Chicken Cholera

Take one part cayenne pepper, two parts ginger; mix with lard and flour enough to make pills as large as a pea. Give two or more twice a day.

Source: The Kansas Home Cook-Book

Alcohol Bandage for Sore Throat

Take a strip of flannel sufficiently long to go three times round the throat ; heat it, dip it in alcohol, and, when thoroughly soaked, fold it, and apply it to the throat; put over this a strip of oiled silk, and over that tie an old silk or linen handkerchief ; this is a safe, easy, and soothing remedy for a sore throat. The bandage should be moistened from time to time with alcohol as it dries.

Source: The Unrivalled Cook-Book and Housekeeper’s Guide, Mrs Washington

Gravel

Into a pint of water put two ounces of bicarbonate of soda. Take two tablespoonfuls in the early forenoon, and the same toward night; also drink freely of water through the day. Inflammation of the kidneys has been successfully treated with large doses of lime-water.

Persons troubled with kidney difficulty should abstain from sugar and the things that are converted into sugar in digestion, such as starchy food and sweet vegetables.

Source: The White House Cookbook, F.L. Gillette

Relief from Asthma

Sufferers from asthma should get a muskrat skin and wear it over their lungs with the fur side next to the body. It will bring certain relief.

Or soak blotting paper in saltpetre water, then dry, burning at night in the patient’s bedroom.

Another excellent recipe: Take powdered liquorice root, powdered elecampane root, powdered anise-seed, each one drachm, powdered ipecac ten grains, powdered lobelia ten grains; add sufficient amount of tar to form into pills of ordinary size. Take three or four pills on going to bed. An excellent remedy for asthma or shortness of breath.

Source: The White House Cookbook, F.L. Gillette

How to Take Castor Oil

Take a half-glass of frothy, sparkling beer, mix the dose of oil with it, and whip it up so as to make it froth strongly. The oil thus becomes intimately mixed with the froth, and if only the latter is drunk, neither the taste of the oil nor that of the beer is perceived.

Source: Audel’s Household Helps, Hints and Receipts

Remedy for Diptheria

Chlorate of potassa is a well known means of arresting the progress of diphtheria. A solution should be kept in every family medicine chest, ready to be administered in every suspicious case of
sore throat. The solution is made by dissolving half an ounce of the chlorate in a pint of boiling water. It should be preserved in a bottle, closely corked, and when used the bottle should be shaken with sufficient violence to diffuse the crystalline sediments through the water. The dose is a tablespoonful thrice daily.

Source: The Housekeeper’s Friend: A Practical Cookbook

For the Griping in the Guts

Take a peniworth of Brandy, and a peniworth of Mithridate mixed together, and drink it three nights together when you go to rest, or take a little Oil of Aniseeds in a Glass of Sack three times.

Source: The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet, Hannah Wolley

A Splendid Remedy for Dysentery

A dessert spoonful of olive oil every four hours, and an opium pill between, this is the quantity for an adult, of course it must be much less for a child.

Source: The Housekeeper’s Friend: A Practical Cookbook

A Recipe for the Removal of Pimples or Blotches

Fifty grains of distilled water of cherry laurel, seventy-five grains of extract of lead, seven of tincture of benzoin, and thirty of alcohol; shake the benzoin and alcohol together, and then the whole very thoroughly.

Source: Audel’s Household Helps, Hints and Receipts

For Chapped Skin

Keep a muslin bag filled with bran constantly soaking in the water which you use for your ablutions; the bran should be changed twice a week; immediately after bathing rub the chapped skin with deer suet, or with glycerine and rose-water, in the proportion of three parts of glycerine to one of rose-water ; do this while the skin is still wet.

Source: The Unrivalled Cook-Book and Housekeeper’s Guide, Mrs Washington