A Remedy for Moth or Hepatic Spots

They are a sign of deep seated disease of the liver. Taraxacum, the extract of dandelion root, is the standing remedy for this, and the usual prescription is a large pill four nights in a week, some times for months. To this may be added the free use of tomatoes, figs, mustard-seed, and all seedy fruits and vegetables, with light boiled meats, and no bread but that of coarse flour. Pastry, puddings of most sorts, and fried food of all kinds must be dispensed with by persons having a tendency to this disease. It may take six weeks or even months to make any visible impression on either the health or the moth patches, but success will come at last. One-third of a teaspoonful of chlorate of soda in a wine-glass of water, taken in three doses before meals, will aid the recovery by neutralizing morbid matters in the stomach. There is no sure cosmetic that will reach the moth patches. Such treatment as described, such exercise as is tempting in itself, and gay society, will restore one to conditions of health in which the extinction of these blotches is certain.

Source: The Housekeeper’s Friend: A Practical Cookbook

Refreshing Drink for Sore Throat attended with Fever

Boil two ounces of barberries with half an ounce of violets in a quart of water for ten minutes; sweeten with honey, strain off into a jug, and drink several glasses during the day.

Source: A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, C.E. Francatelli

A Cure for Cold in the Head

Thirty drops of camphorated sal volatile in a small wine-glassful of hot water, taken several times in the course of the day.

Source: A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, C.E. Francatelli

How to make a Stringent Gargle

Put the following ingredients into a very clean earthen pipkin:— Twenty sage leaves, a handful of red rose leaves, and a pint of water; boil these for twenty minutes, then add a gill of vinegar, and two table-spoonfuls of honey; boil again for ten minutes, and strain the gargle through a muslin rag, to be used when cold.

Source: A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, C.E. Francatelli

To Remove the Odor of Onions

Fill with cold water kettles and sauce pans in which they have been cooked adding a tablespoonful of bread soda and the same of ammonia. Let stand on the stove until it boils. Then wash in hot suds and rinse well. A pudding or bean pot, treated in this way, will wash easily. Wood ashes in the water will have the same effect.

Source: Things Mother Used To Make, L.M. Gurney

Liniment for Sprains

One ounce oil of wormseed, one ounce of hemlock, one ounce of sassafras, one ounce of cedar, one ounce of red pepper, one ounce gum camphor, three pints of alcohol. This liniment Ls good for man or beast.

Source: The Housekeeper’s Friend: A Practical Cookbook

Homemade Shortening

Do not throw away small pieces of fat from pork, lamb or steak. Put them on the stove, in a skillet or agate dish and cook them till there is nothing left, but scraps. Then pare a potato, wash clean, cut into thin slices and cook in the fat for a half hour to clarify it. Strain through a cloth. This will be good to fry doughnuts in and for all purposes, where shortening is needed, except for pie crust.

Pieces of fat, not fit for shortening can be saved in some old utensil and made into kitchen soap.

Source: Things Mother Used To Make, L.M. Gurney

Hyssop Tea: a Remedy for Worms

To a quarter of an ounce of dried hyssop flowers, pour one pint of boiling water; allow the tea to infuse for ten minutes, pour it off, sweeten with honey, and take a wine-glassful three times in the course of the day; this will prove an effectual cure when children are troubled with worms.

Source: A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, C.E. Francatelli

To Remove Freckles

Take finely powdered nitre (saltpetre), and apply it to the freckles by the finger moistened with water and dipped in the powder. When perfectly done, and judiciously repeated, it will remove them effectually without trouble. Rough skins from exposure to the wind in riding, rowing or yachting trouble many ladies who will be glad to know that an application of cold cream or glycerine at night, washed off with fine carbolic soap in the morning, will render them presentable at the breakfast-table. Another method is to rub the face, throat and arms well with cold cream or pure almond oil before going out. With this precaution one may come home from a berry party, or a sail without a trace of that ginger-bread effect too apt to follow these pleasures.

Source: The Housekeeper’s Friend: A Practical Cookbook

How to make a Soothing Drink for Coughs

Take of marsh-mallow roots and of liquorice roots each one ounce; of linseed, half an ounce; shave the roots very thinly; put them and the linseed into a clean earthen pot with one quart of hot water, cover with the lid, and set the whole on the hob of the fire to simmer for half an hour or more; then strain the drink into a clean jug, sweeten with honey, and when it has become quite cold, let it be given in small quantities several times in the course of the day. This mucilaginous beverage is most beneficial in relieving persons who are suffering from cold on the chest, and also those who are afflicted with gravel, etc.

Source: A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, C.E. Francatelli