excellent remedy for the irritation of the bowels, common with children when teething. As a common aperient for the young, it is best given combined with magnesia. With both children and adults it has the property of communicating a deep tinge to the urine — this should be known, as the change of colour in the secretion of the kidneys may occasion alarm and misconception. Garden rhubarb when used as food has a slight aperient action upon the bowels In some cases this may be beneficial, but not in all; those who have a tendency to relaxed bowels should not take it. Generally speaking, it is a wholesome and cooling article of diet.

Source: Baldwin’s Herbal Guide To Health, G. Baldwin