Cramp
Persons subject to this complaint, being generally attacked in the night, should have a board fixed at the bottom of the bed, against which the foot should be strongly pressed when the pain commences. This will seldom fail to afford relief. When it is more obstinate, a brick should be heated, wrapped in a flannel bag at the bottom of the bed, and the foot placed against it. The brick will continue warm, and prevent a return of the complaint. No remedy however is more safe or more certain than that of rubbing the affected part, to restore a free circulation. If the cramp attack the stomach or bowels, it is attended with considerable danger: medicine may relieve but cannot cure. All hot and stimulating liquors must be carefully avoided, and a tea-cupful of lukewarm gruel or camomile tea should be frequently given, with ten or fifteen drops of deliquidated salt of tartar in each.
Source: The Cook And Housekeeper’s Complete and Universal Dictionary, Mary Eaton
To keep away Bed-Bugs
Scald and saturate the holes and bedstead thoroughly with hot strong soap-suds, or water diluted with corrosive sublimate ; dip the cord also in the same liquor. Then, before putting up the bedstead, dip the feathered end of a quill into soft soap, or hard soap melted, or any kind of paint, and work it round in the cord-holes of the beams and elsev/here. This renders every part obnoxious to them, and they will not inhabit it.
Source: Valuable Receipts, J.M. Prescott
Vermin Exterminator
A blessing to housekeepers, and no danger of poison: Take a half pound of alum to one pail of water boiling hot; dip in the ends of the slats; then take a good scrubbing brush and apply thoroughly to all parts affected, all cracks in the plastering or wood work. A certain cure for bed-bugs. Tried.
Source: The Kansas Home Cook-Book
To Destroy and Prevent Bed Bugs
Take two ounces of lard, and one ounce of quicksilver, mix well, and apply with a soft brush or feather where the pests frequent. Apply once a year.
Source: The Kansas Home Cook-Book
How to Get Rid of Bedbugs
Bedbugs cannot stand hot alum water; indeed, alum seems to be death to them in any form. Take two pounds of alum, reduce it to a powder — the finer the better — and dissolve it in about four quarts of boiling water. Keep the water hot till the alum is all dissolved; then apply it hot to every joint, crevice and place about the bedstead, floor, skirting or washboard around the room, and every place where the bugs are likely to congregate, by means of a brush. A common syringe is an excellent thing to use in applying it to the bedstead. Apply the water as hot as you can. Apply it freely, and you will hardly be troubled any more that season with bugs. Whitewash the ceiling with plenty of dissolved alum in the wash, and there will be an end to their dropping down from thence on to your bed.
Source: The Ladies’ Book of Useful Information
Sleeplessness, Easy and Simple Remedy for
“On going to bed, take some sound, as a clock-tick or the breathing of some one within hearing, and breathe long breaths, keeping time to the sound. In a very short time you will fall asleep, without any of the painful anxieties attending insomnia.”
Source: Mother’s Remedies: Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remidies from Mothers of the United States and Canada, T. J. Ritter