Cucumber Juice for Sunburn

Cucumber juice or melon juice squeezed into cream, and always prepared in an earthen dish with a wooden spoon or earthen pestle, is a fatal enemy to sunburn and all its wicked works. A handful of parsley thrown into boiling water is also a good antidote for sunburn, and some famous beauties of old used to swear by the good effects of a raw potato cut in halves and rubbed on the face at night.

Source: Audel’s Household Helps, Hints and Receipts

Lemons for Neuralgia

Lemon, eaten freely, without the peel, and without sugar, has proved very beneficial in neuralgia. But very little sugar, if any, must be used.

Source: Mrs Owens’ Cook Book and Useful Household Hints, Frances Owens

Ingredient: Apple

It is hardly possible to take up any newspaper or magazine now a days without happening on advertisements of patent medicines whose chief recommendation is that they “contain phosphorus.” They are generally very expensive, but the reader is assured that they are worth ten times the price asked on account of their wonderful properties as nerve and brain foods. The proprietors of these concoctions seemingly flourish like green bay trees and spend many thousands of pounds per annum in advertising. From which it may be deduced that sufferers from nervous exhaustion and brain fag number millions. And surely only a sufferer from brain fag would suffer himself to be led blindly into wasting his money, and still further injuring his health, by buying and swallowing drugs about whose properties and effects he knows absolutely nothing. How much simpler, cheaper, and more enjoyable to eat apples!

The apple contains a larger percentage of phosphorus than any other fruit or vegetable. For this reason it is an invaluable nerve and brain food. Sufferers from nerve and brain exhaustion should eat at least two apples at the beginning of each meal. At the same time they should avoid tea and coffee, and supply their place with barley water or bran tea flavoured with lemon juice, or even apple tea.

Apples are also invaluable to sufferers from the stone or calculus. It has been observed that in cider countries where the natural unsweetened cider is the common beverage, cases of stone are practically unknown. Food-reformers do not deduce from this that the drinking of cider is to be recommended, but that even better results may be obtained from eating the fresh, ripe fruit.

Apples periodically appear upon the tables of carnivorous feeders in the form of apple sauce. This accompanies bilious dishes like roast pork and roast goose. The cook who set this fashion was evidently acquainted with the action of the fruit upon the liver. All sufferers from sluggish livers should eat apples.

Apples will afford much relief to sufferers from gout. The malic acid contained in them neutralises the chalky matter which causes the gouty patient’s sufferings.

Apples, when eaten ripe and without the addition of sugar, diminish acidity in the stomach. Certain vegetable salts are converted into alkaline carbonates, and thus correct the acidity.

An old remedy for weak or inflamed eyes is an apple poultice. I am told that in Lancashire they use rotten apples for this purpose, but personally I should prefer them sound.

A good remedy for a sore or relaxed throat is to take a raw ripe apple and scrape it to a fine pulp with a silver teaspoon. Eat this pulp by the spoonful, very slowly, holding it against the back of the throat as long as possible before swallowing.

A diet consisting chiefly of apples has been found an excellent cure for inebriety. Health and strength may be fully maintained upon fine wholemeal unleavened bread, pure dairy or nut butter, and apples.

Apple water or apple tea is an excellent drink for fever patients.

Apples possess tonic properties and provoke appetite for food. Hence the old-fashioned custom of eating an apple before dinner.

Apple Tea

The following are two good recipes for apple tea:– (1) Take 2 sound apples, wash, but do not peel, and cut into thin slices. Add some strips of lemon rind. Pour on 1 pint of boiling water (distilled). Strain when cold. (2) Bake 2 apples. Pour over them 1 pint boiling water. Strain when cold.

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

Cleopatra’s Freckle Balm

A splendid article. Venice soap, one ounce; lemon juice, half ounce; oil of bitter almonds, quarter ounce; deliquidated oil of tartar, quarter ounce; oil of rhodium, three drops. Dissolve the soap in the lemon juice, then add the two oils, and put the whole in the sun till it acquires the consistency of ointment, and then add the oil rhodium. Anoint the freckly face at night with this balm, and wash in the morning with pure water.

Source: The Ladies’ Book Of Useful Information

The Jaundice

Wear leaves of Celendine upon and under the feet.

Or take a small pill of Castile-soap every morning, for eight or ten days. Tried.

Or beat the white of an Egg thin; take it morning and evening in a glass of water.

Or half a pint of strong decoction of Nettles. Or of Burdock-leaves, morning and evening.

Or boil three ounces of Burdock-root in two quarts of water to three pints. Drink a tea-cupful of this every morning.

Source: Primitive Physic: or an easy and natural method of curing most diseases, John Wesley.

For a Dry, Irritating Cough

Smoke in a common clean pipe equal quantities of ground coffee and rich pine saw-dust. My husband finds almost instant relief when his throat and lungs are sore. Swallow all the smoke you can.

Source: Mrs Owens’ Cook Book and Useful Household Hints, Frances Owens

To Cure Watery and Inflamed Eyes

Foment frequently with decoction of poppy heads. When the irritation and inflammation occur, a teaspoonful of cognac brandy in four ounces of spring water may be used three or four times in the course of the day as a strengthening lotion.

Source: The Ladies’ Book of Useful Information

Frozen Feet – To Cure

Get some lumps of fresh lime and make a foot-tub full of strong whitewash mixture, and immerse the feet in it as hot as may be borne. This remedy is to cure that disagreeable itching that troubles one after having frozen the feet. This itching will come on night after night and season after season. The relief will be instantaneous. Let them remain half an hour in the whitewash. They will be shriveled up but free from pain. Rub them briskly and great rolls of dead cuticle will peel off. Anoint with mutton tallow, put on some cotton stockings, and go to bed. Repeat the application if necessary, but it will require but two or three to effect a cure.

Source: Mrs Owens’ Cook Book and Useful Household Hints, Frances Owens

Ingredient: Chamomile Flowers

A strong tepid infusion of these flowers, administered in doses of from three to four ounces, operates as a powerful emetic; a weaker infusion is a useful diluent in promoting the operation of other emetics, when the stomach is weak and likely to be too much oppressed by the use of simple water. A small tea-cupful of cold chamomile tea, taken in the morning fasting, is often serviceable in dyspeptic affections, and intestinal debility. They are also used, either alone or in combination with poppyheads, for fomentations in colic, but are little preferable to hot or warm water; excepting that the infused flowers, rolled up in a cloth or flannel, serve to retain the heat of the application.

Source: A Companion To The Medicine Chest, John Savory.

Warts

Warts, like chilblains, are too well known to require description. They chiefly attack the hands, and particularly the fingers, but sometimes occur on other portions of the body. They may be removed by rubbing or moistening their extremities every day, or every other day, with lunar caustic, nitric acid, concentrated acetic acid, or aromatic vinegar, care being taken not to wash the hands for some hours after. The first is an extremely convenient and manageable substance, from not being liable to drop or spread; but it produces a black stain, which remains till the cauterized surface peels off. The second produces a yellow stain, in depth proportioned to the strength of the acid employed. This also wears off after the lapse of a few days. The others scarcely discolor the skin.

Source: The Ladies’ Book Of Useful Information