Herb Teas

Herb teas are made by infusing the dried or green leaves and stalks in boiling water, and letting them stand until cold. Sweeten to taste.

Sage tea, sweetened with honey, is good for a sore throat, used as a gargle, with a small bit of alum dissolved in it.

Catnip tea is the best panacea for infant ills, in the way of cold and colic, known to nurses.

Pennyroyal tea will often avert the unpleasant consequences of a sudden check of perspiration, or the evils induced by ladies’ thin shoes.

Chamomile and gentian teas are excellent tonics taken either cold or hot.

The tea made from blackberry-root is said to be good for summer disorders. That from green strawberry leaves is an admirable and soothing wash for a cankered mouth.

Tea of parsley-root scraped and steeped in boiling water, taken warm, will often cure strangury and kindred affections, as will that made from dried pumpkin-seed.

Tansy and rue teas are useful in cases of colic, as are fennel seeds steeped in brandy.

A tea of damask-rose leaves, dry or fresh, will usually subdue any simple case of summer complaint in infants.

Mint tea, made from the green leaves, crushed in cold or hot water and sweetened, is palatable and healing to the stomach and bowels.

Source: Common Sense in the Household, Marion Harland

Apple Toddy

Boil a large juicy pippin in a quart of water, and when it has broken to pieces strain off the water. While it is still boiling-hot, add a glass of fine old whiskey, a little lemon-juice, and sweeten to taste.

Take hot at bed-time for influenza.

Source: Common Sense in the Household, Marion Harland

Ginger Tea

Strong ginger tea, sweetened and taken hot on going to bed, is very good. Where persons have been exposed to the air, and think they have taken fresh cold, keep the feet warm by taking a hot brick to bed, and do not increase the cold the next day. If it is not deeply seated, taking this a few nights will give relief. A piece of ginger root, kept about the person to chew, is good for a tickling in the throat, which many persons are subject to, when sitting in close heated apartments, in lecture rooms, or places of worship.

Source: Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers, Elizabeth E. Lea

For Colds on the Chest

Rub with embrocation, or camphorated oil, on the throat and chest, afterwards covering them with flannel or Thermogen. Give a cough mixture to relieve the cough. A linseed poultice will become necessary for a case of bronchitis, croup, pneumonia or pleurisy.

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

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

Bryan’s Pulmonic Wafers for Coughs, Colds, Etc

Take white sugar, seven pounds; tincture of syrup of ipecac, four ounces: antimonial wine, two ounces; morphine, ten grains; dissolved in a tablespoonful of water, with ten or fifteen drops sulphuric acid; tincture of bloodroot, one ounce; syrup of tolu, two ounces; add these to the sugar, and mix the whole mass as confectioners do for lozenges, and cut into lozenges the ordinary size. Use from six to twelve of these in twenty-four hours. They sell at a great profit.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie

Hints In Regard To Health (Part II)

(Continued from this post.)

• Sprains and bruises call for an application of the tincture of arnica.
• If an artery is severed, tie a small cord or handkerchief above it.
• For bilious colic, soda and ginger in hot water. It may be taken freely.
• Tickling in the throat is best relieved by a gargling of salt and water.
• Pains in the side are most promptly relieved by the application of mustard.
• For cold in the head nothing is better than powdered borax, sniffed up the nostrils.
• A drink of hot, strong lemonade before going to bed will often break up a cold and cure a sore throat.
• Nervous spasms are usually relieved by a little salt taken into the mouth and allowed to dissolve.
• Whooping cough paroxysms are relieved by breathing the fumes of turpentine and carbolic acid.
• Broken limbs should be placed in natural positions, and the patient kept quiet until the surgeon arrives.
• Hemorrhages of the lungs or stomach are promptly checked by small doses of salt. The patient should be kept as quiet as possible.
• Sleeplessness, caused by too much blood in the head may be overcome by applying a cloth wet with cold water to the back of the neck.
• Wind colic is promptly relieved by peppermint essence taken in a little warm water. For small children it may be sweetened. Paregoric is also good.
• For stomach cramps, ginger ale or a teaspoonful of the tincture of ginger in a half glass of water in which a half teaspoonful of soda has been dissolved.
• Sickness of the stomach is most promptly relieved by drinking a teacupful of hot soda and water. If it brings the offending matter up, all the better.
• A teaspoonful of ground mustard in a cupful of warm water is a prompt and reliable emetic, and should be resorted to in cases of poisoning or cramps in the stomach from over-eating.
• Avoid purgatives or strong physic, as they not only do no good, but are positively hurtful. Pills may relieve for the time, but they seldom cure.
• Powdered resin is the best thing to stop bleeding from cuts. After the powder is sprinkled on, wrap the wound with soft cotton cloth. As soon as the wound begins to feel feverish, keep the cloth wet with cold water.
• Hot water is better than cold for bruises. It relieves pain quickly, and by preventing congestion often keeps off the ugly black and blue mark. “Children cry for it,” when they experience the relief it affords their bumps and bruises.
• For a sprained ankle, the whites of eggs and powdered alum made into a plaster is almost a specific.

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

For a Cold

Take a quarter of a pint of horehound water a quarter of a pint of coltsfoot water a pound of reasons of the Sun Stoned pound the reasons very well then mingle these together then set them on the fire boyle them like marmolet then take it off and put it into 2 ounces of honey and one spoonfull mustard then set it on the fire & let it simer a while then put it into a pot and take as much as y^e quantity of a walnut first in ye morning & last at night.

Source: A Book of Simples, H.W. Lewer

To Break Up A Cold

When you feel the first symptoms, take a Dover’s powder with a glass of hot lemonade or whisky punch, go to bed, wrap up warm, and by morning you will be entirely relieved. In addition the feet should be bathed in hot mustard water.

Source: The Housekeeper’s Friend: A Practical Cookbook

Earache

Caused sometimes by bad teeth, but generally by cold or hardened ear wax.

Hold ear over cloth wrung out of hot water, on which are several drops of alcohol. Syringe ear with warm bicarbonate of soda water — 1 tsp. to a cup; or peroxide of hydrogen water — 1 tbsp. to a cup of water.

One drop laudanum, or one drop arnica to three drops very warm olive oil, dropped into ear with a medicine dropper, often relieves pain; or cotton may be saturated with the warm olive oil and placed in the ear and covered with dry cotton. To prevent hardening of wax: keep ear anointed with ordinary red vaseline (unbleached vaseline). For watery discharge of ear, dust with dry boric acid.

Source: The Mary Frances First Aid Book, Jane Eayre Fryer