Healing Salve

One lb. Lard, 1/2 lb. Resin, 1/2 lb. Sweet Elder bark. Simmer over a slow fire 4 hours, or until it forms a hard, brown salve. This is for the cure of cuts, bruises, boils, old sores and all like ailments. Spread on a cotton cloth and apply to the parts affected.

Source: One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed, C. A. Bogardus

Feuchtwanger’s Tooth Paste

Powdered myrrh, two ounces; burnt alum, one ounce; cream tartar, one ounce; cuttlefish bone, four ounces: drop lake, two ounces; honey, half a gallon; mix.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie

Toffee for Coughs

1/2 lb Demerara sugar
1 oz butter
2 oz treacle
1 teaspoonful ipecacuanha wine

Boil the butter, sugar and treacle together for 20 minutes and add the wine.

Pour out into a greased tin and when cold break into pieces and keep in a tin for use.

Give a small piece to be sucked slowly, from time to time when the cough is troublesome, but never allow a child to go to bed with a piece in its mouth for fear of choking.

Source: Household Management, E. Stoddard Eckford & M.S. Fitzgerald

Chlorine Pastiles for Disinfecting the Breath

1. Dry chloride of lime, two drachms; sugar, eight ounces; starch, one ounce, gum tragacanth, one drachm; carmine, two grains. Form into small lozenges.

2. Sugar flavored with vanilla, 1 ounce; powdered tragacanth, 20 grains; liquid chloride of soda sufficient to mix; add two drops of any essential oil. Form a paste and divide into lozenges of 15 grains each.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie

Corns – A Sure Cure and Painless Eradication

Extract of Cannabis Indicus ten grs., Salicylic Acid 6 grs., Collodion one oz. Mix and apply with a camel’s hair pencil so as to form a thick covering over the corn for 3 or 4 nights. Take a hot foot bath and the corn can easily be removed with the aid of a knife.

Source: One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed, C. A. Bogardus

To correct a bad Taste and sourness in Wine

Put in a bag the root of wild horse-radish cut in bits. Let it down in the wine, and leave it there two days; take this out, and put another, repeating the same till the wine is perfectly restored. Or fill a bag with wheat; it will have the same effect.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie

Anti-Bilious Pills

1. Compound extract of colocynth, 60 grains; rhubarb, 30 grains; soap, 10 grains. Make into 24 pills. Dose 2 to 4.

2. Compound extract of colocynth, 2 drachms; extract of rhubarb, half a drachm; soap, 10 grains. Mix, and divide into 40 pills. Dose, 1, 2, or 3.

3. Scammony, 10 to 15 grains; compound extract of colocynth, 2 scruples; extract of rhubarb, half a drachm; soap, 10 grains; oil of caraway, 5 drops. Make into 20 pills. Dose, 1 or 2, as required.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie

Cough Compound

For the cure of coughs, colds, asthma, whooping cough and all diseases of the lungs; One spoonful of common tar, three spoonfuls of honey, the yolk of three hen’s eggs, and half a pint of wine; beat the tar, eggs and honey well together with a knife, and bottle for use. A teaspoonful every morning, noon and night, before eating.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie

Camphor Tablet for Chapped Hands, etc.

Melt tallow, and add a little powdered camphor and glycerine, with a few drops of oil of almonds to scent. Pour in molds and cool.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie

Pile Ointment

Powdered nutgall, two drachms; camphor, one drachm; melted wax, one ounce; tincture of opium, two drachms. Mix.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie