Golden Ointment

One pound lard and eight ounces beeswax melted. Have one ounce camphor gum put to five ounces of alcohol, one ounce organum, one ounce laudanum. Let all dissolve while you are melting the first two, then stir together till cold. Do not put these together too hot, or the camphor will go off in steam, and you will lose the good of it.

Source: The New Galt Cook Book, M. Taylor & F. McNaught

To Remedy A Sluggish Liver

Boil two ounces of freshly-sliced dandelion root in two pints of water until the liquor is reduced to one pint, then add one ounce of compound tincture of horse-radish. Use occasionally.

Or, take occasionally ten minims of tincture of rhubarb, ten grains of bicarbonate of soda, and twenty grains of Epsom salts, in a wineglassful of water.

Source: Recipes for the Million

Wheat Gruel for Young Children with weak stomachs, or for Invalids

Tie half a pint of wheat flour in thick cotton, and boil it three or four hours; then dry the lump and grate it when you use it. Prepare a gruel of it by making a thin paste, and pouring it into boiling milk and water, and flavor with salt. This is good for teething children.

Source: Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt Book, Catherine Beecher

Hallett’s Gout and Bilious Cordial

Infuse in a gallon of distilled aniseed water, 3 oz. Turkey rhubarb, 4 oz. senna leaves, 4 oz. guaiacum shavings, 3 oz. elecampagne root, 1 oz. fennel seed, 14 oz. saffron, 14 oz. cochineal, 1 lb. sun raisins, 1 oz. aniseed; shake it every day for a fortnight; strain and bottle it. A table-spoonful (or two) an hour after dinner.

Source: The English Housekeeper, Anne Cobbett

Cure for Hiccough

A good cure for hiccough is slippery elm-bark boiled and made sweet with sugar.

Source: The New Galt Cook Book, M. Taylor & F. McNaught

Seidlitz Powders

Two drachms of Rochelle salts, and two scruples of bicarbonate of soda, in a white paper; thirty-five grains of tartaric acid in a blue one.

Dissolve that in the white paper in nearly half a tumbler of water, then add the other powder, dissolved in another half tumbler of water.

Syrup mixed with the water makes it more agreeable. It is a gentle laxative.

Source: Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt Book, Catherine Beecher

For Bruises and Swellings

Use distilled witch-hazel, wetting a cloth and applying frequently. Both better and cheaper than arnica.

Source: The New Galt Cook Book, M. Taylor & F. McNaught

For Burns

Wet cotton batting with coal oil and put on the burn, keeping there until it is well.

Source: The New Galt Cook Book, M. Taylor & F. McNaught

A Mild Aperient (To Take In The Spring)

Put 1 oz. of senna into a jar, and pour 1 quart of boiling water over it; fill up the vessel, with prunes and figs; cover with paper, and set it in the oven, with household bread. Take every morning, one or two prunes, and a wine-glass of the liquor.– Or: dissolve 3 oz. of Spanish liquorice in one pint boiling water, add 1 oz. socotrine aloes in powder, and 1 pint brandy. Take 1 tea-spoonful in a wine-glassful of water, either in the morning, at night, or both.– Or: a large tea-spoonful of magnesia, a lump of sugar, a dessert-spoonful of lemon juice, in 1/2 pint of spring water.

Source: The English Housekeeper, Anne Cobbett

Toothache

Apply chloroform to the nerve of the tooth, by means of a quill tooth pick. Chloroform is so volatile that when introduced through cotton it seldom reaches the nerve.

Source: Tried and True Recipes, F.D.P. Jermain